Denise Haskew heralds yet another innovation, where readers are invited to call our premium toll phone line and give us lots of money for not much in return.

Article first published: May/June 2007

Anyone out there want to win a goldfish? Because I am is exclusively giving away a genuine Carassius auratus to a randomly picked reader. To stand a chance of winning this once-in-lifetime superprize, all you need to do is call or text our Goldfish Hotline (0678-DOUGHBRAIN) answering A, B, C, D, E or whatever to the following question: Which of the following statements most applies to you?

A I am a deserving underachiever;
B I have trouble relating to members of the opposite sex;
C I find it hard to go five minutes without calling/texting someone/anyone;
D I am 6 years old and make phone calls and texts without the permission of the account payer;
E I don’t understand the question.

We’re banking on all of the above, as text costs a flat rate of $50, of which we get a princely portion, and the whole venture is in trouble if there aren’t enough imbecilic pinheads out there to make us the real winner.

Now there are those who believe that the quality of television would be vastly improved by simply consigning to the broadcasting graveyard all those programs that invite viewers to phone or text them and charge a fee beyond the standard toll for the privilege. But hey, what’s the point of having bandwagons if we can’t jump on them and attempt to make money out of all those defective lamebrains out there? It’s gotta beat working for a living or coming up with original and inspired content.

Yet now, amid displays of morose and churlish self-pity, European excuse for a TV channel, ITV Play, has been closed down. All because of so-called allegation that they have been pulling stunts such as continuing to invite people to call in for competitions after the lines have closed. They also decided that inviting real members of the public to take part in panel quizzes was an unnecessary inconvenience, so members of the production team stood in, meaning they didn’t even have to give away any prizes; they just collected money from the overinflated tolls. Sounds good to me.

Since shenanigans were declared against ITV Play, investigations have uncovered lots more scams (or ‘opportunities’, as I like to call them). Even the self-important BBC has been implicated when a killjoy parent complained that a competition on its flagship children’s TV show Blue Peter was rigged. Evidently, kids we’re still invited to call the high toll lines even though the producers had already decided on a winner – they had a child in the audience go outside the studio and call in the answer. Brilliant. This is UK equivalent of Burt and Ernie opening an illegal gambling den on Sesame Street.

Highlights of the schedule being consigned to the garbage while investigations continue include such unpalatable fare as Strictly Come Ice Skating With Z-Listers – not for the obvious reason that the content consists of the sort of inane drivel you might expect to hear on the omnibus to geriatric central, but because they’ve lost the opportunity of making vast amounts of lucre on phone calls from garden variety morons.

What this means is that even the program makers themselves agree that the quality of their own programming isn’t good enough to stand on its own merits or attract advertisers. And even more telling, they are prepared to admit it rather than think of an alternative, such as asking viewers to email in until an investigation into what went wrong is complete. But all is not lost, as during this ‘crisis’ it has been announced that they are going to replace the new shows (cost money) with repeats (already paid for).

It’s possible all this controversy will have a knock-on (or hopefully knock-off) effect on that other major beneficiary of mass phone-ins in Europe, Big Brother – the televisual equivalent of spending an evening in a bus shelter listening to 13 year olds trying to bum cigarettes off passers-by.

I’ve touched on this before, but the only reason Big Brother appears to be so successful is that there is a conspiracy among TV commissioning editors, national newspaper features editors and gossip rags which target the mentally deficient to pretend it’s popular. Yet recently its highest rated program, during a racist scandal that made headlines all over the UK and India, still managed to gain fewer viewers than How To Grow The Perfect Potato, which was broadcast at the same time on a rival channel.

But if losing a major sponsor can’t diminish TV’s thirst for this meretricious hogwash, it’s doubtful whether they’ll jettison it even if it gets no viewers, and the depressing Endemolization of TV will continue. After all, what else are all the media morons involved going to talk about over their double twist vanilla cappuccinos?

Still, that’s not going to stop us trying to get in on the act. So if know anyone out there who thinks that the world gives a damn who they think should win a fatuous TV dancing competition, tell them to give us a call. The only prerequisite is they have more phone credit than active brain cells.

Denise Haskew After 10 years as a television commissioning editor, Denise decided she needed a more intellectual challenge, so she gave it up to become a model. She has done all sorts of useless jobs, such as magazine publishing and PR. She plans to be on the first big spaceship to leave the Earth, alongside all the telephone sanitizers.