tellymole.com

…why would you inflict such a fucking horrible TV programme on the nation?

It’s not often that I hate something within 30 seconds of watching it. But Fresh Ones’ BBC commission, ’Delicious Miss Dahl’ actually made me want to throw a brick through the TV, and one of her stupid little twee sash windows.

Floating around her faux-rustic designer kitchen, Dahl basically mimics a Nigella-esque food and literary wank-a-thon for the Laura Ashley brigade. I hated it so much that my hands are literally shaking with rage. I HATED this programme!

Now, some of my frustration with this self-indulgent, pretentious piece of shit is probably borne out of of the fact that I probably don’t fit into the target audience. Who is that, though? I can’t see who is actually going to have a use for the this programme. The recipes aren’t complex or original. We’re not seeing anything that anyone with half an ounce of cooking motivation hasn’t already done before. Chicken soup, bubble and squeak, some sort of salad thing. Yet, we’re treated to what seemed like about four hours of her unbelievably pompous babble on “how Winnie the Pooh is the embodiment of melancholy…” WHAT?? What the hell are you talking about? What the fuck do you even know about being melancholy anyway? Do you have a feeling of melancholy because you scratched your Maserati? Do you you feel a bit down because that rural health-food bistro had run out of your favorite elderflower juice? Fuck off. A few moments later, Dahl goes on to talk about how bubble-and-squeak from a ‘greasy spoon’ help to cure her first hangover… said with such a plum, I actually laughed. They don’t even have proper greasy spoons in Barnes or Oxfordshire villages, anyway. 

I don’t mind the floaty, lightweight composition of this programme so much. It’s shot well, it looks ‘nice’ (apart from the self-important links between recipes.. heavily-graded dirty frames shot through leaves, of Sophie, staring doe-eyed into space while loosly grasping a chunky, highly obscure piece of 19th century literature.)  It could be a good little programme. I can even put up with the fact that the thing is draped with a nauseating soundtrack.. exactly what I’d expect to find in a 30-something, middle-class woman’s CD rack - looking at the credits confirms that theme too.. a real floral estrogen-fest.

But I just can’t live with Dahl’s infuriating dialogue, though.  It’s pretencious, it’s sickly, it’s not patricularly helpful. I don’t care that she’s concocting a ‘bar room brawl’ of flavors or if she’s a ‘mushroom fiend’. That kind of talk actually offends me.

So this is a fairly short review of this programme, but as always - my main motivation for writing is when something really irritates me and I need to vent before doing some physical damage to my TV. To finish I’d like to put out a plea. Please. Do NOT re-commission this programme. If I ever accidentally stumble across it again, as I did today, it might actually ruin a decent chunk of my day. It’s that bad.

What I would like to see is a 1×60 of Sophie being force-fed McDonalds, made to live in a new-build studio flat in Thamesmead with a up-and-coming ‘grime’ MC called 8-Ball. She’d only be allowed to read Nuts magazine, wear clothes from New Look and drive an 11-year old Ford Fiesta. Working title, something like “Living Without Jus”.

Instead of being a supercilious little cunt and having a pop at The Mole on TV Watercooler (kisses, Uncle Arthur), ‘TELE TWAT’ raised a few issues with some of my previous posts, giving me the chance to reply and also offered up this rather amusing and observant little compendium of thoughts on what we can a agree is quite twatish behaviour.

1) If you become a ‘fan’ of something that you have worked on for money, you are the broadcasting equivalent of a prostitute faking an orgasm. Fandom by it’s very definition is not about witless self promotion.

2) Taking a photo of your credit then uploading and tagging it, is I admit, quicker, easier and less painful that tattooing ‘I’m a massive wanker’ on your forehead. The end result is much the same though

3) Just as that temp who filled in one day on reception probably isn’t your friend, neither is a sleb you met through work once. No matter how many photos of the two of you together you’ve uploaded. Really they probably forget you the minute the left.

Honestly, even if they were ‘OMG, like a-mazing’

4) Like wise, central London is full of well known people, spotting one, and immediately recalling this fleeting encounter on your status, doesn’t make anyone think that you live in some sort of uber cool media bubble that only where only the beautiful people are admitted.

You know that Narnia that you suburban peasants can only dream of, where the lattes are always skinny, the glamour never ending and you are never more than five minutes away from a intimate tet a tet, oh sod it let’s do cocktails, with Alexa fucking Chung.

