"Welcome." "We, the sponsors, would like to thank you, the audience, for everything you've done for us so far." "Most of you have been unwitting participants in our greatest illusions." "So, at the end of our show, we're going to reveal how they have been orchestrated." "But first, it is necessary to learn the methods we use every day to captivate, misdirect, distract and control." "All of our methods rely on you... ..and your natural attraction to this one simple thing." "Who is this?" "I don't know." "Who are these people?" "Who are these people, bro?" "Who is this?" "From now on we don't know each other." "I won't talk to you like I know you." "Mum's the word." "Mum's the word." "And I don't know any of you, OK?" "This is Chris everyone and this is Felicity, and these are our celebrities." "Give us a couple of minutes, we'll go down to the street and we'll ambush you there." "OK, you'll ambush us on the street?" "Well, there's going to be a nice staircase that you'll descend and we'll get you at some point." "# THE SERENDIPITY SINGERS:" "Everybody Loves Saturday Night" "You too can enjoy the celeb-for-a-day experience for only $300 per hour." "Now, you may be thinking that you would not be bewitched by the spell of celebrity, but it is worth noting that all of these people would probably say the same thing." "Hey, paparazzi, ready to go!" "So we're having a hard time." "Can you keep them out, get them arrested?" "Have you guys got a back exit or something?" "Thank you so much." "You saved our lives, thank you, thank you." "If you guys are here again, call me in the office." "Everybody is naturally and powerfully attracted to fame even though most people will deny it." "This principle has allowed us access into every part of your world and is now the foundation of our entire business." "These are the five lessons that need to be learned to be able to use fame as a means of control." "In different ways, they all take advantage of your basic needs and desires." "It is only through a combination of these lessons that one can master the greatest illusion of them all," "an illusion so great it has given us a seat at the tables of power throughout the world and unlimited influence in raising the next generation." "Our first lesson is all about motivation, as our business depends on everybody believing that they can succeed." "We like this message to be absorbed as young as possible, because kids that follow the dream will always be our best customers." "So, from the day they are born, we convince kids that the key to happiness lies in the entertainment industry." "(TV) 'It's all about the personality." "JT and Jessica put the break-up rumours to rest." "This is E-News." "When Ri-Yan came up and said, you know, "I want to model."" ""Can you find me some place where I can model?"" "What, when he was three years old?" "Hello, everybody, my name is Alex Simon." "I am the owner and founder of Kids Talent Network, based in Las Vegas, Nevada." "We have - nationwide - over 1,900 clients now." "People just contact us and actually about 200 new faces a day we see here." "Can you say hi, can you say hi?" "Can you say hi, can you say hi?" "How was it in there?" "A lot of what we do is we actually scout children around the country for agencies." "I come looking for the kid with the special "it"" "that I can really work with and get 'em to Hollywood." "So I've got to make it bigger and better for my resume." "Why do you want it to be bigger and better?" "Because..." "Oh, Jeez, that's a hard one." "To be a superstar?" "Yeah, and a Grammy Award and..." "I don't know." "An Oscar?" "What the heck is that?" "It's a big statue. (LAUGHS)" "No matter where we go, it's just attention." "He causes a commotion." "Can he take some pictures with you guys on the other side?" "The other side of the street, yeah!" "One, two, three...cheeseburgers." "They're doing a documentary on my son." "Do you want me to carry you?" "No, you're good?" "OK." "Are you cold?" "OK, here you go." "He's cold." "The next step in Ri-Yan's career is breaking into the Los Angeles and the Hollywood market." "Look at you!" "Superstar!" "Oh, my God, he comes with his own little crew!" "This particular agent is, if not the best, one of the top agents in Los Angeles." "Ri-Yan's just very advanced, personally and professionally, for his age, which makes him very attractive for agents, casting directors, and for work on film and TV." "The kid barely reads at the age of five, so it's more challenging." "So I overslept." "I just..." "I just..." "No, no, no, no, no, no." "So I overslept, and what's the first thing you want when you wake up?" "I want my Kellogg's Corn Pops." "OK, let me start again." "OK, all right." "So I overslept, I want my Kellogg's Corn Pops," "I just had to..." "I just got to have my Corn Pops." "I just got to have my Pops." "OK?" "Oh, yeah." "Oh, yeah." "OK, all right, again." "All right, you can do it." "So you overslept, you want your Corn Pops, and you just got to have your Pops, OK, all right." "So I overslept." "I..." "I want my Kellogg's Corn Pops." "I just nee..." "I just got..." "We know smoking's bad for us, we know fast food's bad for us, alcohol... violence on television, there's all this stuff about how many killings kids will see on TV, yet there's nothing about this." "I teamed up with Syracuse University and we did a survey of about 750" "American teenagers, and one of the questions in the survey was" "If you could press a magic button that would make you either stronger, smarter, more famous or beautiful, which would you pick?" "And we found that boys opted for fame almost as often as intelligence, and girls actually picked fame more often than intelligence." "Children now spend twice as much time in front of a screen as they do in school, and 1.5 times more time in front of a screen than with their parents, which is quite phenomenal." "We found if you compared kids that watched one hour of television a day versus kids that watched five hours of television a day, they were twice as likely to pick the fame button." "If you don't have anything and you're constantly being bombarded with images of people who do have stuff, that can make it quite tough." "In poverty, fame is just..." "It's the cure-all." "It's the ultimate panacea." "Narcissism, what this means is, people feeling they're the centre of the universe." "But the characteristics of narcissism seem to be rising within the population." "There was personality study in the United States." "Well, back in the early '50s, only 12% of teenagers said," ""Yes, I'm an important person."" "By 1989, that number had risen to 80%." "I think there's no doubt that the media are the main ways that this is communicated to young people." "By turning our young audience into narcissists, we encourage the belief that they will one day get on television." "So we created reality television to feed this aspiration." "Every day we go out into the public, looking for new talent for these shows and this is how it's done." "Set up a pitch in your local shopping mall right next to the biggest candy stall." "So you wanted to have a go, trying out for being on TV today?" "Hire some attractive researchers who are fluent in impressive-sounding TV jargon." "Auditions for children's TV, yeah." "They're dealing a lot with social issues that are affecting children at the moment." "Just enjoy it, relax." "It's just fun." "This is just about the release forms." "Get everybody to sign a consent form, signing away the right to use their child's image in any context on all media, throughout the known universe, until the end of time." "They say a couple of pieces to camera, you sign a form to give consent and if the producers like them, they get to go on television." "Oh, wow!" "We want to take young children into abattoirs and teach them what happens to meat before it ends up on supermarket shelves." "Come into our studio!" "Erect a sophisticated tent with the latest technical wizardry to shoot the screen tests." "There we go." "All right." "My name's Paris and I work in the slaughterhouse." "There's going to be blood at the slaughterhouse." "I feel like chicken tonight." "We're looking at the effects of alcohol on younger children." "Do you want to go for the drinking one, a bit of baby boozing?" "Brilliant." "Use charm and persuasion to get the best performance out of the young talent." "That's actually the name of the show." "And also, if you can just act a little bit drunk, just a bit kind of... slurring, slurring your words, that sort of thing." "That would be quite good." "My name is Jagon." "I'm a baby boozer." "Don't worry, I'm not driving." "And no matter how far we go, we can always blame the parents." "Amy, listen, all you've got to do is look at the camera, say your name and say, "The next round's on me."" "That's it." "OK?" "Go on then." "I want more!" "You can have some sweets afterwards, darling." "Say, "Cheers."" "Sweets are afterwards, darling." "Is she doing all right?" "Well, we thought we'd just get her to try and decapitate a chicken." "Cut the chicken's head off." "Like this... ..and go bang." "How would you feel if your child was successful?" "Er, pretty good actually cos it means it'll give them a chance to see something they don't normally see." "It's a parent's best dream, isn't it?" "Like, having your kids sort of being on TV." "Yeah, it'd be good." "Take care, we'll be in touch." "Thank you." "We can't help but be affected by this kind of all-pervasive sense of celebrity success." "It's absolutely..." "Not..." "I was going to say surrounding us, it actually invades us as well." "It becomes part of the way we understand the world, the lens through which we