ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
DECIDING WHO SHOULD BE PATIENT zero is proving to be the biggest hurdle for the producers of Network 10’s floundering springtime offering, The Bachelor, as they toy with the idea of introducing chlamydia amongst contestants.
Considered by most as being a ‘rite-of-passage’ sexually transmitted infection that’s widely abundant wherever young people are forced to live together, it’s easily treated by a single course of antibiotics and is relatively harmless if treated earlier.
However, the highly infectious infection will allow the show’s producers to accurately track who’s been doing the horizontal river dance with who.
“It’s important for us to know these things,” said one producer.
“We can trim the fat off the show if we have that information. The show doesn’t need any passengers come finals. Our end game is to create a big love circle where everybody is going to town on each other. You know, so they’re emotions and feelings for each other start to negatively influence their ability to make decisions,”
“That’s the good shit. When you make people genuinely cry on national television. That’s the formula that 60 Minutes have left unchanged for decades. Look where they are now. Four Corners is fucked because they make audiences cry. That’s the completely wrong idea. Bottom line is, if we infected one person with the clap, we can find out who’s doing who and make decisions accordingly.”
There’s also debate whether the contestants will be told they have chlamydia, which rules out them submitting samples – leaving yet another headache for producers.
Collecting urine from the sewerage pipes has been an idea floated, but lawyers for the network insist that doing so may be illegal. In fact, this whole exercise is dubiously legal according to one area solicitor.
“Dubiously legal is the best type of legal. It means it isn’t tested in court,” said one producer.
“There’s also the problem of infecting the first person. One of our interns from a regional college has the clap already, we just need to find out how he’s going to give it to one of the contestants.”
More to come.