No, you just come across as the sort of person who would write in to Heat magazine. And that’s ain’t impressing anyone. It’s your parents I pity.

5) How likely is it that lad from your GCSE English class whose now a teacher will his status to illicit your advice as to how to handle a particularly unruly year 11 class? Not very.

So do you really want his, or anyone else’s, guidance on what questions you should ask the cunting Kooks? Do you, really? Or do you just want to let him, and everyone else know, that you’ve got a really ‘cool’ job now?
He turned you down when you were fifteen and he’d turn you down now. Whether you’ve spent five minutes dragging shit awful sound bites out of Lady Sovereign or not.

6) If you follow all the above, you’ll probably find that you have a lot more time on your hands. Use it wisely, look up the dictionary definitions of the words ‘literally’ ‘random’ and ‘genius’, then apply this knowledge to your every day use of the aforementioned words. You’ll instantly seem a lot lot brighter.

TELE TWAT

I’ll probably make a few enemies when I say this, but in my opinion the vast majority of UK dramas are completely shit. Sure, you might be able to pull out a few exceptions here and there, but the fact of the matter is… when it comes to getting our fix of edgy, original, well-written, gripping (insert remainder of wish-list here) dramas, then we turn to America. And let’s face it, they do it remarkably well.

For any of those who are in denial about this fact, let’s just see what we’re dealing with here. Not that all of these US-offerings are my cup of tea, but let’s put our Being Human next to Ghost Whisperer, The Bill next to, well - pick a US crime drama (Law & Order, CSI, Cold Case, Without a Trace). Okay, maybe not The Bill.. it’s more of a soap. Life on Mars then. We’d have to enter Dr Who up against the likes of any of the modern Star Trek incarnations or maybe Supernatural or Heroes. Look at any of our offerings in recent years; Primeval, Survivors, The Hustle… I really can’t be arsed to list any more. Safe to say, for me, none of them cut it. And that’s when you put them up against the more ’sausage-factory’-like American shows. Throw amazing pieces of work like The Wire and The Sopranos into the mix and what we’re churning out becomes a laughing stock.

What’s wrong with them, you might ask? Actually, I hope you’re not asking that. I hope you know yourself that a good, strong UK drama series is something rarely seen. But for those of you who can’t put your finger on it… PRODUCTION VALUES warrants block capitals because its the first thing I notice when I’m watching another rubbish UK drama. I notice it from the opening establishing shots, from the unoriginal Audio Networks stock music, set design, lighting… it all seems to have been done on the cheap.

The other problem with watching a homegrown drama is that you know that you’re never really going to be able to get your teeth into it. 6 or 8 episodes is all you’re going to get.. 10 and you’re laughing, but that’s rare. The characters are therefore shallow, you don’t engage with them - you don’t care about them and when they finally disappear, you’ve forgotten about them as soon as the Series Producer’s credit is up. This past decade has been a wonderful time for drama fans.. but only because David Chase and David Simon have had me lost in their respective worlds for literally hundreds of hours of some of the best drama I’ve ever seen.

So. Another rant by The Mole? No. Well, in part, yes - I had to have a little pop at UK drama before making my main point. Taking all of the above into account and knowing what I know and feel about this country’s position in the drama-making industry.. if you’d said to me about a year ago; “Hey, they’re making a UK version of ‘Law and Order’, Bradley Walsh is playing the lead role” - I would have said… wait.. I did say; ”Bollocks to that”.  However, that was a year ago and tonight I found myself infront of the TV when it came on. To say I’m a fan on the original franchise is probably going to far, but I ‘like’ it. It’s a good formula. I like the way it looks and the stories are decent enough to kill an hour. I was expecting the UK version to be a complete pile of horse shit.

Wrong.

I was actually extremely surprised. It looked great. Walsh was decent. The story was good. The London backdrop was nicely integrated with the episode. I really, really liked it. The little things impressed me, the geeky details. The camera work was true to the original, shakey - slightly desaturated colours with a nice shallow depth-of-field. Good lighting, good locations. Usually when London is shot this beautifully you have the annoyance of it being in a Hollywood movie where it’s all red phoneboxes, bobbies, shots of Big Ben with 80’s-style two-tone sirens in the background. Not here, this was a well shot, modern London.

