Amber Sherlock, that jacket and the reality TV we all really crave

Amber Sherlock and newsreader Julie Snook. Picture: Channel 9

“I need Julie to put a jacket on ‘cos we’re all in white. I asked her before we came on. Julie, you need to put a jacket on”.

Thank heavens for Channel Nine’s Julie Snook and her absent jacket, and whoever leaked the tape of fellow Nine presenter Amber Sherlock’s take-down of the situation yesterday. What a joy for us all.

It wasn’t true diva behaviour. Anyone who has ever worked in television will tell you they’ve seen far worse.

As a former studio runner - where ironically the first rule you learn is not to wear white on TV - I’ve raced across town to find a particular cheese for a morning talk show anchor who demanded it for her elevenses.

Sherlock just took the upper hand and wanted the panel to look the part. Wardrobe departments take these things very seriously, even if the audience don’t.

And she admits she “probably overreacted … Live TV can be a pretty stressful beast”, so no one really needs to #PutYourBlazersOnForJulie.

Snook said herself afterwards: “Amber and I are good friends … News is a fast moving environment and sometimes these things happen.”

What we got to witness though, was the reality of human conflict under the pressures of television, and the amount of interest in the story - admit it, even from The Australian’s readership - shows it’s the kind of reality in TV we crave.

As an audience, we love it when things go wrong, moreover, when things are real, rather than heavily edited to make them look as so.

Last week, Sydney makeup artist Simone Lee Brennan wrote a tell-all blog post about her experience as a contestant on the second series of Married At First Sight.

Yes, she married a man she’d only just met, (although under Australian law the wedding was only a commitment ceremony) and no, it didn’t work out.

But the best bit? To get the right shots she revealed she had to walk down the aisle four times, do the first kiss bit twice, and go along with cute dinners staged to look like they were organised by her ‘husband’.

Wouldn’t we rather have seen an awkward first kiss and an early domestic over why neither of them had planned dinner?

“Problem was, nobody knew. Nobody but me that is,” Brennan wrote. “Week two, day three, of the five-week experiment, while folding a pile of bathroom towels during a filming break, he said to me, and I quote, ‘I’m just not that into it’” – now that’s the scene we really want, folded towels and all.

We know both news talkshows and reality TV are under pressure to keep things looking slick. Getting the right camera angles and mix of guests, and feeding them storylines, all to entertain us. But the gold, it seems, comes in the moments they let their subjects, at least, be themselves.

Case in point: Last week the presenters of BBC Breakfast were left red-faced when they accidentally introduced the wrong guest. Embarrassing, sure, but wonderful viewing.

And yesterday, would you believe, also marked one year since the greatest moment in reality TV history: ‘David’s dead’.

If you haven’t seen it, it’s the moment Celebrity Big Brother UK contestant Angie Bowie tells Tiffany Pollard of her ex-husband, David Bowie’s death - only for Pollard to mistakenly think she means their fellow housemate David Gest - who coincidently had gone to bed ill.

Yes, it’s cringe-worthy stuff and humiliating for those involved. But if you can’t laugh at that, or the leaked Sherlock video, you need a reality check.

Words: Kate Sullivan