The Second Serve // Blacklisted

A new Australian series of “Who Do You Think You Are?” – the show that delves into celebrity genealogy – has been filmed and is slated to air on SBS from May 2nd. However, Aussie schedulers have had a bit of a fraught weekend as the episode that was chalked in to act as the season debut was… Barry Humphries’ – whose death this weekend has slightly complicated the launch.

Especially as, rather prophetically, he jokes on camera “This is probably the last show I’ll ever film”.

Remember Raef Bjayou, the breakout star of the 2008 series of The Apprentice? Trying to capitalise on his rising profile after getting shitcanned by Alan Sugar, he took a bunch of pitch meetings with TV execs to see if he could get himself a show of his own.

The one that got closest to being made was called “Raef In Reverse”. The concept was that he’d drive coast to coast in the United States, all in reverse gear – an overriding theme of “looking backwards and what not”.

The trip was going to take six weeks. Chrysler agreed to modify a gearbox specially to make the drive easier. Production had spoken to pretty much every sheriff along the route to clear the whole reversing thing. All in all, the suits were pretty bullish about getting it on the air. Sadly, the 2008 financial crisis killed the project dead.

So he did Celebrity Come Dine With Me instead.

It’s no great secret that when TV types are trying to come up with new pitches, they start with a title and then try to fit a show around it.

“Up Fit Creek” was one such show that got developed. The format was a game show where two handsome lads would tackle challenges up a cliff with water cascading down it. Whoever got to the top would then be met by Gemma Collins in a gold swimming costume, who would announce they’d won a date with her with the line “You’re UP FIT CREEK!”

It never got made – but Channel 5 was tempted.

F writes:
“I got talking to Alistair McGowan who wanted to reboot Jon Culshaw’s ‘Alter Ego’ – where he would interview celebrities dressed/impersonated as themselves.

“Apparently the reboot was stopped from the start as there had been a lot of negative feedback because Culshaw kept dressing in blackface to interview Trevor McDonald and Frank Bruno. Even though McGowan promised he would never stoop that low, producers thought that if a reboot happened, people would Google the name of it and find out about Culshaw’s shenanigans.”

M writes:
“A few years ago, I played at a charity golf event laid on by Disney, and found myself next to Len Goodman on the fairway. When I asked how his round was going, he proceeded to drop more f-bombs per sentence than anyone I’ve ever met.”

In PB1085, we asked:

“Which A-list model dragged an interviewer to the toilet mid-chat – not for any sneaky, snorty reasons, but to take a big long piss in front of them because she insisted she ‘can only focus when she’s empty’?”

Hopefully camera crew on I’m A Celebrity have been tipped off to this, because this was one of the campmates who makes up part of tonight’s new cast… Janice Dickinson!

Massive Attack have just marked the 25th anniversary of Mezzanine’s release and the ex-head of Island Records who originally signed them (Marc Marot) has been sharing some stories about it all on Facebook.

When the band came in to sign their publishing contract, Marc says they did the typical band thing of raiding the label’s cupboards and making off with a load of freebie CDs the company had kicking about. That’s basically what the CDs are there for though, so no problem.

Only when Massive Attack handed in their first album, Marc noticed that the bed of one of the tracks (Daydreaming) had been nicked wholesale from a CD they’d taken from the stock cupboard that day – which almost led to him suing his own signing for copyright infringement.

They didn’t learn the lesson for the follow-up either. On listening to Karmacoma for the first time, Marc recognised the music from another CD they’d nicked that day – by a band Marc had particularly loved (and signed): the Startled Insects.

We’re pulling into the home stretch of our musical trip through the alphabet – dealing this week with the last few stragglers.

Each day, we’ve crumpled up ten songs that take a letter of the alphabet as their rough theme, and made a shoddy little mix out of them. All you have to do is pull the ten song titles from the wreckage and the ten artists too.

You get a point for every correctly salvaged item: twenty in total

Monday’s Theme: U

[Play it here]

Rolling Stone’s 50 Worst Decisions In Music History
[Read the rundown]

Tokyo Jazz Joints
[A nice website]

The Banned Book Club
[What does America hate?]

“The solicitor previously hit his mother with a pan after losing his temper when Ronnie O’Sullivan missed a snooker shot on TV”

[Insane Local News Of The Week]

That Seymour Stein staircase we’ve been talking about the last few weeks?
[It’s up for auction this week]