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Talent Dredge

That Mitchell and Webb Look2010Season 4Episode 6
That Mitchell and Webb Look
SKETCH-O-VISION
A VERY GOOD USE OF YOUR TIME.

The setup

Backstage at a TV talent show's auditions, an interviewer refuses to accept a contestant's claim that giving it her heart and soul was all she could have done.

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The premise

Here’s the bit.

Outside the auditions for the talent show Talent Dredge, a microphone-wielding man named Ian stops Felicity as she leaves the stage and asks how it went. She offers the familiar contestant's refrain that she put her heart and soul into it and could have done nothing more, but instead of sympathising Ian questions the claim: she could have practised, learned the words or tried to stay in tune. Each time she repeats the same phrase he lays out, in increasingly baroque insults, everything wrong with her outfit, her gloomy song choice and her hoarse, shouty voice, then tells her that outside the fantasy of talent television sincerity is no excuse for failure. When she falls back on her children as her real achievement, he turns even that against her, and as she dissolves into tears he admits he is not a presenter at all, just someone who spends his lunch breaks doing this for fun.

The funny people

Meet the cast. 2

Say it with us

Highly quotable.

I don't mean to be rude, but you put me in mind of a dog trying to bark the alphabet.

You don't see pilots saying, sorry I killed 300 people and sheared the roof off that church, I guess I was giving it too much heart and soul.

I'm not a presenter at all. I just come here on my lunch break and do this for fun.

Behind the scenes

The people who made it.

ScriptEnglish · 16 turns

Automatically generated script; wording may contain errors. Speaker labels are inferred.

  1. 00:01

    Felicity

    I Thank you Thank you.

  2. 00:12

    Ian

    So, Felicity, how did it go?

  3. 00:14

    Felicity

    Well, Ian, I went in there, put my heart and soul into it, really gave it my heart and soul, and at the end of the day, speaking from my heart and soul, that's really all I could have done.

  4. 00:29

    Ian

    Is it, though?

  5. 00:31

    Felicity

    What?

  6. 00:32

    Ian

    Putting your heart and soul into it. Is that really all you could have done? What about practising? Or learning the words? Or trying to stay in tune? aren't all those things quite important

  7. 00:42

    Felicity

    yeah but what i'm saying is ian i went in there today put my heart and soul on the line really gave it my heart and soul and at the end of the day coming right from my heart and soul now there's really nothing else i could have done

  8. 01:00

    Ian

    yeah but technically there is though

  9. 01:02

    Ian

    well you know you could have got up early and rehearsed You could have dressed like a proper singer instead of getting trussed up in leather like some Tory MP two seconds before a fatal wanking accident. You could have picked a funky, modern tune instead of that sort of depressing Mariah Carey thing that sounded like something a taxi driver would listen to whilst burning photo albums in a lay-by. Or you could have worked on your vocal technique, which, to be honest, was a bit hoarse and shouty. I don't mean to be rude, but you put me in mind of a dog trying to bark the alphabet. Is any of this helping?

  10. 01:33

    Felicity

    But I put my heart and soul into that performance.

  11. 01:37

    Ian

    Yeah, but in the real world, that's not really good enough. Which, if you think about it, Felicity, is probably why you're still living with your gran and working in that biro factory. In real life, as opposed to the happy, clappy, rainbow fantasy world that you see fit to fly through on your winged unicorn of delusion, sincerity is no excuse for failure. You don't see pilots saying, sorry I killed 300 people and sheared the roof off that church, I guess I was giving it too much heart and soul.

  12. 02:07

    Felicity

    kids

  13. 02:07

    Ian

    yeah brilliant because of course having children it's sort of like a way of achieving something without needing any talent which if you think about it is a metaphor for your whole life

  14. 02:16

    Felicity

    actually

  15. 02:18

    Ian

    Felicity I'm not a presenter at all I just come here on my lunch break and do this for fun

  16. 02:25

    kiss you

The rabbit hole continues

One more couldn’t hurt.

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