This week, our anonymous intern columnist describes the day-to-day reality of working as a media underling – less hanging out with celebrities, more tea-making – and shares some advice for intern bridge-burners...
It may come as a surprise that the day-to-day life of a television intern is not actually that glamorous.
Just as when I worked in publishing I didn’t get to spend my lunch hours sipping martinis with such luminaries as Martin Amis and that politician’s daughter who writes all the tooth-enamel-meltingly sweet chick lit, I don’t get to spend that much time hanging out with Mariella Frostrup and half the cast of The Inbetweeners. A little bit, but not much, and rarely on my lunch break – when I’m more likely to be found sitting by myself in a park. The “hanging out” comes when I take a celebrity’s coat, hang it up, then ask how much sugar they like in their tea, before returning to my desk and doing myself an injury while trying to inconspicuously listen in on what’s being said.
By way of context, I’m now the only intern in my office, which is why there’s no one to eat lunch with. Intern M has been taken on full-time to work on the promotion of shows via social media. She’s now only available through Twitter and never for what I like to call “hours spent plotting who we won’t employ as soon as we take over the company”. Intern T, meanwhile, dropped out via email to work for a world famous choreographer, prompting a mortified phone call from his dad (who’d arranged his work experience at our place to begin with) and absolutely no gossip.
Some words of advice on staging a walk-out to any potential social arsonists (sees bridge, burns it): don’t email the nicest person in the office, asking them to pass on the news, don’t lie and say its because you’ve moved onto a way cooler full-time job, and don’t get your dad to call on your behalf later that day. He’ll only inadvertently blow the whole thing by revealing you’re still in bed and going back to Cambridge tomorrow for a chat with your student adviser. Especially don’t do this after less than two weeks working somewhere – it shows what my granny would describe much less euphemistically as “a distinct lack of character.”
Apart from nursing an over-stretched neck and strained hearing, I’ve spent this week researching shoes, Fibonacci sequences, and how many toasters are sold in the north of England for shows to be screened over the summer. The best explanation I can offer for the documentary programmes produced here is that they veer between the kind of high-brow panel-led discussions that make people say, “Ah, yes!” when you mention them, and the kind that makes people smile uneasily before asking, “Is that on Channel 5?”
It’s varied subject matter but the problem with research is that, much like oral sex or office admin, when people find out you’re good at it, it’s all they want you to do. Consequently, I’ve yet to improve my editing or camera work skills, but am fairly sure that when I do descend into hell it’ll be via the medium of a golden ratio.
More Intern X:
New Year resolutions
The Christmas party
Image: good secretary by anniebee, available under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 license.