look at the world." "The child could be in the jungle and think that this is wonderful, but the child won't know about the dangers that are lurking." "And sooner or later that child, just as surely as they would fall foul of predators in the jungle, will fall foul of predators in the world of media." "We run a global business but our British and American affiliates have the best product, as well as the most loyal customers." "Everybody has bought into the dream we've created and there is now an insatiable demand for TV shows involving kids." "We are now making these shows faster than anyone can watch them." "All in the name of factual entertainment." "I just feel really, really scared." "Please leave me alone!" "I hate you!" "Fear no doubts." "I don't want to be here anymore." "They've stuck me in prison because I fell in love with somebody." "I just love this girl so much, I really do." "My brother is, like, doing a very big thing for Cyprus." "It made me cry." "Like any craving, the more we supply, the greater the demand." "The key is making it seem genuinely attainable." "Our second lesson is all about addiction, which, fortunately for us, is for life, not just for childhood." "This is how we can keep someone trying to succeed, even when they're likely to fail." "And, as failure is so abundant, it's easy to find new ways to make money out of it." "OK, welcome, everybody." "Give yourself a hand for being here today." "CHEERING AND APPLAUSE" "Good." "This is the New York Reality TV School." "You might be sitting next to, you probably are, sitting next to one of the next big stars." "I've been coaching actors, directing theatre, directing internet television and live events for years." "Actors don't have money and need training and there's this new genre, called reality, where you don't have to be an actor." "You have money, a job, cos you're a real person." "And you need training." "I'm going to introduce the wonderful producer/casting director" "Risa Tanania." "CHEERING AND APPLAUSE" "If I were to say, "Why should you be here?" and you say you're interesting, that is such a turn off." "If I were to say, "Why do you want to be on reality TV?"" "and your answer is, "Because I want to piss my parents off."" "That's fantastic." "Do practise your story." "Do watch reality." "Watch reality TV." "How dare you not watch reality TV and want to be a part of that culture?" "It has changed the way we live, the way we look at the world, the way we look at each other." "Huge amounts of children watch." "Yes." "And do you think that that's a good thing?" "Do you think that 6, 7, 8 year-old kids watching Celebrity Rehab and 'I Want To Be A Pussy Cat Doll' is good?" "I'm not." "I'm not, no." "That's a ridiculous question, I'm sorry." "Those children - 6, 7 and 8 - they have parents." "Those parents need to be aware of what their children are watching." "That's not..." "But they're not though, I mean, everyone knows." "Did you ever sneak off and watch television you weren't supposed to watch as a child?" "No, well, I actually was, like, raised by a television." "I was raised by a television." "Here is the veteran." "Here he is" " Robert Russell!" "APPLAUSE" "In here today, one in particular that has actually auditioned for me for Big Brother many, many times." "If you're not going to get on once, you won't a second time." "People are obsessed." "Especially their specific show that they want to be on." "When they want to be on it, they will continually come and continually try to make it happen." "And is that healthy?" "No." "But who cares?" "We're making money." "Sign that." "No matter how often our customers gamble with their future, the house is always going to win." "Our profit depends on them constantly returning to try their luck." "Even though the odds are stacked against them." "So, I overslept." "I want my Kellogg's Corn Pops." "I just got to have my pops." "All right buddy, that was great." "All right, let's go do it." "10 minutes of practice that could mean the beginning of a great career in acting or it could be the end of it." "From what I heard, it went great." "The agent loved Ri-Yan, has big plans for him." "It was, all in all, just tremendous." "So Ri-Yan, tell us how was the interview?" "It was pretty good and..." "I liked it and I'm going to sign with it...sign with the agent." "They're ready to put him to work immediately so we're really excited about that." "Instead of going "hmmm", I want more "aarrgghhh"." "Arrgh!" "Good." "Arrrgh!" "Arggh!" "That was one of the best." "Usually, at this age..." "I don't even shoot them." "Really?" "Really." "Why, why?" "Do they just not respond to you or...?" "They're a pain in the ass!" "I used to shoot a lot of kids and I stopped doing it because it was so much work, you know?" "See, I like that attitude more than I do that." "I think he's got great listening skills." "That's what makes him very unique." "That's the most important thing." "Most people don't." "I don't have great listening skills." "I have horrible listening skills." "I don't listen to anybody." "Fuck them, listen to me!" "Go back a little further and you got to turn sideways even more." "Do you think that he's got what it takes to make it to the big time?" "Oh, without a doubt." "As long as he can take direction, cos it's all illusion anyway." "Like you're looking down a gun." "Yo!" "Yeah, I like that.." "We don't have money, I work everyday." "My wife works here, you know." "We beg and borrow." "We trade." "Like with Carlo, we trade." "With Carlo, he charges $5000 for a photo shoot." "He gave us all the pictures, all the rights and he said just pay me whatever, whenever you can." "The little bit of struggle we have right now is going to be a distant memory so we're really..." "And Ri-Yan too, he talks about it the same way." "On the way home the other day and he said, "You know what, Mom?"" "I'm going to buy you a really big house when I make it big, but I'm going to but it, not Dad." "I was like, "OK"." "You know, of course they would like him to be huge, but I think they're realising now that we've got signed in Los Angeles and they started auditioning, it's a taller task than they imagined it would be." "Now remember, they're driving 8-10 hours for a 30-second audition and driving all the way back." "You know, the first time you do it, it's OK, the second time... but try 15, 20 times, 30 times." "And you're spending gas money, taking a day off work." "A lot of people just say "We can't afford it,"" "or "We don't like it," or "We don't think anything is ever going to happen."" "So that's the stage they're getting into now." "(RI-YAN'S MUM) So what did we do today?" "I did a Coke audition in California." "So how you think you did?" "Good." "You think so?" "Yeah." "So, what are we going to do now?" "Er...we're driving back." "You ready for school tomorrow?" "Yeah, boring as all." "Did you do any homework?" "No." "Whoopsee!" "Yeah." "Got to do some homework, right?" "Yeah, before anything." "OK, say bye." "Over-optimism is a great human trait." "In most areas in life, looking for the positive side gets us through." "In very simple layman's terms, I think the easiest way to say what's the difference between a healthy excess of enthusiasm and an addiction is that healthy enthusiasms add to life and addictions take away from it." "I can see, theoretically, how people can be totally hooked on the idea of wanting to be famous." "The younger you are, the more susceptible you are to most types of addictive behaviour." "The earlier that you start smoking, having sex, drinking, gambling, you're more likely to have problems with those behaviours later in life." "The fruit machine is ideally designed to give lots of what we call near-win experiences, so, psychologically, a gambler does not constantly lose, a gambler constantly nearly wins." "We aim to give you a near-win experience as often as possible." "We carefully select stories of ordinary people who have hit the jackpot and we give them blanket coverage, reinforcing the belief that it could happen to you." "Wesley Autrey." "Wesley Autrey." "Wesley Autrey." "A 50-year-old American construction worker is being hailed a hero." "What's up?" "What's happening?" "I pretty much know everybody here." "How you doing?" "Wesley Autrey saved a stranger who'd fallen off a subway platform by throwing himself on top, pinning him down and protecting him from a passing train." "So, they come in at about 50, 60 miles-an-hour." "So, when you were approached by the media, did you say yes to every interview?" "Well, I let my sister who was my PR..." "More or less yes, yes, we did." "That's the day it happened, January 2nd." "And then you met the mayor." "The Mayor." "Donald Trump." "This is a brave man." "David Letterman." "That was a big day." "That was the night I was invited to the State Of The Union." "There is something wonderful about a country that produces a brave and humble man, like Wesley Autrey." "This day was a very crazy day because Deal Or No Deal wanted me on that day and Oprah wanted me on that day." "That applause is almost better than what I got at the State Of The Union." "Thank you, guys." "And then Time Magazine." "I was number 48 out of the most influential people in the world." "In the world?" "In '07." "Chrysler gave me that free jeep out there." "Chrysler gave you a jeep?" "Chrysler gave me a jeep behind me saving Cameron." "I would like to do a commercial for them to let the world know that is a great jeep." "I mean, not only is it economising, good on gas, it's an excellent jeep." "Und Heute Abend ist er bei uns zu Gast, der U-bahn Engel von New York, Wesley Autrey." "Suddenly..." "You're on every TV channel." "I'm