The suffering show

UM, cut!... Erm, you - oh what's the crippled Brazilian kid's name?

Carlotta is it... you're sure? OK, well yes, Carlotta, when your long-lost mother totters into frame... um, comes near to you. Um, well, could you look sort of pleased... ecstatic, even... to, you know... see her. Could you do ecstatic for me, sweetheart? Oh s**t, what's ecstatic in Portuguese?

Look, Carla... Carlotta, whatever, we've come all the way over from civilised Malta to this hot, steamy, mosquito-ridden hellhole in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, to reunite you with your natural mother and all you can bloody do is stand there and gawp at the old slag! Please, for the sake of all those viewers and advertisers back home in Malta, at least try and shed a tear... even a crocodile one would do.

How do we get through to the stupid little bitch, any ideas? Look, lovey, it's no good pretending you don't understand English or Maltese... you're eight years old and you've lived among us with your foster parents in Bormla for the last three years of your life, so you must have picked something up... even if it's only insomma!

Fetch Rajxill on set, will you? Then let's shoot this and get the hell out of here. Well, where is she? In make-up having her compassionate face put on. Well, that shouldn't take long, she's had plenty of practice.

Oh there you are... yes, you look lovely, not a hair out of place... anywhere! Now Rajxill, could you take the brat by the hand... yes, it's been washed, don't worry. Then prop it up on its calipers and set it on a course for its birth mother. We'll stay back here with the zoom lens to catch the expression of wonderment on the old slapper's face and joy... or something... on the kid's mug. Oh yes of course Rajxill, we'll make sure to catch the usual compassionate smirk on your gob as well. OK, everybody! We're going for a take. First positions and... action!

Not bad, not bad... um, could have been better. Er, Rajxill... maybe if you concentrated on looking compassionately at the kid and its mother instead of craning your neck around to look compassionately at the camera, it might be... But I do agree with you, the mother does look a tad disinterested and way too fit and well to generate the usual tear-fest on TVM. Yes, good idea, Rajxill, she should have at least one broken leg. Could somebody see to that, please? A limping mother is a guaranteed tear-jerker.

Not both legs, George! Oh never mind, just pop her in a cart and wheel her over.

We'll do one more take before we cut to commercials in the studio. Oh, and Rajxill, would you like to do the promo for this week's star greed award? Yes, this week the first prize is the winner's very own personal Boeing 747... plus a luxury apartment in the Palace at Versailles, plus a pizza for two at Pizza Paradise, San Gwann.

OK, let's get ready for another take... what's that? The mother is being difficult. What do you mean, difficult? Just give her another string of beads and let's shoot it, shall we? Not the child's real mother! What the hell do you mean? Didn't we get a perfect DNA match... mother and daughter?

Rayxill couldn't get the DNA test sponsored? I don't believe this! You mean we've travelled all the way over to the middle of the Brazilian jungle... Air Malta first class and free. All 26 crew members, plus Rajxill, myself, Rajxill's personal make-up people, her personal hairdresser, her personal manicurist, her personal couturier, her very own Feng Shui arranger, to be told that the sole reason we made the f****** trip in the first place here is not a DNA match?

Give me strength!

OK, everybody back in the chopper... except the brat. Then it's back to Malta and another search for some richly deserving... and preferably terminally debilitated child to exploit.

Next!