Aside from the seemingly high produciton values, the script (which on further research is apparently a re-hash of some of the best US episodes converted to UK scenarios) was also true to the original franchise, allowing the main players’ characters to develop over time but still giving you a nice bite-size brodcast hour’s arc with which to get your teeth into. The one downside to this Dick Wolf creation is that the tight-arses over at ITV, in true British fashion, have limited it to 7 episodes for the first series, 6 for the second. So it’s not all good news.

But, as this post’s title suggests… I’m taking this series as a major positive. Chris Chibnall (Torchwood, Doctor Who, Life on Mars) has come good on this one, picking up Exec and Writer credits on the series (No doubt under the watchful gaze of his overlord, Dick Wolf). He has dragged with him a bunch of producer and director types from the desperately awful titles above, which goes to show that if you SHOW British drama producers how to do it, they can actually get on with it and churn out something pretty decent…

..Think I’m being harsh? Go and pick up a DVD of Doctor Who, which looks like it’s been shot on the cheapest HDCAM they could find, in a corner of TC2 with a set made entirely of cladded polystyrene before being edited by retarded chimps, graded by a 19-year old work experience boy and some cheap explosions whacked on with After Effects for good measure. The sad thing is… I’m not actually far off!

Then watch this: Not ground-breaking. Not necessarily your cuppa, but well-made British drama. Not too cheesy. Not too cheap. Let’s just hope someone notices and the quality of this ITV programme becomes a benchmark.

There’s a recurring cycle in this business, whereby it seems a few weeks after you start a new contract – you’re on the lookout for a new one. If you’re lucky or extremely well-connected you’ll find yourself on a good run of back-to-back contracts, unless of course you’re one of those jammy gits who’s landed themselves a nice cushy ‘staff’ position (for those of you who actually believe these types of roles are cushy, staff doesn’t mean permanent, like a job for life… it purely means; ‘you’re employed here until our commissions dry up and then you’re out on your arse’). Anyway, all I’m assuming that you’re aware that a freelance TV world exists…

I want to talk about the conditions in that weird little void we all find ourselves in sometimes, that magical place in between contracts where something, somewhere has gone horribly wrong. Maybe that special commission which your friend told you was ‘just about to be green-lit’ didn’t happen, or you weren’t able to coincide your last finish date exactly with the start date of this new thing, or whatever… fact is, you’re now out of work and looking frantically for something worthwhile or at least something that pays ok. For those new to the industry, this can seem quite alien and strange. You life can draw parallels with that of a jobbing actor in Hollywood, you’re forced to wait tables and pull pints while looking around for work that might pay you a couple of hundred quid a week (assuming they’re paying you at all). For the more senior of us, we feel annoyed with ourselves that our supposedly extensive list of contacts have let us down on this occasion and we’re reduced to the lowly and embarrassing levels of sending out CV’s and cold-calling companies that we’ve not worked with before. The fact is, it can happen to anyone, because if you’ve been working in TV for any length of time, you will have realised by now that the ‘right place, right time’ element of getting any job in telly places a massive part.

But don’t worry! There are plenty of things in place to help you through this dark period. First off, we’ve got job ads in Media Guardian, Broadcast Freelancer, et al. Fine, if you’re going for a job at ‘the beeb’ and can afford to be out of work for another 3 months while they take you through a simple 7-part recruitment process, or if you’re after a job as an ‘in-house scheduler’ or ‘technical supervisor’. For those of us with dreams of more than a thankless £19k a year, we need to try and dig a little deeper.

So what else is on offer? Mandy.com? Productionbase? Well, you would have thought so. Mandy still seems to be the place to go if you fancy working for NO money whatsoever. I can’t believe they still have a function to search for ‘unpaid’ or ‘lo-paid’ jobs if you fancy it. Why the fuck would I fancy that? Oh yeah, I forgot, it looks good on my CV. Apparently. Productionbase actually take the biscuit as far as con-artists are concerned though. For months we received emails promising us brand new and exciting content, but when they launched their new site late last year – we found that it was exactly the same set of tools, set out in a different colour scheme with the inclusion of a new method of displaying showreels and media, although now you have to pay hundreds of pounds a year to display it. Thanks pb. I can’t think of anything I’d rather do more when I’m looking for work  than spend more of my dwindling supply of cash on stupid productionbase things that I used to get for free with my subscription. Turds.