on every TV channel." "My name is like a household name like Cornflakes." "So I'm telling him "don't move"." "APPLAUSE" "Is it true you've done over 2,000 interviews?" "Don't you ever get sick of it?" "No." "So it's increasing your brand worldwide?" "Exactly, exactly." "Thank you, baby." "If you stood for office in this ward, in this council... you would get a landslide, wouldn't you?" "Yeah, that's what people tell me." "They say," "Yo, you have so many people loving you and you have some great qualities, why don't you run for president, for mayor, for governor?" "Do you think you've changed by..." "Has it changed you?" "No, no, no." "Cos people said, "Don't let that change you, don't let that money change you."" "No, I don't think I've changed," "I think it's the people around me that have changed because I got friends who think I should give them," "I've got friends, like I said, who think I'm already a millionaire and that I'm nowhere near yet." "The kind of work that I've been doing," "I would actually say that people who have become famous, that, in and of itself, can be a potentially addictive activity." "When they do achieve something, they get intense mood-modificating effects." "They really do feel buzzed up and high when they've been on television, on radio or they see their name in print." "They're living on this oxygen of publicity." "Who hasn't, among us, had the sort of delicious experience of being at a cocktail party, telling a good story, having everyone hanging on our word and then laughing." "There's not a lot better in life than that." "If you could bottle that, you couldn't keep it on the shelves." "That's potent stuff." "Performing itself can produce a high and it's doing that through all the same chemistry that cocaine works." "Most addictions are about what we call the deficit of a particular neurotransmitter called dopamine." "It's going to affect the catecholamines." "There's plasma changes that sort of alters our chemistry a little bit and that really sets us up to need more of it, really." "The do-it-again part of our brain is sort of activated." "There's more firing going off." "And of course those euphoric chemicals like endorphins are firing off in other areas." "We create celebrities by selecting the right candidates and relentlessly boosting their profile." "This gets them hooked on positive attention." "And to keep you hooked on them, we sometimes need to change the type of attention we give them." "When the terrorists tried to attack Scotland's biggest airport, they were answered by the courage of the police and of the fire fighters and a baggage handler named John Smeaton." "Local hero - the airport baggage handler who ignored the dangers to tackle a suspected terrorist." "We're under attack here." "The British people have been under a lot worse things than this, and we always stand proud." "This is Glasgow, you know, so, we'll set about you." "A year ago, an unknown baggage handler at Glasgow Airport, today, receiving a medal from Her Majesty the Queen." "Fight on for freedom." "Fight on for Scotland!" "What we didn't headline when the story broke was that there were three other less photogenic citizens who also bravely fought the terrorists." "Nearly a year later, having received hardly any media attention, they turned on Smeaton." "And this time, we were only too happy to help." "And I'm like that." "Woah, stuck the heid back, foot oot." "It's almost instinctive..." "Totally, you know, and it's like... so you're saying I didnae do that, mate?" "You know that, to me, is libel." "You know, to me that's libel but..." "I'm a big man, I can take it," "I don't need to go and cry to newspapers and take it to the courts and..." "But when it's personal criticism, something that's... you know, it's overstepping the mark." "You know, that's when it hurts and that's when you begin to say..." "Bastards." "Do you know what I mean?" "But that's the nature of the beast." "That is the nature of the media." "There's no such thing as bad publicity." "Do you believe that?" "Aye." "You do?" "Oh, aye, you know?" "So, you'd rather have it with all the nastiness than not have it?" "Aye." "Is it the case that we are putting a unique kind of person up in celebrity status, and if that's true, why?" "What is it about us that we care about these people?" "Why do we care?" "These are sick people." "Why are we focused on them?" "Our entire global business is based on understanding the answer to these questions." "In the previous lesson you saw how a lucky few can get trapped inside the spotlight." "Our third lesson is about your irresistible attraction to them and how we manipulate this for profit." "Evolution can sometimes produce hard-wired behaviour that generations later causes you problems, like moths flying into a light." "Long ago, moths that instinctively flew towards the moon were better at navigating and this urge got handed down." "Now, technology has changed their surroundings and this instinct is more of a hindrance." "Darwinists believe that humans also developed powerful urges that kept them alive in times gone by." "Our brains are hard-wired to make us social." "Very few people can really tolerate social isolation for any length of time." "There is a theory that in the past, there were two types of human." "Those who naturally wanted to form groups, and those who wanted to be alone." "The team players were able to share tasks and so were able to survive when times got tough," "unlike the loners." "So the survivors passed on the urge to be part of a group, that modern man has inherited." "Some early humans instinctively copied the successful, while others tried to learn alone." "Well, it's not difficult to see why those who copied the leader would stay ahead of the competition." "TRUMPETING" "This is your inheritance, making you naturally copy whoever appears to be the leader of your gang." "What if there was also an urge to get as close as possible to whoever you're told is the most successful?" "This would have been good for women, who would have got to mate with the top dog." "And those men closest to the alpha male would have got to share his women, as well as any leftover food." "Anyone who naturally didn't want to join an entourage wasn't going to much reproducing." "So it is possible that you have evolved with an instinct to form groups, copy whoever appears to be successful, and to congregate around them." "But then technology advanced so quickly that it became possible to convince the mind that a moving image is real." "As soon as the trick was used to entertain an audience, our industry was born." "By entertaining the world, we were able to grow into powerful and influential corporations." "Now our reach is unparalleled and we deliver media to you and your children, in ways that you cannot control." "When we surround you with famous faces, your survival instincts kick in and you feel the urge to get up close and copy them." "This has created a new social hierarchy, based around your proximity to anyone well-known." "No, this is...this is..." "Oh, right." "It feels miles away doesn't it?" "Yeah." "I know." "We like to keep our distance." "Yeah, absolutely." "We don't know too much about you!" "It's a bespoke private celebrity PA agency." "What, attracted you to the advert?" "Why did you look at the ad and think, "That's something I want to do"?" "Well, it's clearly simple, it says "celebrity PA", and they were looking for someone in the industry who already understands what that word means." "Celebrity PA?" "Flexibility and motivation." "They're buying an assistant, in a way, like a pet." "And they can kick the pet?" "Well, unfortunately..." "They shouldn't do that, but..." "Pets get kicked." "I'd been working as an actor for about a year, since leaving uni." "I actually brought a CV with me, just, uh... just for general interest, really." "Yep, good." "Slide it across there." "I thought it would be far more interesting to work in the industry." "Let's say you're working for a... very high profile celebrity whose wife is, you know, getting on a bit, and he's having a series of affairs." "What if one of the girls was 16?" "That's not really a problem... 15?" "To be honest, if a 15-year-old girl wants to do that, she's going to do it anyway." "Good on her if she gets to do it with a celebrity." "You're quite young, got a social life." "Would you be happy to give all that up?" "Yeah." "Not see your friends or family?" "Yeah, that'd be fine." "They need five grams of coke." "That's fine." "If you drove, would you break the speed limit?" "No." "You wouldn't break the speed limit?" "I'd try not to." "The rules are always to break them, that's what the rule's for." "You always have to break them!" "But I never drive, anyway, on the limit." "What if they wanted to pay for sex and said, "Find me a prostitute"?" "I would do that." "I did that." "I did that." "I had to do that as well..." "Basically, this is your job, this is..." "Even if things were illegal or...?" "Even." "You just have to do it." "You are the gatekeeper to the celebrity's life." "They have crazy people after them." "Wow." "Like stalkers, psychos, nut nuts, crack bags, the whole thing." "I mean, would you...?" "Would that worry you?" "No." "I know it sounds really weird, but, um..." "Do you ever get this feeling where you just want a bit of adventure in your life?" "Yeah, yeah." "A bit like a movie." "Yeah, yeah." "This all sounds fantastic to me." "But you might end up taking a bullet for them." "Does that worry you?" "Surprisingly, no." "Stupid thing to say," "I wouldn't mind taking a bullet for someone I don't know, but..." "That's the sort of adventure and adrenaline