It was my first day at my first job after leaving university, and my new manager gave me some advice.
‘You won’t make any money working in telly, ’ he told me, hands flounced apart (as if I needed any reminder of how little I was earning) ‘unless you come up with an idea and sell it to a channel.’ He took a drag of his cigarette.
I had found myself working for the production company that makes the daytime television programme A Place in the Sun. We called it APITS.
The manager continued, ‘It doesn’t have to be complicated. Think of this programme: two Brits go abroad, they look round some houses, if they like one, they buy it.’
For the uninitiated, I can’t provide a better summary of A Place in the Sun. Since its first broadcast in 2000, millions of retirees and adults pulling sickies have watched two Brits do just that.
Each morning, I’d get the Metropolitan line and commute out of the city into rural Hertfordshire. As the train clattered past the M25, the carriage emptied until it was just me and my fellow APITS researchers on board – all women, all under 25. Our job was to find out everything we could about the people coming on the show, and to source a dozen properties which vaguely matched what they wanted to buy (within budget). We then managed their expectations and organised a filming schedule for the film teams in France, Spain and Greece. The presenters first see the properties on the day of filming, the same time as the house hunters. On a few occasions this has led to the presenter getting lost mid-tour, opening doors to a ‘stunning master bedroom’ which was, in fact, the toilet.
As we clunked along from Zone 1 to 7, we’d discuss house hunters we’d been assigned that week:
‘My lot are weird… but nice.’
