Presenter Monty Don has confessed to faking certain shots from Gardeners’ World – and Jaci Stephen isn’t surprised
Hold the front page! The news is finally out: people “cheat” when making “reality” TV.
Sorry, but you don’t say.
As Gardeners’ World presenter Monty Don confesses to faking certain shots purporting as “reality”, one can only gasp in disbelief… that any viewer would be so gullible as to think it doesn’t happen. It does. It has to. All the time.
I know. Because I am a cheater.
I first appeared on TV 40 years ago and, in the subsequent years, have participated in many programmes – live TV (mainly This Morning, where I was soap critic), documentaries (in my capacity as a TV critic), but mainly as a presenter of individual shows and, on many occasions, my own formats
And one of the tasks of a cheater (or, as I prefer to call it, a distorter of truth for the joy of others) is hiding what really goes on, because it really would spoil everything. Far from being a negative, it’s essential; creating the final, polished product you see on your screen. Because, trust me on this: you really don’t want to know what goes on behind the scenes.
Twenty years ago, I was the subject of a Channel 4 series called So You Think You Want . . . ? Each half-hour programme took a subject who was looking for something they thought they might like and took them through the hoops to see whether the reality lived up to their dreams. Mine was: So you think you want a healthy lifestyle? I was picked because the producer thought I was a heavy smoker who drank a lot, probably took drugs and altogether was heading for death’s door before long.
Jaci Stephen with rugby legend Gareth Edwards (Photo: Supplied)
They could not have been more wrong about my lifestyle. I have never taken drugs, I loathe smoking, I’m largely vegetarian and I cook all my own fresh, unsalted food. I do like my wine, though.
The production team were disappointed, to say the least. After much discussion, it was suggested that we put more emphasis on the wine part and, in my bid to be healthier, I’d stop drinking for two weeks, in addition to my “adopting” (for the camera) healthier eating habits.
On the first day of shooting and before the nutritionist arrived to admonish me, the crew came to empty my fridge of everything green and nourishing. Out went the lettuce, radish, pears, water melon, skimmed milk; in went chocolate, cream – and what can only be described as a small Greggs warehouse.
The unknowing nutritionist was suitably struck with horror (as I had been) as she pulled item after item from the chilled coronary box. I gasped convincingly when she told me what damage I was doing to my body.
As part of the same programme, I had to have colonic irrigation. The idea was that I would go out to an Indian restaurant, eat like a hog (my favourite – a Phal, the hottest curry), down lots of beer and wine and, the next day, have it all flushed out of me by the good doctor.
Great. In theory. The clinic couldn’t manage the appointment the day after the hog sitting; only the morning before filming, so we would have to film in reverse. Lying on the bed facing a poster of Princess Diana (who had allegedly gone there for the same procedure), the doctor’s wife, my producer, lighting and camera people stood by, ready and waiting.
Nothing. Ten minutes passed. Then 45. “You have very stubborn stools,” said the doctor. Yep – not something that would have been a problem with a bucket of Phal inside me, I wanted to point out.
We had to cut a lot from the programme, too – not cheating, but essential. On day one, the producer had handed me a huge pile of videotapes (remember those) on which I was to record my progress by talking directly into camera. She emphasised how important it was that I do this, as presenters often forgot. She arrived on day two and I proudly handed over the enormous and, now, full recordings.
“You’ve done all of them?” she shrieked, incredulous. “They were for the fortnight!”
I filmed with the same producer for my series on UK Food, Star Suppers, in which celebrities came to cook for me in my Paris apartment and I sat on my fat backside, drinking wine and interviewing them (my own format, obviously). The booked guest had reached the airport in the UK, only to discover her passport was out of date, so we scrambled to find a last-minute replacement and managed to land actor Samantha Giles, then in Emmerdale.
The premise of the programme was that the guest had a favourite meal they were going to cook, and a backstory was required, explaining why the dish was special to them. Sam had had no time to prepare, so we hurriedly came up with a seafood risotto and a backstory about her having eaten it at her Italian boyfriend’s house when she visited him.
“Whatever you do, don’t ask me what his name was,” she said.
Hmmm. Red. Rag. Bull.
With the camera behind me and focused on Sam, I greeted her with a glass of Champagne, welcomed her to Paris and asked about her signature dish. Expounding the delights of seafood risotto, she started to fill me in on her dreamy Italian boyfriend. “What was his name?” I asked, out of shot.
“Er, er . . . R . . . E . . .” Not one Italian name came to her mouth. Nothing even approaching an Italian syllable. Seventeen takes and three bottles of Champagne later, we still hadn’t recorded the opening greeting and, as the producer got more irate, our giggling fit intensified. We laughed more as Roberto (we came up with) acquired an extended family, including a grandmother who had also apparently been at the feast of the seafood risotto.
Another cheating moment was for a series in Wales about how, much to the consternation of locals, supermarket chains were destroying the livelihood of small family shops.
Except the locals didn’t give two figs. “I’ve got three kids,” said the local antiques dealer. “It’s cheaper for me to shop at the big Tesco.”
Oh, dear lord. “Look, for the sake of the programme, could you say you prefer to shop at Bill the cheesemaker’s, John the fishmonger, and Tom the butcher.”
On to the other questions I’d be asking him. “And apparently, there’s never been anything in your store that hasn’t sold – is that correct?”
“Not really” (I’m losing the will to live now). “Everything apart from that f*****g green plate.”
“Look, for the sake of the programme…”
We start filming. “Ooh yes, I love Bill the cheesemaker… wouldn’t go anywhere else…”
‘And is it true that you . . .’
Reader, I lost it. All I could hear in my head was “that effing green plate”. I could not stop laughing. The researcher took this moment to come down the stairs where she had been sitting out of shot to try to calm the situation. All I remember was her glasses flying through the air, closely followed by her, closely followed by the huge glass chest falling in my direction. Thank God for a fast-moving sound man.
So you see? You wouldn’t have wanted to see all that and have your illusion of Bill the cheesemaker shattered, would you? You wouldn’t want to know that Sam Giles was never in love with Roberto? And you definitely wouldn’t have wanted any more detail than was strictly necessary about my relationship with Phal curry. You really wouldn’t.
Cheating? I don’t think so.
Call me a faithful traitor.