I need in my life." "Nice to meet you." "Nice to meet you." "Nice to meet you." "Thank you, cheers." "Again there's some interesting research on this, they call the phenomenon" ""basking in reflected glory"." "In this study, students, several hundred of them, read a short biography of Rasputin, you know, the villain of Russian history." "For half of them, they customise the test so Rasputin had the same birthday as you did, without you knowing," "My birthday's July 28th, so I'm reading it and Rasputin was born July 28th whenever." "The people that had the same birthday as Rasputin were, across the board, more likely to say Rasputin was a misunderstood man in history." "He was notorious but he was great and he played an important role and that shouldn't be forgotten." "And this is just because they share a birthday." "The power of association with someone who's famous, or even infamous, is far more potent than we even realise." "Are you just taking one pair of shoes?" "Just these, or you want to take some other...?" "Whatever's going to fit with that outfit." "See, I wash all his shoes, man." "Some of them are two years old, they look brand new because every night I clean them." "That's the military in me." "And sometimes we argue about what we're wearing!" "(MAN) But who's the commander of the outfit?" "He likes to say that it's him." "But it's always my wife." "I'll kind of draw from other celebrities." "I was trying to do something LL Cool J-style, like, with a tracksuit and track pants." "It's Chet Buchanan The Morning Zoo." "Give it to me." "On 98.5 KLUC." "Spence, while you're up, would you please let in our guest?" "Yes sir." "(MAN) So he's got his own little slot on a radio show?" "Yeah, he's doing the NFL season and it's on the biggest radio station in Vegas." "Where did the other mic go?" "That's cos it's down near the floor, where the little fella is!" "No, it's not." "What's up, buddy?" "Hey." "Ri-yan didn't have school today, so he came in." "If you want to make money, are you taking Cincinnati or the Dallas Cowboys?" "Dallas Cowboys!" "Take it all to the bank and come back and see us on Monday, that's what I'm saying." "I don't know as he gets older, he'll say, this is a big deal," "I'm on the radio and I'm talking to hundreds of thousands of people, you know." "They are listening to me." "What if he just doesn't understand how important it is." "So far it hasn't fazed him." "You got slaughtered last weekend!" "Yes, I did." "We keep throwing him in more and more of these situations." "Right now, we try everything." "It was nice to see you, Ri-yan." "Nice meeting you, Ri-yan." "Great meeting you." "He'll be DJ-ing throughout the day." "APPLAUSE" "I'm running the bookie." "The bookie!" "(CROWD) Woah!" "I don't want no problems!" "Why do they call you the bookie?" "Because I've been collecting money and I've been breaking some heads." "Breaking some heads!" "I'm going to buy a car here." "That's another show, it's an info-commercial, but it's run, like, ten times a weekend on different channels in town, so his exposure, people see him." "Let's make some noise for my boy, Ri-yan!" "CHEERING" "He also does like promos at different bars." "People have football parties, he has his own booth and he has his own fan base." "You've got your own fan base?" "You've got your own fan base?" "Yeah." "Ye-e-ah!" "(WOMAN) Ri-yan just made parole." "As his, you know, success progresses we're going to have to be more aware, more, way more aware of who we speak to about him." "We still do what we got to do, you know." "They can't stop us." "Yeah." "We can't be, you know, afraid..." "We'll be stuck in the house all the time." "We don't live our life that way." "No matter how many celebrities we create, it's never going to be possible for everybody to join an entourage." "But there are other ways we can exploit your need to be close to the famous, all from the comfort of your own living room." "Television probably played the biggest part here, because with television, there's an illusion of intimacy and that visual image, now quite realistic, can be right in one's home, giving us the illusion that we actually know these people." "There is no way evolution could have anticipated the internet!" "And therefore, we are stuck with a kind of brain machinery which was designed to handle face-to-face interactions." "It was not designed to handle virtual interactions." "It is a brave new world from that point of view and that does mean it's easily exploited by people who can figure out how to use that medium to their advantage." "A para-social relationship is one of those awful technical terms which sounds more fancy than it is." "It simply means that you have a relationship with somebody which is not based upon a face-to-face relationship, it's based upon what you know about that person through the press, what you know about that person through watching him or her on TV" "despite the fact that you never actually meet the celebrity." "I say to my students that the only example that I know of where people have this deep emotional attachment to someone they've never met is the attachment that some people have to God." "But the para-social relationship is created by the media, fuelled by the media." "And we all do it?" "We all do it, yes." "CROWD CHANTS" "The more celebrities we create, the more we can capitalise on these bonds." "And the younger these relationships are formed, the stronger they're going to be." "Her whole bedroom has posters of Zac Efron!" "Zac Efron!" "CROWD SCREAMS" "I think there's some things that celebrities do that play right into this trick of the box." "Pretending it's a two-way relationship," "I think, enhances this." "Yeah, I feel like there's a connection there." "Yeah." "And he loves me!" "There is this terrifying prospect I have that it is actually replacing what we used to call real life, that people are developing stronger imaginary relationships with people who are themselves imaginary constructions, people who are not real." "And our purpose in encouraging you to make one-way friendships?" "It's simple - to make you buy stuff." "Your urge to copy the famous influences your spending, whether you like it or not." "See how easy it is to keep a man happy?" "Why not give your husband a carton of Philip Morris cigarettes." "Delivers flavour, 20 times a pack." "When it's tougher than ever to be a tiger..." "Success is down to finding people like this..." "Now for the good bit... if you have a debt problem... ..and a prudent approach to banking... ..you could borrow anything... ..three and a half times your salary..." "A million pounds... ..as long as you keep paying the premium..." "Is that too much to ask?" "..." "It's going to cost a pigging fortune, this lot!" "..." "Don't treat me like an idiot..." "Do you have advice for young people who drive?" "Take it easy driving." "The life you might save might be mine." "Celebrity endorsement works on an emotional level." "We process emotions and we process rational thought in different parts of the brain." "So the limbic system, which is the very old part of the brain that says," ""Lion on the savannah, ..."" ""Lion on the savannah, ..." LION ROARS" ""..run away!"" "That's where we process things on an emotional, almost gut-feel level." "Imagine a horse and a rider." "That piece of the brain is like the horse, just working away." "And that's where we make decisions and do maths and use spreadsheets." "We try to control the more instinctive parts of our brains, that's like the rider." "But sometimes the rider loses control of the horse." "It's been shown in experiments." "If you ask people, "Would you like fruit salad or chocolate cake?"" "People will go, "I should take the fruit salad, because that's the sensible thing to do."" "So they'll take the fruit salad." "But if you give them a really difficult task to do beforehand, so they're mentally exhausted, they'll go for the chocolate cake, because that's their instinct." "And that's how it seems to be with a lot of emotional advertising that's not well-labelled." "We just process it instinctively." "These forms of advertising are most effective when you're not even aware that you're being sold to." "This is Hannah Montana." "It's time to wake up!" "Seriously, it is!" "You know what else is serious?" "Back to school shopping!" "So gather your list of school supplies." "and don't forget Walmart has Hannah Montana gear, the fashion and the music you love." "Be a superstar yourself and get your things together." "And have fun!" "Good luck this year at school." "Children up to the age of eight, nine and ten don't really understand the persuasive intent of advertisements." "There are people in there trying to sell you something." "I've no doubt our society would be much better if there was a total ban on advertising for any child under 12, and really limiting advertising towards teenagers." "It's possible that there is a link between increasing materialism and the mental health problems that an increasing number of our children show." "In the last ten years, something has shifted." "The number of young people now that say a good life is about money, fame, appearance, has shot up dramatically." "That's what our young people believe, and why wouldn't they?" "Because that's the value system that they're picking up from the media." "The media do not want to hear this message." "It is not in their interest for people to be saying that part of the problem with well-being, or confidence or whatever, might be the media." "And that one of the best and easiest ways for people to actually look after their mental health is to cut down on media consumption." "They don't like it." "As we