I thought I'd let you all know how my Temptation experience went. It was filme in March and I will warn you that I can not divulge how the actual show went until after it goes to air, so I will stick to the experience of the day for now and the rest will come later. There's lot's to tell and it was quite exciting, so I'll do more than on entry. I know one of the grand champions wrote about his experience in the Sydney Morning Herald recently, and was fairly accurate, but obviously every one's experience of the show is different.
The shows in question go to air this week.
On Monday morning I left work a little early to catch a plane to Melbourne. Not a highlight of my year as I seem to average about 26 flights a year for work (probably 30 by the end of this year), but I will say I was delighted to go through security and not have a laptop to take out of my bag or a weeks worth of clothes to check in.
In fact all I had was 3 outfits as per the Temptation email, which is to ensure any successful contestants didn’t look like complete dags if they were successful and appeared on more than one night. A whole week of shows is filmed in one day. It felt like too much for a night, but my thoughts were just preoccupied by the fact that if I embarrassed myself the next day, it wasn’t just in front of an audience, like when I public speak, it was in front of 1 million prime-time viewers. And also I’d told most of my friends that I would be on the show so there was no escape!
After a fairly uneventful flight, R and I were picked up from the airport by a car, which for a few brief moments on the walk to the car park, I thought might be a Chrysler (was the very plush Holden next to it). And then we checked into the Crown Promenade Hotel in Melbourne’s Southbank. To our good fortune we were upgraded two levels from the room booked by the production company to a Studio room, which was spacious and overlooked the city. It also had some of the comfiest pillows I’d slept on.
I didn’t actually sleep very deeply and woke up a bit tired from that and having to get up in the dark at 6:30am – 5:30am Qld time (damn daylight savings). Even though I didn’t have to do my hair or make up I still took half an hour to get ready and had to rush down to the hotel restaurant for a buffet breakfast before checking out and being ready for pick up at 7:30am. Being more nervous than I thought I was, I didn’t eat quite so well as I usually do when I have breakfast in a hotel.
After 15 minutes of waiting in the foyer, treating every passing person destined for a tour bus with suspicion in case they were a fellow contestant, I finally found my car in the car park. There were 7 of us – 4 contestants and 2 supporters. One contestant was from Sydney, one from Hobart and two of us from Queensland. All fairly full of energy and excitement that we had been chosen to appear on the show. I found out that my fellow contestants had been asked the same question I had by their friends, “What if it doesn’t go to air?” This is a bit of a hot topic at the moment, because I know some bingo show did not air all of it’s episodes and did not pay any prizes to the people who were in the axed episodes. Apparently there is a lawsuit in the works. From what I have heard about this story, they had actually signed an agreement as such, which seems fairly logical. It’s commercial television, they’re only going to give you something if they get their advertising revenue! Just another reason to read every contract you sign carefully. Most of us had dismissed this concern because unlike other shows, Temptation requires continuity, champions carry over from one show to the next and it would not only be confusing for viewers if a show was left out, but they may have to re-film several episodes. Also having started as The Great Temptation, transforming into it’s best known form Sale of the Century and after a few years off becoming it’s present show Temptation, I’d be surprised if it was axed suddenly. They’d probably also annoy a lot of very generous sponsors.
Arriving at the studio was amusing as our South African driver dropped us off on the pavement after refusing to go into the gated area of the studio as he didn’t trust anywhere he couldn’t get out of. Logic that would be useful in ZA but not really warranted in Australia… …unless he gets some dodgy clients.
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