Top Billing is looking for new presenters, and, as someone who has suffered severe exposure to that show and has had it burnt into his soul forever, I would like to take a short break from the important news of the week to offer some tips to the hopefuls that they might not otherwise be getting from the mainstream TV industry.
This is not to say, of course, that they’re getting no help whatsoever: this week Bonang Matheba, herself a former presenter and now one of the judges of the presenter search, was quoted by this website as she encouraged aspiring presenters to try to be as natural and conversational as possible in their audition tapes.
“We need to feel like we’re talking to you through the medium of television,” she explained.
This was vital information, saving from disaster the many aspirants who might otherwise have sabotaged their chances by still believing that a conversation is a thing where two people talk to each other about topics they find interesting.
Could you walk through a house clearly furnished from last month’s issue of Conformist Taste For The Newly Rich And Deeply Unimaginative and literally vibrate with excitement? If so, you’re halfway there.
No, on Top Billing a conversation is a short lecture, delivered with a relentless smile to nobody, almost always about something so fantastically uninteresting that someone has had to pay the SABC to pay people to tell you about it.
So now that that’s cleared up, here are some other essentials that every aspiring Top Billing presenter should have:
1. The ability to look as if South African kitsch is about to give you the biggest orgasm of your life
Can you stroke a bronze sculpture of a cheetah and look as if you’re reaching climax? Could you walk through a house clearly furnished from last month’s issue of Conformist Taste For The Newly Rich And Deeply Unimaginative and literally vibrate with excitement? If so, you’re halfway there.
2. Eyes that mask the death of your soul
Top Billing is a televisual nozzle deigned for the sole purpose of spraying empty consumerism with a sticky, golden veneer of knackered glamour, and inevitably the tackiness will seep into your soul. When this happens, perhaps halfway through an interview with a sportsperson who only knows nine words, remember to smile and dig down to the deepest parts of your soul and remind yourself of your true motivation: this will pay for your house. The eyes, however, can ruin everything, and it’s important that you start training them right now to remain glassily bright, like the eyes on the beloved characters that wander around Disneyland.
3. A Plan B
Fame is a fickle thing, but not as fickle as SABC budgets. Start planning right now how to parlay your Top Billing presenter search fame into a more durable TV career, perhaps by pitching a formatted game show in which former Top Billing presenter search hopefuls compete in a series of challenges, like using the most adjectives to describe a salad spoon or looking at a koi pond with the most convincingly serene expression.
4. A good tax adviser and a ghost-writer who can spell
Google Bonang Matheba. Enough said.
Good luck, contestants, and remember: you might be about to become a walking cliche, but if you scramble the letters of “cliche” you get “le chic”, and that’s French, which means after the break we’ll be visiting property developers Poena and Credenza Venter in their exquisite French chateau near Stellenbosch, dating all the way back to 2017 …
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