set the public agenda, we'll avoid giving exposure to anything that will discourage you wanting more of our product." "By attaching a product to a familiar and likeable face, we've developed an unstoppable means of making you spend what you don't have on things you don't need." "Most people will say that these tricks don't affect them, but that makes the tricks even more potent." "How can you fight something if you don't believe it exists?" "So strong are these bonds that every piece of information about our celebrities is valuable to you." "When we insert famous faces into your eyeline, you're guaranteed to stop and look." "The need to gather social information about the people we perceive as influential and powerful is something that is embedded deep within us." "There are some studies that have been done at Duke University on Rhesus monkeys." "They can do one of two things." "They have a device hooked up to the eyes, so people can see which way the monkey's looking at." "And if they look at one screen, they get a squirt of juicy juice which is, you know, payment, reward." "Or they can look at another screen and see a series of pictures." "and what Platt found was that these monkeys were willing to give up food - or "pay" - for two things." "One was to look at the hind quarters of females." "OK, I don't need to explain that!" "The second were the dominant monkeys in the group." "Why would they give up food?" "Why would they pay in effect to look at the pictures of the dominant members of their group?" "The answer is that that information is valuable, social information." "So the more I know about the dominant monkey in my group, when he eats, where he sleeps, who he likes to mate with," "I increase the chances of my own survival." "But that mechanism is still firing, it's like a ghost ship." "We are not getting anything out of it, we're not ingratiating ourselves, we're not enhancing our own abilities to survive, but the mechanism still fires, fires, fires, and we're looking at these pictures." "This is Ryan." "He's a six-year-old who can make better football picks than me, and Monica and probably the whole place." "Thanks for coming back, Ryan." "Time now for some showbiz news." "Gossip has become the underpinning of the news business." "The more we tell you about somebody, the more you want to know about them." "Gossip is actually quite useful in allowing you to work out how to handle situations." "Talking through other people's experiences helps you prepare yourself for coping with the same kind of experiences." "And the demand for bad news is even greater than the demand for good news." "Even if you don't like our featured celebrity, you're still going to want to know all about their misfortunes." "You are more interested in learning how to avoid danger than you are interested in learning how to become even more successful than you already are." "So that's why, in general, we're drawn to negative news more than drawn to positive news." "We are here to sell you good news, bad news, any kind of news you want." "And if it isn't available, we'll create it, just for you!" "We're now going to pull back the curtain and reveal how." "Sylvester Stallone was just wandering around here the other day." "I saw that on..." "I don't know where." "Was he trying to find a shop?" "Yeah, he was on the corner, looking around and everyone was shaking his hand." "You see, it's all you need." "And there wasn't a lot of paps on him either." "That would have been a great set of pictures." "Cos there was a story?" "He wasn't lost, but..." "Rambo gets lost." "You know, found his way round the jungle but fucked in Rodeo Drive." "PHONE RINGING" "Hello, mate." "I guess that's where all the top boys are." "I'm going to see what's going on up there, I think." "All right, buddy." "Thanks." "Yeah, exactly." "Er, if there's anybody..." "All right, Mick?" "How you doing, fella?" "Sorry to make you jump, fella." "Yeah, good." "Made me jump as well." "Cheers, bud." "Did you get him?" "Yeah." "God, I just clocked him in the mirror." "We were sitting in Dean Street in Soho, having a coffee." "It was about half two in the morning." "Pete Doherty and Mick Whitnall and one of the other Babyshambles come round the corner and I spot 'em." "At the time he was with Kate, so it was, you know, Pete was saleable then." "And this little beggar girl, she started saying" ""Oh, I haven't seen you since rehab, blah, blah, blah."" "And he pulled out a folded-up 20, you could see it was a £20 note." "Then he clamped his hand round it and he gives it to her." "John catches this, I get it from the other angle, so I get him going in his pocket." "In the Sunday People, the headline was, "Oh dear, Pete, what's the score?"" "They had a blow-up of his hand in her hand and this little end of a £20 note which looked like a wrap." "Yeah." "So it was the wrap that never was." "There were some quotes from somewhere." "Where quotes come from, who knows?" "They make them up, don't they?" "Onlooker said, bystander said..." "Yeah, yeah, yeah." "The "Chum said" quote may just be fiction." "It's just the caption writer providing a lie to write about." "Who knows?" "Who can check?" "We don't know who it is." "And who cares?" "I mean, that's the problem." "The big corporations who've taken over the media outlets on the whole have cut editorial staffing levels and at the same time they increased our outputs." "They got masses of extra supplements in newspapers." "And that quite simply reduces the time we have to do our job." "And if you take away time from reporters, you're taking away their most important working asset." "Wherever you live in the world, the source of much of your celebrity gossip is the great British press." "Our journalists there are always on the look-out for new reliable sources." "PHONE RINGING" "Hello, Showbiz." "Hello." "Sorry, is that The Star?" "I just got a call from a friend of mine, she was at a party at Amy Winehouse's place last night." "They were having like a jamming session." "Playing guitars and stuff?" "They blew the fuses completely in the house," "Amy goes off and tries to fix it with a mate of hers and he got a complete shock and she just jolted and then apparently singed her hair!" "(LAUGHS)" "And I was like, she lives in Barnet!" "How cool is that?" "That's very funny, Emma." "Yeah, yeah." "(LAUGHS)" "We can give you a bit of money for this Emma, if you want..." "Oh, really?" "Yeah, we operate, we rely on people tipping us off about stuff." "So, by and large, most reporters, most of the time, no longer go out and find stories or make contacts or even check facts." "PHONE RINGING" "Hello, Diary." "Hey there." "Do you guys pay for stories?" "We do if they're printed." "I'm a waitress over at Scotts in Mayfair." "On Saturday night, there was Guy Ritchie and Trudie Styler." "He was really drunk and he was like, flailing his cutlery all over the place." "Whacked himself in the face." "Oh, that's quite funny!" "He cut himself a little bit." "How much would that kind of thing be worth?" "Lead stories on Bizarre go for £600." "Oh, my goodness." "We're going into an age of information chaos." "The profession that was there, that was supposed to be doing the job of filtering out truth from falsehood, is slowly declining." "The idea it's being replaced by bloggers and citizen journalists and the internet is, to me, far more optimism than reality." "The internet is full of babble." "Imbecile babble." "PHONE RINGING" "Hello, I've got a story about Sarah Harding, is there someone I can speak to?" "You can speak to me." "I do the gossip column." "Oh, all right." "My husband is a removal man and he was moving Sarah Harding." "She has loads of books on like, quantum physics." "She had little telescopes and stuff." "Oh, wow!" "Like she's really into astronomy or something." "Oh, that's good, really good." "It ceases to matter to these big media organisations whether it's true, it's legal, it's right, whether it's important." "It's just a story." "They're not in the business of telling the truth." "Media organisations are in the business of being in a business, making money." "And this corruption of journalistic standards goes right to the top" "There's no doubt about it." "The fact that the most successful editors of the newspapers have been former showbiz journalists, their standards have corrupted, in my view, corrupted other parts of journalism." "With these market forces, it's even more important to remember why we exist." "Journalism." "Investment in journalism is the key to long-term prosperity, yet cost-cutting is inevitable." "Your need to have this information, combined with our ability to sell it to you, has created a demand for infinite content." "This final lesson will illustrate how we deliver this." "Not too long ago, there were enough journalists around to verify their stories before they were printed." "As news operations became streamlined, checking facts and sourcing leads became a luxury they could no longer afford." "This irreversibly changed the type of news they had time to write about." "Then we took over the news business and the digital demand is now so great that even we struggle to provide infinite content." "Thankfully, our partners in the public-relations industry are always available to fill that void." "If you look at it from the other end of the telescope and you look at all the celebrity stories appearing in the media, and ask yourself, how many of these are spontaneous?" "More than half the stories in the national media are wholly or mainly constructed out of PR material, fabricated by the PR industry, in order to inject their angle, their product, their idea, their celebrity into the