The answer is simple, save that money you’re about to chuck at productionbase or the premium bits of broadcast and put the money towards doing things your own way. Don’t be lazy, you can do it. How many jobs has pb ever got you anyway? Seriously. How many ? More than three? Were they good? Anyone calling you because they found your CV on productionbase is scraping the barrel, because they exhausted the list of people they actually want to work with and they’ve begrudgingly turned to a list of people they know nothing about. It really isn’t the best way to work. They’ll probably offer you a lower rate, too. That money you’re about to pay someone else to do the job for you, you might as well do yourself. Nobody is going to put as much effort in finding you a job than you are, seeing as, erm, you’re you. Do your research, find out who’s who at each indie you’re going to be contacting if you don’t already know. Contact them individually, address them by their name, show you know something about them – but not too much to seem creepy. Send HARD COPIES of your CV as well as emails, I can’t stress how important this is – you’ll be surprised how often they get picked up, even if its a year down the line.  If you’re desperate and you’re out of work, you need to plan a full-scale assault on the industry to make sure you get work.

Fancy online galleries of your showreels? Simple, that can be done yourself , you don’t need to pay productionbase to do it. If you insist on having a productionbase account – you can still link directly to your own website from you pb page and have all that nice shiny video content on there for a fraction of the price. A domain name will set you back from £3 a year, hosting on a really snazzy web host (which will make your content look awesome in a simple ‘drag-and-drop’ interface) will cost a comfortable £5 a month and there’s plenty of free software lying around on the internet that will turn your impressive showreel into a web-friendly video. There are snakes in the industry that are more interested in lining their own pockets than actually helping to find freelancers work.

Luckily most of us are able to find work, at least most of the time. I think if you’re finding it tough all year round – there’s probably something wrong. It’s tough, but it’s not that tough. As much as people like to moan that it’s getting harder and harder, I’ve actually found it easier as my career has progressed. I guess if I was a cameraman and I had shooting APs snatching up all my jobs, then I might have something to grumble about – but thankfully, I’m not. I guess maybe it’s karma, for all those grumbling cameramen who like to whinge if a shoot overruns by half an hour and moan if there’s not enough rocket in their ‘Pret’ sandwiches.

I’ve normally reached the end of post, fairly happy that I’ve driven home something I think is particularly to-the-point – but today, I’m not sure exactly what it is I’ve written about. Erm, okay – how to handle things when you’re out of work? Career advice?…

..okay, I’ve just read back through. This post doesn’t really seem to have much point to it at all, it’s been a bit of a ramble. Good job I’m not getting paid to blog, eh? Well hopefully you’ve at least identified with some of the points I’ve made today and maybe I’ve given you some food for thought regarding chucking your money down the drain in between contracts.

That’s all for today. Something better to talk about soon, I’m sure.

The Mole

I’ve got a problem with Dawn Porter, in that I’m not entirely sure what I think about her. Usually, I’m able to make my mind up about new TV faces pretty quickly - but the self-styled ‘Hot Patootie’ has me at a bit of a loss. Is she the ditzy, cutely-curious, ‘ooh all this stuff that I’m finding out is freaking me out’, playful investigator that she plays so well? Or is she trying to mask some of her intelligence with an added bit of sexuality? OR is it all a big mess and Dawn is in fact, tottering around unable to decide if she’s trying to be a ‘cutting-edge’ investigative journo or the girl that didn’t quite make it as an actress, but still quite fancies the idea that she can still be a sex symbol on some level?

I’m not entirely sure that Dawn knows herself, which is why I’m finding it hard to make a judgement on it. On a number of levels, I really enjoy watching Dawn. In autumn last year her offering of 4 x 60 ‘light-docs’ for Channel 4 (which I’ve just caught up on, prompting this post) loosely explored a common theme of ‘girls finding love in different ways across the world’, which looked at free love in San Diego and remote German community ‘Zegg’, Geisha girls in Japan, mail order brides in Eastern Europe and polygamists in the US. 

In each episode, I didn’t really feel like Dawn was truly immersing herself. While she seemed to be getting the opportunity to stay with these people, I never felt like she was doing more than scratching the surface. There seemed to be no arc to her stay with these ‘weird and wonderful’ contributors, certainly no jeopardy with any of them. The fact that these all seemed to be shot on at least two cameras gave me the sense that a larger-than-necessary crew was following Dawn around, giving her more help than she needed (possibly with one of those directors that is so anal about shooting they decide to actually film some themselves, but end up fucking the cross-shooting up and replicating the shots that the first camera was picking up anyway). I wanted Dawn to surprise me - wading in with some of the questions that might have made her slightly more unpopular. Challenging her contributors to face up to their underlying fears and insecurities. 

