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Fake Faking It

A

Anonymous

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Note: This post can only be taken at face value as the details originate from a FOAF. I do not state that it is fact, merely conjecture (and there is no mention of Beckhamso dont sue me)

Faking It is a series that I have really enjoyed but have you ever wandered how amazing it is that thesse people so often accomplish such hard challenges in such a short time? Well I was informed recently that one of them was not quite so amazing. The episode I am referring to is the one where the 'girl-who-worked-cleaning-toilets-on-ferrys' learnt to skipper a boat and won the final boat race by takng a massive gamble and tacking well before everyone else, thus gaining the lead, which led to her winning the race. It was a great moment in the programme, the David beating Goliath moment that the series is so successful for. However, this superior tactical maneouver (and possibly many of the other decisions) was supposedly not her idea, but the idea of the backup skipper (who had to be on the boat in case she steered towards an oil tanker or something). Supposedly she was a most terrible skipper (not surprisingly considering only having done it for four weeks) and her competitors almost got fired by their employers for sailing so bad as well. So who was really faking it? The girl or the programme?
The programme was edited very well and made her appear to be quite capable, so was she really quite good or was the editor the talented one?

The FOAF was actually involved in the program, so if friend is not lying then this is bible. But I can't take responsibility for that.

Oh and as an interesting addition, but not significant, she supposedly shagged the sound man and two of the competing skippers.
 
I wouldn't say it was faked, but on occasions where it's been very successful I've noticed they've picked someone whose current profession gives them a bit of headstart at their new one, even if the two seem unrelated. For eg, the guy they trained to be a pro-wrestler was really a ballet dancer, so already he was fit, flexible and used to performing in front of crowds. And the exotic dancer who learned to show jump, again, already fit and flexible and blessed with good balance. Uh, and those are the only two I've seen, so I can't comment further, but this struck me on both occasions.
 
That is fair enough, there are certain qualities they look for in the contestants that would enable them to accomplish the challenge (i.e. balance, fitness etc). But the episode of the woman faking it as a skipper made a mockery of the whole idea if she in fact did not accomplish the final challenge on her own, but relied on the backup skipper (who was not supposed to help her at all) to tell her what to do.
 
Along the same lines...

A couple of years ago, I was talking shop with a colleague at a plant nursery. We got onto the subject of those 'garden make-over' programmes...
Apparently, when a certain famous programme looks like it won't finish the garden before the unsuspecting owner gets back, they draft in a team of horticulture students who work non-stop, for free.
Of course, the students aren't ever filmed. The presenters taking all the credit for slogging away so diligently...pretending they 'just managed' to get finished in time!

(My colleagues neice is one of the students used, studying horticulture in Wolverhampton)

Of course, it's only what I heard, so you can't sue me Alan...
:D
 
Ditto Changing Rooms: small army of (ahem) assistants who just seem to be out of camera shot when the final edit is compiled.
 
Ooo - the buggers are all at it!

A friend of mine (an actual friend!) went on Can't Cook Won't Cook. The ingredients were chosen for her, and the cooking time was actually well over the supposed twenty minute timeframe that comprises the format's conceit.

Not a massive surprise, admittedly, but salutory lessons for all those who believe everything they see on telly.

On an tangentially related subject (sorry if it's been covered elsewhere) didn't the BBC bugger up their coverage of the Orgreve Colliery disturbance during the miner's strike?

The story I've heard (from the telly, ironically enough) is that the footage was inadvertently reversed, showing the miners pelting the feds with bricks, then the feds charging the strikers. I heard that the reverse actually happened, but a simple editing slip made it look like the miners provoked the confrontation. Obviously, this could equally be misinformation!

C
 
I'm not going to offer any details as it's something I'm deeply ashamed of and makes me shrink with embarrassment whenever I think about it - but I was on a programme about problems with flat-shares. All our lines and even characters where "suggested" by the director. They even asked us not to clean the flat for a couple of weeks and when they were filming tipped stuff on the carpet, including emptying ashtrays etc. to make it look as seedy as possible. If you're wondering why we did it - I still have no idea and bitterly regret it, although they did pay us a bit of cash and got the carpet cleaned professionally after they left.

Needless to say, it was all presented in the programme as though they'd just walked into the house and filmed us.
 
Minor but related - it is alleged on a certain website that the location of the dates on Blind Date are rigged for logistical reasons. That said, I can't say I'm too choked if anything discussed here is true - I'm not a great TV fan these days anyway.
 
Having worked as a professional yacht skipper, I was most interested in this prog. My initial idea was, this is impossible - no-one can absorb the relevent knowledge in just 4 weeks. But when I realised the limited nature of the final test (a two hour, daylight race) I began to think that it was possible to pass it.