media." "Showbiz correspondent Steve Hargrave was in Leicester Square." "Our arts reporter Stephanie West went to meet them." "Cannes is all abuzz with celebrities and fashion as the world-famous film festival is underway in France." "I don't think we'd dispense it, "That isn't news, that's advertising!"" "Because the boundaries are so blurred now." "And I honestly don't think most people know the difference, even if there is a difference." "Perhaps it's just gone." "See, before I watched that I wouldn't have bothered, and now..." "I'm desperate to go." "If PR serves up a celebrity, we'll go for it, because it's a human story." "We like safe stories, rather than anything controversial," "We like simple stories, rather than anything complex." "All these work in a commercial outfit because you can bang them out fast and the punters will like it." "It's cheap, easy, not legally dangerous and it sells papers, so you can see a whole shift in the priorities of the media because if the celebrity story is good, with a good picture, we don't know whether it's true," "But who cares?" "They're not going to complain, they gave us the story." "If we allow our news media to take its material from people who are serving those interests, we're completely abandoning the interests which we should be serving, which is the readers' and viewers'." "And of course you've got to look at it from the point of view of the journalists." "If journalists don't co-operate, they're cut out, they don't have access." "Are you filming this?" "And that matters because PR is inherently unreliable as a source of truth." "All experienced PR people will tell you they have seen their own press releases appear verbatim in newspapers with the reporter's by-line 'cause the reporter hasn't got time to check he probably even hasn't got time to re-write it, just bang it in." "These techniques can only satisfy your need for good news, so other parts of the PR industry are working hard to generate bad news as well." "The art of the PR is to try and take it as sleazy as you can without crossing a line." "(LAUGHS)" "Is that...?" "That's funny!" "Politicians call them spin doctors and things." ""Spin" is a posh word for "lie"." "You know, I've told a lie, maybe a little white lie, but spin is bullshit." "So what do we understand?" "The bikini, we're not going to talk to Maowi, but we will ask their name." "I thought it was shame not to have a Miss Great Britain 2009 so I spoke with the owners and we've managed to keep the show going." "I hope for you at the end we'll have Miss Great Britain as a client at my agency." "So, if you could ask their name and just say," ""Would you please go and stand over there and do some pictures with Piers?"" "In a bikini?" "Yes." "And then afterwards the same bunch come in again in a dress." "And they sit in that chair you're in, and we grill them...but in a dress." "If I'm honest, when I'm sat at a meeting table with a new client" "I'm looking at them like a cash register." "I'm thinking "How much money's in the till?"" "So, how much money would it cost for you to do a full nude photo shoot for Playboy Magazine?" "I wouldn't do it." "No, no money in the world?" "No, I wouldn't do it." "Ten million?" "Twenty million?" "Thirty million pounds cash sitting there?" "Money doesn't really mean anything to me." "No?" "That's interesting." "OK, thank you." "Thank you." "See you later." "See you next time." "Thank you." "Safe journey home." "Bye." "I saw recently there was a student beauty pageant or something and a lot of students came and protested outside." "Are you worried about that?" "No, I want them." "I've actually already started a rent-a-crowd." "I'm looking for people to do that." "(CHANTING) Miss UK, not OK!" "Miss UK, not OK!" "Hello, big tits." "How are ya?" "Good, you?" "Yeah, fine." "Are you ready for some fun?" "Of course!" "Have we told you what we're doing?" "Kind of." "Brains not busts, brains not busts!" "I've got some people upstairs say they're part of your show, but they look like protestors." "Are they supposed to be here or not?" "Yeah, I'm just doing a little stunt, five minutes for the press." "Thank you." "Thank you for letting me know." "Sorry, I should have warned you about that." "You guys need to come in really tight cos the main picture's going to be her going in the door sort of like this." "So a wall of placards?" "Yeah." "I know..." "I know it doesn't look real." "Yeah?" "Like that." "I'm not even going to get her to walk home," "I'm just going to get her to keep coming here like this, looking at you and we'll work just this area." "Does that work, Mario?" "Yes, that's it. (CHUCKLES)" "All right, Case." "We're not going to get you to walk up the road, we're going to get you just to sort of stand here." "And if you walk in..." "You've got to try and..." "Walk in like that?" "(CHANTING) Miss UK, not OK!" "Miss UK, not OK!" "Miss UK, not OK!" "We'll be two secs, and we'll just get the egg." "Brains not busts!" "Brains not busts!" "Brains not busts!" "(CHEERS)" "Miss UK, not OK!" "Miss UK, not OK!" "Bloody protestors!" "Dave, you've just assaulted one of your own clients there." "Was that successful?" "The great thing about Casey is she's got the right attitude for this business - you can't take it too seriously." "It was worth it, it's cost me six eggs." "If there isn't a story we have to spin one." "The newspapers or magazines aren't interested in just a picture." "And that's where I come in, you have to make a story up." "They've got empty pages, they've got a deadline tonight, they've got to fill those pages up." "If editors are all going to start writing only things that's true in the newspapers, we're not going to get a lot of newspapers out, are we?" "You never ever open up a national tabloid newspaper and read" ""Look." "How lovely she looks in that lovely flowing frock."" "Don't happen." ""She's a slut, she's been shagging this person behind the footballer's back, blah, blah, blah"" "That's how it works." "They want sleaze." "I have to get my clients in the headspace that they need to be able to deal with that." "They need to have skin like a rhinoceros to survive in this business." "You know, the worst thing is the kiss-and-tell thing." "A girl has slept with a Premiership footballer on Saturday night, the following Monday she's coming into offices like this to broker the deal and sell the story." "Now, it's modern-day prostitution, except he's not leaving the money on the side next to the bedside lamp." "She's collecting her money from the News Of The World or the Sunday Mirror." "It is modern-day prostitution." "To keep up with demand, our journalists often need to take an active role in bringing you these stories." "So we will go to any lengths to manufacture your news." "I came up to London and just got like spotted when I was out clubbing and, em, asked if I wanted to model." "I was like, "Well, yeah." Didn't know anybody, had no friends, so, it was like, you know, nothing better to do." "The woman that was encouraging me to do it said I would get more modelling work." "Who was this, your agent?" "Yeah." "No fashion agency wanted to book me after that." "Every week you had to get a kiss-and-tell." "Not just me or the features desk or the news desk." "I just seemed to be able to generate good stories from these girls." "She was given a huge amount of money and she thought, "Actually, maybe I can do the same again,"" "or, you know, blah, blah, blah." "But actually the more she got involved with it, the more they asked her to do more things." "The modelling work was drying up, em, and I needed money to feed my drug habit, also my alcohol habit and then, em, one day I was just taking drugs, partying in the pub when Mr Leslie walked in..." "John Leslie?" "John Leslie?" "..with his mates." "Yes." "A guy who worked on the features desk at The People rang me up and was basically, "Stay there, we'll get a girl down with you."" "So the newspaper pressurized you to do the story?" "Yeah, the features editor did, quite a lot." "You know, they can easily manipulate all these people." "That's why the papers have a field day with them all." "And this is still happening out there now." "I mean, he knew I was off my face on drugs and he didn't care about that." "He just cared about becoming a showbiz journalist - or whatever crap it was - of the year." "It's quite funny actually, because a lot of the girls I used to work with five years ago, they've all gone off and they've got kids or they've, you know, they've married." "So...those are the lucky ones." "And what about the unlucky ones?" "Erm, you never hear about them, they disappear." "Don't know what's..." "I don't know, I don't know." "A couple of times at one drug dealer's house..." "Well, we think he put Rohypnol in my drink." "I collapsed and was passed out and erm, like he had sex with me and stuff, but, like, obviously I wasn't conscious." "But because I had kissed and telled, or kiss and told, erm, the CPS didn't want to press charges against the guy who had raped me even though the other girls... or it's common knowledge in the town that he had done it before." "Because you'd sold your story?" "Yeah, basically I was branded a kiss-and-tell girl." "Whenever the newspapers are challenged about these kinds of stories, they say that they're only giving people what they want." "Well, that might be." "You could justify throwing Christians to lions in Rome that way, couldn't you?" "That's what the Romans wanted, but it doesn't mean it's good and it certainly doesn't make it legal." "We run a worldwide operation, but in some countries there are unhelpful limits on how far the press can bend the law." "We can