(plus 10.6 million viewers and rising) available to witness the humiliation. It’s a fact that during preparations for a wedding small problems escalate. A decision about a buttonhole – carnation or lily – can be make or break; therefore the turmoil that the choice between Carol and Lily can wreak should not be underestimated.
My response to the bishop’s letter ran in all the quality press. Which created just the correct amount of indignation. Calls were made for the government to intervene by issuing TV programmes with certificates of classification, similar to the cinema. A sensible suggestion with which no one with any common sense could argue. Luckily the tabloids misrepresented the issue and re-opened the old debate on freedom of the media and ‘big brother’ censorship. The uproar is tremendous. Although the tabloids fail to articulate a sensible counter-argument to the idea of classification, there is enough contagious anger to keep the issue (and most importantly the show) in the headlines for weeks. I am delighted with the controversy. There are a number of distinct advantages, besides the incessant snowballing of the number of potential guests. I have been given the go-ahead to shoot Sex with an Ex episodes from now until July. Advertisers are more confident and are pledging big advertising budgets, which has allowed me the opportunity to extend the channel’s programme schedule. We’ve bought four massive films, which are set to secure huge audiences. We’ve put more money into the Teddington Crescent soap, commissioning better writers and sets that are not made of tissue paper. We’ve also introduced a number of entirely new programmes – quiz shows, sit-coms and docusoaps. I am Midas.
The only disadvantages of Sex with an Ex being a runaway success is that Bale has become more ‘hands-on’ in the management of the show. Like all good bosses, his main strength is identifying a winner, created by someone else, and stealing it. Bale has never had an opportunity to pull a fast one like this on me before – I’m normally too sharp, too many steps ahead of him. But this time I unintentionally handed him the opportunity on a plate. Bale describes my trip to Whitby as my ‘wild-goose-chase period’. He frequently cites it as an act of misjudgement and irresponsibility. The implication is, of course, that if I’ve been so heinously stupid and irrational once, there is always the danger of my doing the same thing again; perhaps when even more than a tight schedule is at stake. My twelve-year exemplary CV counts for nothing. I would resent this treatment but I know the rules we play by in this industry – I made most of them up; so I simply have to take it on the chin.
At least publicly.
Privately I’m plotting ways to circulate pictures of Bale in women’s underwear, which I procured from his latest wounded jilt. She happily offered them up to me, as she has been giving Bale head for three weeks, on the back of his promise that ‘he’d see her right in the firm’. In fact, he saw her right out of the firm with nothing more than a P45 for her effort. She’d taken the pictures during one of their more bizarre sessions. She gave them to me and I gave her a letter of recommendation based on some of her talents, other than those Bale sampled. I also suggested she concentrated on her shorthand, rather than hand jobs. But I expect the advice will have fallen on deaf ears. Once you find yourself on your back, on the back of a promise, you never get up. I’m not sure when, or if, I’ll ever run the pictures on the Internet but I like knowing I have them.
Bale’s insidious presence affects the entire show, largely because he doesn’t understand it. The success of Sex with an Ex is its spontaneity. Now, speculation has been annihilated.
We have telephone lines set up for those wishing to be on the show, which are manned by counsellors. I rarely handle the interviews these days, but have a team of psychologists to do so. The channel gets involved with the stooges’ wedding preparations from a very early stage in the engagement, often selecting the ring. We attend most dress fittings and censor the guest list. We bear the entire cost of any weddings that actually manage to limp to the altar but, worse than twenty parents, we exercise our right to advise on all aspects, from cake to consummation. We