<img align=left src="http://www.ash-tree.bc.ca/images/ACDSimages/cottingley.jpg"></img>Recently there was a depressing TV advert doing the rounds, promoting a new reality TV programme called "Lapdancing Island". It now transpires this was a <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/3170075.stm">hoax.</a> Which is even more depressing.

"The trailer… is part of an elaborate advertising campaign to promote The Pilot Show… which sets up the public and celebrities to take part in wacky recordings and auditions for fake TV shows, believing they are experimental runs for the real thing. A spokesman for the show said although the Lapdance Island trailers were still running, there would soon be a new one which apologises to all those who were taken in and will be disappointed to learn there was never any intention to make the programme."

I'd love to see this starting a trend. Producers giving public apologies for wasting people's time. Can we also expect similar apologies from the makers of Fame Academy?

"We're sorry this programme isn't a fake."

Or the makers of many a guilty show:

"We're sorry for letting Kate Thornton anywhere near a camera".

Perhaps self-awareness could be the new cocaine:

"We are sorry that, in our privileged position as programme makers to educate, entertain, edify and elevate millions of people, we have instead chosen to waste a lot of time and money, for the sake of making a very, very, obvious point. Without realising the connection between people applying to go on reality TV shows and people like us actually making reality TV shows. Cheap jokes with expensive budgets. Next up on Channel Boy Who Cried Wolf – TV Producers Taking Pleasure From Smelling Their Own Farts. Followed by, oh, more of the same. "

I've always found many hoaxes rather pointless, hollow, tragic and tiresomely unfunny, in the same way I find many April Fools jokes, celebrity impersonation, anonymity and, yes, fake web diaries and "Fakesters", pointless, hollow, tragic and tiresomely unfunny. Chris Morris and Ali G are notable exceptions, preying on the gullibility of self-appointed celebrities and experts in order to make rather good TV comedy. But, and I hate to break this to a lot of people, everyone's not a comedian. Look upon the works of Steve Penk, ye mighty, and despair.

There's just much better ways of making a point, and much better ways of making people laugh. And indeed, much more interesting, even stylish ways of creating a hoax. <a href="http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/pcaraboo.html">Not least the story of Princess Caraboo</a>. Or the case of <a href="http://www.ash-tree.bc.ca/ACDFAIRIES.html">Arthur Conan Doyle and The Cottingley Fairies</a>. That's the way to do it. Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths – anticipating PhotoShop by some eighty years.

The "dead pet rabbit" web diary entry I linked to in my post about soliciting abuse was also, <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/siamang/44222.html">its author now admits</a>, a complete hoax. Or rather, they offer a rather risible pseudo-philosophical explanation of their motives.

This reminded me of a 90s hoax TV series by Muriel Gray about the state of modern art. In the final programme, she admitted all the artists she had featured were actors, and went into a big self-important speech about reality, TV, modern art, and so forth. Like the dead bunny person, she said she wanted to provoke a response, to make the viewer go away and think about things. She didn't seem to anticipate that such thoughts were most likely to be, "Yes, and I now think, get lost, Ms Gray, you cheap, sanctimonious waste of my time." And she did. She hasn't worked in TV since.

Ultimately, the only way hoaxes can justify themselves is by producing something of genuine comic and satirical excellence (Chris Morris, Ali G), or providing a great story much retold (the cases of Princess Caraboo and The Cottingley Fairies were both made into rather good films), or by stopping Muriel Gray appearing on TV again. This Lapdancing Island hoax, however, is just a depressing symptom of the state of current things televisual. The tragedy is, its instigators have the temerity to look down on people who apply to go on reality TV shows, without realising that by saturating the schedules with those sort of inane programmes in the first place, they themselves are hardly prime, hypocrisy-free, edifying examples of humanity.

Here's my pitch: a programme that addresses why it is that the premise of Lapdancing Island was entirely believable in the first place. Why "Touch The Truck" (game show where people have stay touching said vehicle for days on end) and "Chained" (strangers having to carry on their lives while chained together) are actually very real programmes. The show would put a group of TV producers in a house surrounded by cameras and mirrors….

"Day 32. And Jeremy Nokia-Comfortable, producer of Abbatoir Academy and Britain's Sexiest Children, is in the diary room weeping again:

"There's something wrong with the mirrors in this place. Instead of being covered in lines of white powder, I can actually see the lines of accountability etched into my wretched face". "

There's an Alan Bennett TV season at the NFT next month. How terrible that the only way of getting good TV is by going to the cinema.

I do feel like dragging the makers of The Pilot Show along to the NFT, saying,

"Look, do you see? THIS is how to make television! There IS a better way! Everyone will benefit! Your lives need NOT be in vain!"