bypass these restrictions by publishing stories in one of our British tabloids first, so it can travel instantly around the globe." "There's a subset of journalists who are still supposed to be getting scoops, to use the old-fashioned language." "And lots and lots of the stories that are done about celebrities, against the wishes of the celebrity, the painful exposes, are done by using illegal techniques." "Hello, news desk." "Hi, I wonder if there's someone I could speak to about a quite sensitive celebrity story." "Basically, it's not me, it's a friend of mine, she works in a cosmetic surgery clinic." "Right." "I've been on her for years saying that you could make a fortune out of some of the things you know." "She's an ex-girlfriend, basically, and anyway she's interested, so she's asked me to sort of make some discreet enquiries." "Right, I think we'd find it very difficult, because under the Press Complaints Commission charter, you cannot go into people's health issues." "I think you'll find it a very, very difficult thing to sort of get any newspaper interested." "I mean there might be others who have got a different view on it, but I just think, from our point of view, it would be a legal minefield." "It sounds like it would be right up our street, to be honest with you." "We are definitely interested in these sorts of stories." "We'd definitely be interested in speaking to you about how we could kind of move forward with it." "I would be very interested." "I think what it's crying out for is a cup of coffee or a glass of wine." "Good to meet you." "How are you doing?" "Yeah, not too bad." "Bit of a nightmare journey in?" "Have you got everything you need?" "Yeah, yeah." "You haven't paid for this already, have you?" "Our newspaper industry in Britain is responsible enough to regulate itself and is policed by the watchful eye of the Press Complaints Commission." "Can I quickly move on to the Press Complaints Commission?" "How seriously do you take a judgment of the Press Complaints Commission?" "Very seriously, erm..." "No editor wants to have an adjudication against them." "A complaint being upheld by the PCC is what terrifies editors." "You perhaps underestimate the kind of humiliation that comes with a PCC adjudication." "It carries an enormous amount of weight and carries far more significance than a fine." "It's difficult to convey this, because it sounds like we're being sanctimonious, but there is deep shame when you have to carry an adjudication." "Oh, really?" "So a slap on the wrist?" "Really?" "!" "Right, of course, I remember reading about this." "The PCC and self-regulation has changed the culture in every single newsroom in the land." "Self-regulation works, and it would be nice if, occasionally, that was recognised." "And we have a great system, so forgive us for promoting it, but that's the truth." "When is comes to the media's lack of morals, there's one person who has more to say on this than anybody else." "And every year, I think, it gets harder and harder for any person of principle to be on tabloid newspapers." "Because if you don't do it, you're sacked and they get somebody else in." "Public relations isn't only about fabricating stories, it's about controlling the truth, and in the field of censorship, Max Clifford is our undisputed master." "He, unlike anyone else in this game, is a poacher-turned-gamekeeper." "Let's have a chat to Jade Goody's publicist, Max Clifford." "He is presented to the public as this Honest Joe pundit who's able to talk about the world of celebrity, but we have no health warning, we don't know whether, in fact, he has engineered the story." "Well, my job is a combination of promotion and protection, but every year, it's more about protection than it is about promotion." "I'll get a lawyer on the phone." ""Max, there's somebody else coming over I want you to look after." "They're going to be in the country for two months." "They like this, they do this, nice guy, nice woman, but..." "Celebrities, stars, it's important that you're seen to be putting something back." "From a PR perspective, it's good for them, and obviously it's good for the people that benefit." "And this goes right to the top." "I mean, let's look at the Prime Minister's wife, Cherie Blaire," "When she's about to have a baby, he gives that alledgedly to Piers Morgan because Piers Morgan will then be prevented from running a damaging story about one of Max Clifford's clients." "So, here the Prime Minister's wife's baby is part of the trade with Max Clifford to prevent some other celebrity being turned over by the papers." "This concludes the final lesson." "We, the sponsors, can now use the allure of fame to reach everybody in the world from the day that they're born." "We have tapped into your instinct to copy the famous, enabling us to sell you whatever we choose." "Your hunger to know everything about our celebrities means we can feed you media 24 hours a day, allowing us to control the truth." "Having learned these lessons, we are now able to perform illusions on a grand scale, fooling billions of people, and extend our power way beyond entertainment." "You've already seen how celebrities naturally divert your attention, so for a politician, they become a valuable distraction." "Once we've connected them to politicians for long enough, the boundaries start to blur." "Even on its own, this simple trick can be extremely successful." "So let's have a quick look at how it works at local level." "It should give you a glimpse of what you have to look forward to." "In 2008, a group of our Lithuanian celebrities thought they could do better than real politicians." "They formed their own political party and ran for office." "This celebrities' party simply took a lot of the populist votes from the other parties." "So what, they're actually part of the government?" "Certainly, they are second-largest party in the government with two cabinet ministers and the speaker of the parliament." "(SPEAKS LITHUANIAN)" "So like, ever since independence, he's basically been in TV..." "In charge of the media." "Exactly." "(SPEAKS LITHUANIAN)" "(SPEAKS LITHUANIAN)" "APPLAUSE" "My name is Donalda Meizelyte." "My job, I'm a member of parliament of Lithuania." "(SINGS IN LITHUANIAN)" "I was a singer, actor on TV, and if you're clever person, so you can be a member of parliament." "(SINGS IN LITHUANIAN)" "(SPEAKS IN LITHUANIAN)" "My name is Linas Karalius." "And what is your job here?" "I'm a member of parliament." "(SPEAKS LITHUANIAN)" "(SINGS IN LITHUANIAN)" "And I have an autograph!" "My name is Rokas Zilinskas." "And what's your job?" "What is it that you do?" "I worked for the television for 18 years, including 15 years as a news anchor." "And now what do you do?" "Now I'm a member of parliament and the chairman of Nuclear Energy Commission." "When you're out in the street, when people see you, do they see you as a television presenter or a politician or both?" "Just put my name in YouTube and you'll see that I'm more popular than Madonna in this country." "(TRANSLATOR) What they say is that he was the best TV presenter in Lithuania." "That's what they say." "Now they say he's the worst politician." "(INTERVIEWER LAUGHS)" "Everything what's happening in the politics in the world shows that that's a global trend, it's not only Lithuania's." "This simple trick has granted us access to the tables of power all over the world." "But for our grand illusion, we've added one more crucial ingredient - charity." "On the one hand, you naturally avoid questioning celebrities or their actions, and, on the other, we provide a blanket endorsement of anything entertaining." "This combination has enabled us to convince the world that we are changing it for the better." "To see how this illusion works, let's take a look at our greatest success so far." "In 2005, the most famous celebrities and politicians in the world came together with the intention of solving African poverty once and for all." "I was very reluctant to do this again." "I couldn't see how anything could possibly be better than that glorious day 20 years ago, almost perfect in what it achieved and in the day itself." "Thank you, good night." "Please send your money in." "CHEERING 1985's Live Aid raised more than $200 million over the last 20 years." "So it seemed to me that we could gather together again, but this time not for charity but for political justice." "Live 8 is there to say, "The rest of the world, join in"" "and try to see whether or not eight men in one room can't change the world on one day in July." "See this little girl?" "She had ten minutes to live 20 years ago, and because we did a concert, she's here tonight, this little girl!" "Birhan!" "CHEERING AND APPLAUSE" "How much did Live 8 raise?" "Well, so far, 65 billion, you know, and rising, not bad." "On aid, ten out of ten." "On debt, eight out of ten." "This is the story we would have you believe." "The truth, as always, is a bit more complicated." "My objection is much less to his simplification, than I think that Live Aid arguably did some harm as well as some good." "A lot of money was raised." "The money was distributed to a large number of humanitarian relief agencies." "Some of the agencies used the Live Aid money to bring in materials and food to places where the Ethiopian government wanted these people to go." "A government that really basically wanted to do ethnic cleansing, forced population transfer of people from the combat zone, where they were thought to sympathise with the guerrilla armies, to less cultivated, less settled areas in the south of Ethiopia." "Medecins Sans Frontieres estimate that between 150,000 and 200,000 Ethiopians were