Why Anne Robinson Put Me Off A Career In Entertainment

I have filmed in the UK's grimmest council estates, drug-infested tower blocks and overnighted in every Ibis and Holiday Inn from Ilford to Inverness. 

I often get e-mails from wannabe Runners. Family friends or just randoms who have stumbled across me online. The questions are often generic - what advice would you give me? - which I've now started to copy and paste into my replies. Sometimes I'm asked to look over a CV or covering letter. Many of which are so hopeless I just tell the graduate to google other Runner/Researcher CVs for inspiration and to use as a template. Occasionally the requests are more up-front and to-the-point - do you have any contacts I can hit up? can you offer me work experience? - I try to tell myself that I took exactly the same approach many years ago that if you don't ask, you don't get. So I normally suggest a few well-known Talent Managers to approach. 

Today I got a curious e-mail asking what genre the guy should work in. 'I've heard documentaries are more interesting and you get to travel more?'. It really made me think about why we end up in the genres we do and whether they really live up to the hype. 

I left Entertainment early in my career for this very reason, I thought docs would be more interesting and I'd perhaps have the opportunity to travel. I envisaged I'd be filming an remote African tribe on the verge of extinction but I'm more likely to be found filming dysfunctional families or tap-dancing pensioners. In fact, many of my friends who have stayed in Entertainment have been to Australia for Australia's Got Talent, Argentina for Total Wipeout and destinations around Europe for shows like the Bachelor. Whereas I have filmed in the UK's grimmest council estates, drug-infested tower blocks and overnighted in every Ibis and Holiday Inn from Ilford to Inverness. Maybe I made the wrong decision? Maybe I should have stuck to chaperoning quiz show contributors or glamorous studio days on shiny floor shows with a greenroom full of M&S sandwich platters?

But then I remembered the real reason I departed Entertainment and studio shows in particular. Celebrities. The egos, the diva demands, the grovelling, the arse-licking. I once worked with Anne Robinson and had to arrange her straws neatly at right angles to her cans of diet coke and fan out her fashion magazines according to the strict instructions my Producer had given me. I had to wear Ugg boots not heels because she hated hearing the 'clip-clopping' of hard soles on the studio floor. We were all warned not to eat curry or spicy food the night before a studio day as Anne couldn't stand the smell of it. And worst of all, we were told to never make eye contact with her or answer her questions directly even if they appeared to be addressed at us. If she read your biog and shouted out a question, we were to go and inform the Series Editor so she could relay the required information.

So I think my reply to the wannabe Runner will be this - it depends whether you think overnighting at an Ibis in Hull is preferential to arranging Anne Robinson's straws at a right angle.