Cheap gags and stitch-ups in DIY television

By REBECCA BARRY

It's 2pm on a hot Wednesday and the regulars at the Ponsonby Bowling Club are just getting started. Drinking, that is.

As three retirees laugh raspingly over their afternoon pints, outside another three patrons more than half their age do the same. Cameras aside, if it weren't for the five impossibly attractive FHM-type models practising innocently on the green, you wouldn't know this was a film set.

In fact it's another investigative day at the office for Pulp Sport creators Jamie Linehan, Ben Boyce and Clarke Gayford.

Why, they're asking today, is lawn bowls suddenly so popular with young people?

"Okay girls, now if you can just bend over ... " instructs the cameraman as they conclude it "must be the cheap drinks".

Cheap gags such as this convinced Sky TV the half-hour parody sports show would work.

Linehan and his sports-mad friend Boyce came up with the idea to make a show their mates would like, while studying radio at the Christchurch broadcasting school. Nicknaming themselves as hosts Bill and Ben, they then invited Gayford, a TV major on the same course, to help them put it on screen.

After a brief and unsuccessful stint with a production company the trio set out on their own and, with little more than a computer, a camera and a fox suit, they set up Shonky Productions and started making some "rough as guts" TV.

Sky took a leap of faith, giving them a half-hour slot, $20,000 and one month to film the first series.

That's about a quarter of what most TV shows in New Zealand receive, Linehan reckons, and they spent half of it on a camera.

"Turning it around was ridiculous," he says. "I came as close to a nervous breakdown as you could possibly get."

"I ended up in hospital and lost my girlfriend," adds Gayford. "It was a very emotional time."

Which soon paid off. Now in its second series, the original radio version of Pulp Sport still broadcasts on The Rock on Saturday mornings, on Sky's sports channel on Wednesday nights and now on music channel C4 on Thursdays. (Gayford is one of the channel's two main hosts.) This time round they've also picked up sponsorship from Xbox, Tui beer and Nandos Chicken, not bad for a bunch of guys who admit spending more on their launch party than they did on the whole series.

"Jamie's from Te Awamutu, Ben's from Masterton and I'm from Gisborne and we make a show that's not slick, the guys don't have sponsored clothing and they very rarely do their hair," says Gayford, as Boyce twists a dreadlock around his finger.

"And we get to do stuff that you can't normally get away with."

In the sketch "101 Uses For Ian Jones" someone yells, "What a dick!" as the tall former All Black struggles to improve the reception by lifting a TV aerial over his head. In "Urban Creatures" host Steve Urban - a take-off of crocodile hunter Steve Irwin played by a former classmate - stalks a cheerleader to her house then rifles through her underwear. At their most cunning they write up a contract for a new Soccer Kingz team, then ask unbeknown Auckland Blues players to "autograph" it.

Of course this kind of low-budget, handycam-in-the-backyard, male-skewed TV is nothing new. Over the years there has been Ice TV, Boss TV, Cow TV, Back of the Y TV, Havoc and Newsboy's Sell-Out Tour. But arguably the most influential is the American ratings hit Jackass, whose "stuntmen" snort wasabi, ride shopping trolleys down staircases and injure themselves with stun guns, fire hoses and mallets to the groin. Halfass, a new addition to Pulp Sport, is a parody of Jackass - or, more accurately, a parody of Kiwis trying to emulate Jackass.

All of which makes Pulp Sport one of the most patriotic of its genre, especially when you consider the number of this country's personalities who've put themselves on the line for it. It's not just the likes of David Tua, Grant Fox, Harry Ngata and Bernice Mene agreeing to appear on the show. Musicians, TV presenters and politicians have also lined up to get stitched up.

The boys even claim to have convinced a concerned Nandor Tanczos that the smoke cameo-ing in his shot was simply so they could recreate the atmosphere of the British TV talent quest, Stars in their Eyes. Later they slowed down the footage, put it to a Bob Marley soundtrack and rolled some asparagus.

"We're still too precious in this country about televisions and stars," explains Gayford. "Look at the Americans - it's so much more of their culture. Letterman, for example. He's the type to slag them off but he'll slag himself off too.

"We're getting people who are on TV3 or TVNZ and just bringing them on to the show and not caring. There's so much wank - you can't use this person and you can't use this person - but we don't care. We've got nothing to lose."

Sometimes it's a matter of talent-spotting. They nabbed TV One sports presenter Tony Veitch for the first series when they spotted him walking along the road. That's the beauty of having the camera in the back of the car, says Linehan, who will also happily send himself up, whether it's running down Ponsonby Rd with no pants on or wearing a skirt to a major rugby match.

Sound like a dream job so far? It's a lot harder than it looks, warns Boyce. This morning they worked until 4 o'clock in the claustrophobic editing suite at the back of Gayford's Grey Lynn flat. It was 3 the morning before, 2 the morning before that, and most weeks they'll hand over the finished programme the day it goes to air.

Much of their overwhelming workload is self-inflicted - they made a 1100km round-trip to Feilding just to film the town sign, and they spend hours each week scouring sporting footage for the slow-motion video montage, Man Love Moments. But because they own their half-hour on Sky, they also have to sell their own advertising. Only occasionally do they get a day in "real TV land" when the broadcaster directs them in promos for the show.

"Sky was shooting something on the road and one of our mates was sitting on his deck and he rang and was like, 'What am I looking at?' It looks like Steve Urban and a truck and a crew. This isn't Pulp Sport! You guys normally forget to bring headphones."

How to make a TV show the 'Pulp Sport' way

1. Come up with an original idea for a show your mates would watch.

2. Hook up with someone experienced in TV.

3. Get a decent digital camera and a computer. (They use a G4

Apple Mac.)

4. Pool an army of mates you can call on as your unpaid backup crew.

5. Pitch your idea to a production company, broadcaster or both.

6. Be prepared to spend hours making a doofus of yourself.

* Pulp Sport screens on Sky Sport 1 on Wednesdays at 8.30pm and on C4 on Thursdays at 10pm