Having said that, Dawn Porter quite clearly loves what she does - which is slightly paradoxical seeing as she generally bricks it when it comes to a potential story crescendo. There’s still something which made me sit through four hours of her most recent docs after already seeing her BBC 3 work. It HAS to be more than her flirty giggles, come-to-bed eyes and slightly over-whitened teeth. Don’t get me wrong, Dawn Porter has huge sex appeal, she’s civilised enough that you wouldn’t be embarrassed taking her home to your parents to talk about ‘that piece on the Today programme’. And at the same time, well, as she says herself… she is/has a ‘hot patootie’, depending on your understand of the phrase. She also has a slightly trendy ‘come on girls, we’re going to find out the truth about this..’ kind of attitude to her programmes. Aiming at the forward-thinking ladies of the country who might be watching that slot. You know the ones I mean, the ones that want to be reading Heat but read Gracia instead because they care what people might think about their celeb-infatuation. The same ones that end up marrying chaps at least 20 years older than them, because although they still flirt with hot young men, they need to go home to a Range Rover Sport, decent childcare options and a house near the Common. Yep… you know who I’m talking about.

But I’m not going to offend Dawn by suggesting that all she’s got going for her is a nice tan, white teeth and a trendy fringe. I think she has the potential to be a great reporter. She boasts the enthusiasm and drive to form relationships with a good cross-section of interesting characters and in some cases she does venture out of her comfort zone (although she does seem to get her kit off in pretty much everything she takes part in). I just wish she’d trade in those scenes where she’s tottering away from her contributors in 5-inch heels, a big pink suitcase full of shoes and flashing her ‘LA smile’, proclaiming; “Whoa! Those lot were proper mental!”, for a decent closing reflection on her ordeal. I’m certain that if she toned down her attempts to be seen as a glamourous, sexy style icon and concentrated on her journalism - her contributors would take her more seriously and she might get more of that jeopardy her programmes are crying out for. We get it, Dawn. You’re hot. And you think you’re hot. And you want people to think you’re hot. And oooh, that slightly-60’s-style thing you’ve got going on is very individual, isn’t it? But… this is a documentary!? What are you doing??

I’d like to see Dawn take something on without the ‘look at me’ factor and make a documentary which isn’t playing up to her Gracia-reading peers. I’m more interested in the characters she can prize out of the woodwork, because I think she’s got it in her to make great connections with people. Don’t think I’ve got a problem with Dawn’s personality for one second, I haven’t, she’s seems like the kind of girl I’d try and buy a drink for down my local (only to be spurned because she likes them 45, with a Porsche.)

But this bizarre fashion-show with the plasticky pieces to camera need to go and sometimes when I watch her I wonder if deep inside, she’d be happier presenting Dancing On Ice where she’d get to where a pretty frock and bat her eyelids all night. Go to her website right now; www.dawnporter.net . This isn’t the website of a serious documentary maker. This is ‘Dawn’s World’, with loads of ‘pwitty pickchas’ of Dawn in various states of undress, close-ups of white teeth and a link to her ‘STYLE BLOG’ discussing things such as fake tans, underwear, makeup and Gucci handbags - yet on her twitter page describes herself as a journalist. 

Bottom line? I’m going to keep watching Dawn Porter, because I think her best is yet to come and despite the impression I may have given in this post - I think she’s pretty talented. I just hope she figures out whether she’s cute, clever, investigative or ditzy.. or maybe her plan was just to throw all of those into the mix from the start. In which case - I’ve just spunked away 1000 words for nothing!

The Mole

(If The Mole has given the impression in this last post that he doesn’t find cute women with a nice skin tone, white teeth and an interest in fashion attractive, he wishes to assure you that is not the case. He does. A great deal.)

 Just look at them! These urchins, with their skinny jeans and floppy, wild hair - are the future of television. Runners are easy to spot; They take their fashion cues from the cast of Hollyoaks, annoyingly haven’t hit that level of unfitness that you put down to ‘metabolism’, and still gallop around the office unaware of glass ceilings, two-faced industry politics and the fact that freelancer rates haven’t even increased with inflation in the past 10 years.