killed due to this forced relocation, which was enabled by the relief effort." "They claim this killed more than famine and war during 1985." "The aid monies that allowed the Ethiopian government to give the relief that attracted these people in order to be forcibly cleansed." "20 years later, the problem of African poverty had not gone away, so the British government formed a committee and asked Bob Geldof to join." "Quite separately, a group of activists and charities came together to form a coalition called Make Poverty History." "The idea of the campaign was really to mobilise an unprecedentedly large number of people to come behind this basic call to the G8, the most powerful governments of the world, that they should clean up their act." "Take three major issues - aid, debt and fair trade - and see if you can shift the position of these major government leaders." "Make Poverty History made plans to hold a huge march in Edinburgh on July 2nd to coincide with the G8 summit, but Richard Curtis started to persuade his friend Bob Geldof to organise another charity concert." "He also enlisted the help of his brother-in-law, the PR, Matthew Freud." "Freud's father-in-law, Rupert Murdoch, owns The Sun newspaper, which started to campaign for another Live Aid concert using the story of Birhan Wold..." "Led by the Sun, several of our publications claimed that her life had been saved by Live Aid in 1985." "What we didn't disclose was that her life was actually saved from the brink of starvation in 1984, ten months before the Live Aid concerts." "The Sun journalists also claimed that they alone had rediscovered Birhan, even though she'd been filmed throughout the intervening 20 years by the original Canadian journalist who also contributed to her education." "Two months before the march, Geldof announced the Live 8 concert with the full backing of the British government." "The sort of Live 8 concerts were not sort of organisationally part of Make Poverty History." "Well, the march in Edinburgh was set for 2nd July, the Saturday, and that had been in place for months and months and months." "And then, suddenly, the Live 8 concert appears on that same day." "On July 2nd, 250,000 people took to the streets of Edinburgh in the largest march of its kind, but most of the British media was in London, filming themselves providing saturation coverage of the concert." "In between the acts, films were screened that illustrated the message of Make Poverty History, but instead the BBC had to broadcast interviews with famous people." "You know, there's 2.2 billion people watching." "3.4 billion." "I know, they keep saying to me 5.5 billion." "Over half the planet." "What should have been a political concert was very much kind of watered down and frittered away by the way the media covered it." "The next day, our newspapers hardly had any room to report on the march." "You remember Pink Floyd reforming, you remember Pete Doherty not being able to sing." "You don't remember that actually, you know, a quarter of a million people were marching around Edinburgh at the same time." "On the Wednesday, when the march went up to Gleneagles which was where the G8 was actually meeting, suddenly there was another Live 8 concert, which just happened to have been arranged for the same day, this time in Murrayfield in Edinburgh." "Every time that we want to get a strong political message into the media, there happens to be a pop concert to take away all of that thunder." "When using celebrities, the message stays simple, but not always consistent." "This is to raise awareness and for people to sign the Live 8 pledge, and, er...as many people as possible, so that Bono and Bob can take it to the G8 leaders on Wednesday and say, "Listen, we've got 150 million people with this thing."" "There are 500 million signatures, they tell me, already today." "In this box are 38 million people." "There are 31 million names in this box." "The leaders of the most powerful nations in the world presented an aid and debt package for Africa, the majority of which had been announced well before the summit and the concerts." "On aid, ten out of ten." "On debt, eight out of ten." "I was there in the press conference in Gleneagles when Bob Geldof gave the G8 ten out of ten, and that's after the Jubilee Debt Campaign had said they'd failed on debt and the UK Aid Network had said they'd failed on aid." "The BBC commissioned Brook Lapping, which was owned by Bob Geldof's company, to make an impartial documentary about the Live 8 story." "It concluded that it was a sensational success." "The only person in the world who could pull off Live 8 was Bob, so he was, as it were, my husband or wife, the person I had to deal with." "Just lying on our sofa making a lot of phone calls on speakerphone and enjoying the croissants and the coffee and the cake and the tea and the lunch and then the dinner at night." "They didn't actually strengthen the message of Make Poverty History." "In fact, they diluted that message and made it much more of an unclear, touchy-feely experience, where everybody's made to feel good about themselves, but, in fact, the political demands have been watered down to nothingness." "And the promotional side of the event was extremely successful and resulted in a huge increase in album sales for all of our record companies." "Four years on, and the promises are not on course to be met." "Of all the aid promised to Africa, only $7 billion has materialised." "How much did Live 8 raise?" "Well, so far 65 billion, you know, and rising, not bad." "The misinformation is probably going to be a constant." "I frankly think Save Darfur has produced a tremendous amount of misinformation in much the same mode, even though, again, as with Geldof," "I don't doubt for a nanosecond that they have the best of intentions." "This illusion made something that turned out to be a failure go down in history as a magnificent triumph." "It enabled the politicians to make a deal with celebrities that they could walk away from when we had turned off the spotlight." "Everybody came out on top." "Except for you." "But best of all, it inspired many more of our celebrities to try to make the world a better place." "I've actually been doing charity work my entire life." "Even though their well-intentioned actions are often counterproductive, we present their deeds as being wholly successful." "In return, we get the keys to power in global affairs, which is precisely where we need to be to gain unrestricted access to the next generation." "The other day, we were waiting on the air, and I remember him saying, "Why are they keeping me on hold?"" "and I was like, "Son, don't worry,"" ""I bet they've got other things to talk about."" "I think he was coming on after 50 Cent or something." "He was coming on after Justin Timberlake." "And he was like," ""I don't need to wait for him, I'm the star!"" "Get out here!" "Make some noise for my boy!" "CHEERING AND APPLAUSE" "You want to see him dance?" "CHEERING AND APPLAUSE" "DANCE BEAT PLAYS" "Go!" "Go!" "Go!" "Go!" "Go!" "Go!" "Go!" "Go!" "Go!" "Go!" "Go!" "Go!" "Go, Shawty!" "Go, Shawty!" "Go, Shawty!" "Go, Shawty!" "Go!" "Go!" "Go!" "Go!" "Go!" "Go!" "Go!" "Work it out!" "Work it out!" "Work it out!" "Somebody scream!" "SCREAMING" "All right, everyone!" "Hi!" "What I want to know from you, by a show of hands, is, who in this room would like to be famous?" "Now you know how we are able to use this one simple thing to control so much of your world." "We're always looking for willing recruits to come behind the curtain and join our business." "We're not going anywhere, and we'll see you again very, very soon." "Subtitles by Roel Keller" "# Everybody loves Saturday night" "# Everybody loves Saturday night" "# Everybody, everybody everybody, everybody" "# Everybody loves Saturday night" "# Everybody loves Saturday night" "# Everybody loves Saturday night" "# Everybody" "# Everybody, everybody everybody, everybody" "# Everybody loves Saturday night... #" "Let's go to Mexico!" "# Todo el mundo quiere sabado" "# Todo el mundo quiere sabado" "# Todo el mundo, todo el mundo todo el mundo, todo el mundo" "# Todo el mundo quiere sabado" "# Everybody loves Saturday night" "# Everybody loves Saturday night" "# Everybody, everybody everybody, everybody" "# Everybody loves Saturday night... #" "How about a little German, Fraulein?" "# Alle Menschen haben Lieb Samstagnacht... #" "Eins, zwei, drei, vier!" "# Alle Menschen haben Lieb Samstagnacht... #" "With a little glass of beer!" "# Alle Menschen, alle Menschen" "# Alle Menschen, alle Menschen" "# Alle Menschen haben Lieb Samstagnacht" "# Everybody loves Saturday night" "# Everybody loves Saturday night" "# Everybody, everybody everybody, everybody" "# Everybody loves Saturday night. #" "Pizza, Paul and Mary, Puccini-style!" "# Tutta la gente amoratti sabato" "# Tutta la gente" "# Tutta la gente amoratti sabato" "# Tutta la gente" "# Tutta la gente Tutta la gente" "# Ooh!" "la gente Tutta la gente... #" "Oh!" "Bravo, bravissimo, bravo!" "# Tutta la gente amoratti sabato... #" "And now Hawaii calls... (THEY SING "EVERYBODY LOVES SATURDAY NIGHT" IN HAWAIIAN)" "How about a little smile, Larry?" "# Everybody loves Saturday night" "# Everybody loves Saturday night" "# Everybody loves Saturday night" "Everybody loves Saturday night" "# Todo el mundo" "# Alle Menschen" "# Hey!" "Everybody!" "# Everybody loves Saturday night" "# Everybody loves Saturday night" "# Everybody loves Saturday night" "# Everybody loves Saturday night" "# Everybody loves Saturday night" "# Everybody, everybody everybody, everybody" "# Everybody loves Saturday night" "# Loves Saturday, loves Saturday night. #"