Back to Reality

In October 2023, Britain’s Got Talent became my first full TV Runner job. In the fifteen months following, I have worked on Reality productions including ITV’s Wheel of Fortune, Netflix’s Building the Band, and BBC’s The National Lottery’s Big Night of Musicals, as well as Drama including Sky Atlantic’s Brassic, ITV’s G’Wed, and BBC’s This City Is Ours. Making Drama in Liverpool has been a homecoming – but it was great getting back to Reality in Manchester, with BGT. And just in this past month, Britain’s Got Talent has returned to Blackpool, where it’s looking to stay for foreseeable seasons after this year’s great success (it’s cheaper).

To give an idea of what a day on BGT can be, these are the final events of the Manchester Producer’s Tour from the perspective of three Runners.

Domino one. Me and two other Runners were stationed outside an audition room, where applicants are seen by Producers before anything might be filmed. This auditionee, however, needed one of us sitting in to assist the Producer and another to assist the Act. They didn’t tell me what the act was, and my inability to ask follow-up questions resulted in me yodeling in a mask of Simon Cowell for three and a half minutes (I was counting). She didn’t get through.

Domino two. The very next auditionee came in to sing Whitney Houston’s I Will Always Love You. And as she reached the end of that final high note, she fainted backwards like a book falling over. So perfect a faint, the Runner inside the audition room actually started clapping, as the woman spasmed on the floor. We ran out in a panic and called for Medic Steve – who told us the woman was fine, she just lost the oxygen in her brain from singing such a long note. Never seen someone spasm before.

Domino three. On our way out, three of us passed by Production Office, picked up some free chewing gum they had, and stopped by the big BRITAIN’S GOT TALENT sign they have to get pictures. Getting ready, I started straightening out my cargos (reference below),

for one of the Runners to say I looked like a dog itching fleas. I laughed, intaking breath, swallowing my gum whole – staggering at the two of them, eyes watering, choking. They didn’t help me: they thought I was doing a bit. Just as I managed to explain what had happened, an auditionee, not flinching at me choking, told us her car wouldn’t start and she needed help getting her children home.

Domimo four. So now two of us are pushing a caravan through a pitch-black carpark with a “professional hobby-horser” (???), as the third sits in the driver’s seat turning the engine. And as the woman tells us of her seven other cars, and we realise one of the “children” we’re pushing is nineteen, and surely now the night will stop wildin, we look up, and the Final Domino falls. There’s a UFO hovering in the clouds above. This great white stripe zooming back and forth like strip lights.

I’m pretty sure this was some Salford art installation shining up at the clouds, I saw it in 2022. Or it legit could have been a tractor beam. Felt like I’d walked onto the set of someone else’s TV show.

Anyway, the hobby-horser-turned-professional (?????) was picked up by her husband, I stopped choking to death, and we all had a drink in ‘spoons. A fairy tale ending. And all of this in two hours. We got paid for the overtime, in fairness. Lovely production team.

You can do your bit for BGT by donating to Simon Cowell’s GoFundMe page, brought to you by the IDF. Not linked below.