Even if the idea of tacking away from the fleet was suggested by the back-up man, it is pretty standard practice in yacht racing, and had probably been mentioned in her earlier training. And the fact of winning the race was not essential in her passing the challenge - she had to convince the three judges that she was a pro.

My opinion: she did well.

Did TV fake it? Probably, in part.

I'm a great fan of Scrapyard Challenge, and I suspect a lot of 'fiddling' goes on there as well. They wouldn't have a prog if one team failed to build their machine in time!
 
They had the lady from the Yacht Skippering "Faking It" on Womans Hour. What she said was quite revealing.

There is a lot of set-up with the programme, but primarily against the protagonist.

Examples were:
1) Asking her to clean the toilet on the ferry she is stewardess aboard - which is not part of her duties - and then implying that she was some sort of skivvy;
2) Teaching her to sail in a laser dinghy, which is probably the most unsuitable training dinghy possible, which handles very little like a racing yacht;
3) Telling her that she was going to meet someone special and to dress nicely but forgetting to say where they would be meeting - hence her embarrassing interview with Chay Blythe
4) She was not told from one day to the next what she would be doing so she had little chance for preparation.

Regarding her winning tack, the idea was her own and based purely on the principle that she couldn't do any worse if she was wrong.
 
intaglio said:
2) Teaching her to sail in a laser dinghy, which is probably the most unsuitable training dinghy possible, which handles very little like a racing yacht;
Click to expand...
No, I disagree there. Having sailed both dinghies and large yachts, I can say that the best way to learn how to sail is in dinghies, because everything happens much faster. You literally feel the boat by the seat of your pants, and the effects of the wind on the boat are very quickly apparent. The different manouevres can be practised many more times in a day than they can on a larger boat.

It's much easier to transfer sailing knowledge gained in dinghies to a bigger boat than to do it the other way round. Also, the fact that an error in a dinghy can result in a ducking is a very efficient spur to learning! Errors in a larger boat may not be so apparent until you get something so drastically wrong that you break something (or someone... :eek!!!!: )
 
Sorry, Rynner, it was the whole term Laser Dinghy I was using not Dinghys in general. I agree that dinghys are one good way to learn to sail but the Laser is a tricky beast - even for the experienced.
 
True, a Laser is perhaps not ideal as a first training boat.

I half watched last night's prog about the punk rocker trying to be an orchestra conductor. One of the people involved said something like "You can tell when someone steps onto the podium whether he knows the job" - this echoed something I heard when I was training as a RYA Yachtmaster instructor, but with 'podium' replaced by 'boat'!

This series has tremendous entertainment value, as it demonstrates a lot about human passions, relationships, and how we learn things. I'm sorry I missed the first few episodes - I'll be looking out for repeats.

Having been at various times a school teacher, and a dinghy and yacht instructor, I feel that this series could profitably be shown as part of teacher training and other instructors courses! A debate after each episode would be at least as valuable as some of the stuff I've been through!
 
Yeah, I had an experience (slightly) similar to Inhabitant's. When we were students we rented a huge house off this filthy fat landlord - mould in the fridge and dripping ceilings and no fire escape - nightmare. Anyway, as we were students we just made even more mess and refused to tidy up. The landlord got a couple of journalists (spit!) in from the local Morcambe rag during the holidays and they did a front page feature "Students Wreck House Says Landlord". Except the journalists went in and tipped at least 10 black bags of rubbish out in every room, chucked the furniture around and generally caused more mess than we had! Of course, it added to our credibility as students and we were well pleased, but it goes to show that even the tiniest of stories will be manipulated by the tv and scum journalists.
 
On our local radio station today, someone told the DJ that their brother had worked in the 'media'. He used to be part of the production team for 'Blind Date'...
'Apparently' the majority of the contestants were from various acting schools:rolleyes:

I think it was a wind-up myself...
 
Being a bit of a horsey sort, I watch the show where the show girl became a show jumper, I thought they were going to have her competing at Hickstead and I was terrified she'd get killed, but in the end they stuck her on a trained horse and put her round a fairly small course. I thought she did very well, but I'd like to see her try getting on one of the horses I ride and faking being a showjumper!
 
David Raven said:
'Apparently' the majority of the contestants were from various acting schools:rolleyes:
Click to expand...

I hope so, I'd hate to think that the people who appear on Blind Date are real...
 
the acting school thing seems to make sense, i've known two people go on it and they are drama type (i think one of them is doing a drama-related degree). one of them went on hoping TV people would notice him. saddo.
 
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