JRE is led unto Temptation

I auditioned for Temptation this evening. Read on to find out how I went. And if you want to audition as well, lob an email to temptationcontestant at nine dot com dot au.

The audition isn’t as intimidating as you might think. It starts with a 50-question general knowledge quiz - and when I say “general”, I mean “general”. Geography, history, sport, and pop culture were all fair game. My sports and pop culture knowledge is pretty dismal - and it showed. After fifty questions, thirty had little dots next to them - code for “had to guess”. There’s a pass mark. Below the magic number, you’re ushered out of the studio and invited to re-apply. Magic number, or above - it’s your lucky day. Eighty people went into the studio, and seventy-one were ushered out. For nine of us, it was our lucky day. I scraped through by one mark - one more wrong answer, and there would’ve been seventy-two people leaving the studio. The terribly nice contestant co-ordinators handed out a form, asking us for some background about ourselves - do you have a nickname, have you ever been on TV before, tell us your most embarrassing moment so we can repeat it on national TV, that sort of thing. There was a quick interview - presumably so they can weed out the boring people - and off I went into the evening. “Don’t call us, we’ll call you.” If you pass the audition, they put your name and photo on file, and they’ll call you when they need a contestant. Contestants from out-of-state are flown in and put up at a rather nice hotel, at someone else’s expense; poor Melbourne-based saps like me don’t even get a taxi fare. However - we do get to come in as standby contestants, which is an extra chance to go on TV. A little sad note: we were sitting in Studio 9, and around us, the set of The Price Is Right was being torn down after the filming of the last show ever. Wait, that’s not sad news.