Did anyone else audition for the new ITV series ‘Britannia High’ at the weekend? I wasn’t impressed and think it may have been a clever scam on behalf of the producers to get lots of ordinary kids on camera looking disappointed, thus courting controversy for the first two programmes, which are to be ‘fly on the wall’ documentaries of the ‘auditions’..

After seeing an advert for the auditions, my daughter and I travelled across London on Sunday in order to attend.

The advertising asked kids between the ages of 17 and 19 to turn up at the London Welsh Centre, and didn’t ask for official qualifications or stage schooling, just for personalities and the ability to act, dance, sing and/or play an instrument. It gave the impression that ordinary kids were being sought, with or without training.

My daughter is studying for a BTEC in drama at college and attends professional dance classes. She can also sing. She is not stick thin (she’s a size 14) or ‘gorgeous’ like the usual stereotypes, but has a bubbly infectious personality as well as fitting the bill for the other attributes being looked for.

Anyway, we tuned up at 2pm to join a straggle of about 10 kids waiting to be seen. After 5 minutes, she emerged saying she hadn’t even got past the registration process. She had been asked what ‘training’ she had received, and when she said the details of her course, she was told abruptly ‘that’s not good enough’ and then ‘this isn’t for you is it?!’, whilst being filmed. She didn’t get to audition or prove what she could do, so so much for them wanting ‘personalities’!!

However, other kids were also being turned away on the same premise, most of them fitting the stereotype ‘high school kid’ look, with good training behind them.

The ‘chaperones’ who ushered the children into the building to register said they had seen a maximum of 250 kids over the weekend, which begs the question: how can such a prime-time high profile show possiby cast itself from only the 250 people who turned up, when they are turning the majority away? (The X factor auditions saw thousands, and everyone got a chance to sing). And why hold auditions only in London, in a tiny venue, if a country-wide cast was sought? Unless the producers already knew the people they were looking for, and had them turn up at the auditions ‘by coincidence’….

On a more worrying note, the main websites which carried detailed adverts of the auditions (including audition pieces!), were Asian cultural websites, encouraging more Asian/Afro Caribean children to audition. Lo and behold, everyone at the auditions who fitted that criteria got to audition, and there were quite a high percentage, due to the increased advertising on cultural sites.

So, to sum up, I think it was a con; the ‘white’ cast had already been chosen, and the weekend auditions were mainly to recuit Asian/Afro Caribbean actors, to make it look ‘PC’. Ridiculing ordinary kids on camera and telling them that ‘this isn’t for you’, when they have travelled a distance to turn up because they think it is, is cruel, and to use this for cheap entertainment is exploitative reality TV at it’s worst.

I urge everyone to boycot this show when it appears and treat it as the sham it so obviously is….