But we all have days when we’re very pleased that there’s a runner around to help, whether its a coffee at the right moment, release forms being sorted, talent being attended to, etc etc - a good runner is often a blessing. But I have a theory about runners that I want to share with you. I think they’re going to save the industry. I think they’re going to take it over and revolutionise the bastard. I think a change is coming and I think we’re all going to benefit, they’re coming and they’re shouting “Yes we can. YES WE CAN!!”  Ahem…

For those who are wondering what the frig I’m talking about, I’ll expand a little on my theory of televisual evolution that I believe will one day benefit us all…

Firstly, I started in the industry as a runner. I can’t imagine ever looking as alien or freakish as the ones depicted at the top of this post, I’m pretty sure I was a little better turned out than these fools. Nevertheless, I was inducted into the TV industry at the bottom of the food-chain, eager to work my way to the top - yet not really knowing what the top was or how I was going to get there.

There were plenty of observations that I made in my new environment as I entered the business. First off, I was made fully aware of my status. Before I could even be a runner, I must start my life as a kind of primordial slime puddle, slowly oozing my way into paid employment. This was work experience, and it lasted for fucking months. Initially I was working for an indie making a BBC daytime programme, working for the princely sum of £2.50 a day towards my travelcard. £2.50 a day was almost worse than getting paid nothing, because it acknowledged that I was having to buy a travelcard (the pre-Oyster equivalent of being to ride on the tube for a day) yet refused to even cover half of the daily cost of one. I looked on it affectionately as kind of a daily “Fuck you, worm.” from the indie.

But the single most disturbing thing that I began to notice throughout my time as ‘work experience person’ and later, runner.. was the number of people in the upper echelons of the TV hierarchy that had never done the job I was currently doing. How was this possible? I’d been told at every turn that there was only one way to get into telly; the hard way. Was I to now assume that the dog-shit ridden path that I was currently treading was in fact a meandering trek to the dole queue, rather than the fast-track to becoming a TV deity as I’d once thought? Bollocks.

A few more months into the industry and I’d made more discoveries. I started spotting certain similarities between the arseholes in the industry. (Let me point out quickly, that I think I’ve been quite lucky. I’ve experienced a relatively low number of arseholes in the industry, compared to non-arseholes.) The majority of arseholes were either parasites who were able to hold out for non-runner type jobs because of a rich Mummy and Daddy and/or a pre-existing London base which allowed them to live in the Big Smoke rent-free, or, people who had ‘proper degrees’ from red-brick universities who had either been BBC trained and nurtured or had stepped into the industry sideways from journalism. Either way, if I ever met a really disgustingly pompous wanker (or wankerette) they’d be from one of these backgrounds. 

The problem for these arseholes, is the rise in popularity of Media Studies degrees. They don’t like the idea at all. They see them as ‘Mickey Mouse’ qualifications, easily completed and of no academic worth whatsoever. The result? Thousands of classless oafs leaving crap universities and looking for glamourous jobs in TV. The reality is, a large number of those looking for a ‘Mickey Mouse’ degree, don’t follow through with looking for a job in TV after getting their media degree and of those that do, they’re put off by processes involved in making it into the TV industry and give up after a few months when the rejection emails are too much to bear or the credit card reaches its limit.

The truth behind the matter is this - only the most talented or determined young people are making it into the industry now. Being a runner is the initiation test. 

I’m pleased to say those ‘upper echelons’ of TV are changing now. Many of the elitist, pompous, ex-BBC idiots that held the positions as exec, creative director, head of development and used to mock the ‘Mickey Mouse’ degree posse are now being replaced by the very same group that they used to lambast. As I’ve grown into the industry I’m seeing more and more people who have trudged the modern path of runner to become directors, producers, execs, series producers. The people who will shape the future of television are now the people who came up through the media studies degrees of the mid-to-late nineties and onwards. I’m glad there’s more ‘real’ people in positions of power now. The new generation of producers/directors is more humble, more personable, more reasonable and it’s because they’ve had to endure things that many of the previous generation skipped. 

Many of the people I work with now say they’d never dream of raising their voice to a runner or sending them on pointless runs to ‘Pret’ just because they can’t be arsed to go and pick up a crayfish sandwich by themselves. Thank God there are also people like Benetta Adamson around who are willing to speak up about pay and conditions for people breaking into the industry now, which is also making things easier. I’m not saying that everyone that comes through a modern media degree and makes their way into TV through being a runner will be brilliant, I’m just glad that the ones that are, are now being given a chance to shine and the ‘old boy network’ of TV appears to be dissipating.

Be nice to your runners. Please.