Archive for the ‘Discussion’ Category

If you’re the sort who tends to avoid any pre-show articles on The Biggest Loser you probably missed the reports that a contestant in this year’s show has been charged with possessing child pornography.

The producers of the show have made the decision to edit both him and his partner out of the show entirely, removing any references to them ever having been there. Hopefully they won’t just replace planned clips of that couple with even more repeats of earlier footage of other contestants…

What follows is somewhat more of a spoiler so I will put it after the break…

Read the rest of this entry »

And so it begins…

Click here to watch the Sneak Peek on the official site.

I’m trying to keep my enthusiasm in check but after watching that Sneak Peek I have to admit I am intrigued!

Read the rest of this entry »

Former Olympic swimmer Hayley Lewis will be hosting the new season of the show.
Hayley’s a mum of two these days and she revealed that she’s struggled a little with her own weight of late.

Apparently in the very first episode she will be setting the contestants a challenge that will span the entire season, with Hayley also participating in some fashion.
Also revealed was that Hayley will be having a lot more interaction with the contestants. In fact Hayley went to great pains to emphasise how much more involved she will be, obviously to make it clear she wasn’t going to be just a brunette-Ajay.

For the young whippersnappers in the audience, you can learn more about Hayley Lewis via Wikipedia.

So. What do we think? I’ve never seen her host anything but then the woman she’s replacing had never really hosted much before either!

Just a short note to let anyone who happens to be reading this during the off season… Ch10′s The 7PM Project will have the new host of The Biggest Loser in for an interview tomorrow night!
That’s Tuesday, 13th of October, 7PM, Channel 10.

Will post any intriguing details tomorrow after the show!

On Ajay’s blog – attached to her ChasingOprah site – she’s explained things from her side of the fence. Everything from her “stealing” from The Biggest Loser set to the reality behind her recent court case to the supreme douchebaggery of the paparazzi, all in her own words for the first time.

The court case you saw in January 09 was not all you have read about. What you didn’t read is that I was the one who had approached Centrelink over 4 years ago, before Biggest Loser ever aired on TV and told them that, as I had slowly pieced my life back together after the tragic suicide of my mother, I discovered the possibility that I might have received payments over what I was supposed to. It happens to a lot of people or so I have been told by others in similar situations to me.

It’s a long read, but worth the trouble if you want to hear Ajay’s side of things, without the filter the media forces on everything we usually read.

Read Ajay’s blog entry here.

You could also follow Ajay on Twitter.

It seems if you repeat a rumour often enough, it comes true? Or even a really dumb rumour can become true if some really dumb people are in charge?

Whatever the cause, reports are now coming in that next year Biggest Loser Australia will be getting a new host as Ajay Rochester has been dumped, apparently as a result of her recent legal woes and a desire by Channel 10 for the show to go “in a different direction”.

Why Ajay couldn’t've been retained for a “new direction” is not made clear in any of the stories I can find. Perhaps Channel 10 have bought into the whole “Ajay has the emotional range of a lump of wood” school of thought.

Of course the muckrakers have come out of the woodwork already. One news report claims:

Recently it was claimed Rochester “helped herself to waste materials” left over on the set of the ratings winner

“Waste materials”? Waste implies they were to be thrown out so who the hell cares if she helped herself? Unless the waste you’re talking about is poop, I can’t see why her claiming rubbish as her own ought to be an issue.

Another fun one is the claim that Ajay threw “a tantrum from hell“:

A BEAUTICIAN has revealed Ajay Rochester threw a “tantrum from hell” at her for supporting a petition calling for the Biggest Loser host to be replaced. …
Charmyne Palavi, who hit headlines last year for her kiss-and-tell relationships with a handful of NRL stars, was friends with Rochester until she joined an online forum trying to push former contestant Alison Braun to the helm of Channel 10′s reality weightloss show.

Hmmm, someone who claimed to be a friend was pushing for her to be sacked and replaced by somebody else? Why on Earth would Ajay be upset by that? Clearly she is just a diva!

Whether you think this is the right decision or not the fact remains we’ll be getting a new host next year. But who? Early speculation seems to favour previous contestant Alison Braun for the role, despite her lack of TV hosting experience. Ajay had not had a wealth of experience at the time she landed the gig either, but with Biggest Loser such a big part of Channel 10′s programming it’s hard to imagine them going with a rookie.

When the US version of the show went looking for a replacement for Caroline Rhea, they ended up going for an ex-soapie star who had battled her own weight issues in the past, Alison Sweeney.
Will the Australian version once more ape the US version of the show and get their own ex-soapie star who has battled with her own weight issue in the past, Kate Ritchie?

Or will they go with someone nobody expects?
Speculation, as always, in the comments section!

And best of luck in your future endeavours, Ajay. I for one will miss your ever tragic wardrobe. :-)

During tonight’s episode of The Gruen Transfer host Wil Anderson said that they were unable to air one of the ads they had hoped to air due to the ABC not giving them the green light.

Each week Gruen gives a challenge to an ad agency as part of a segment they call “The Pitch”, where they have to take something that is unusual or unpalatable and make it appealing via TV advertisement.
“The Pitch” for this episode was for ad agencies to come up with ads to “End Shape Discrimination” – which is to say end the stigma associated with being overweight.

One of the ads went to air and Wil directed interested people to a special website if they wanted to see the ad that they weren’t able to air, along with a 15 minute panel discussion on the issues the ad addresses.

It’s not, strictly speaking, Biggest Loser related, but as it deals with some associated issues I thought it might be of interest to anyone still reading this dinky little blog.

Before I provide you with the link I will warn you that the advertisement could be considered offensive. It contains a couple of jokes that are clearly discriminatory in nature and, well, quite repugnant in a sense.
But it is for a good cause and highlights an interesting dichotomy, where nobody much thinks of telling jokes about fat people when they’d hesitate to tell a joke about black people.

Now, if you promise not to come back crying to me the URL for the website is www.antiprejudicead.net

Do you think the ad agency went too far? Did it make you reconsider your own prejudices? I know I have some weighty thoughts rolling around in my head right now.

I’ve put the Facebook Connect button back on the comment form, for people who want to use that option to login to Disqus and comment here.
I’m reasonably confident it will no longer break the individual pages in Internet Explorer now but if it does, please do email me to complain. I won’t know if nobody says anything!

Note that you still need not login to Disqus at all, commenting is open to anyone. But please do bear in mind that this is an unofficial fansite and the chances of any messages being seen by people on the show are slim at best. So while people telling Shannan he’s hot is endlessly amusing, he’s probably not going to read that and fall madly in love with you. ;-)

Sooo apparently I broke a lot of people’s ability to read my recaps and other pages here in Internet Explorer?

Sorry about that! I’ve no idea how long it’s been broken for, either, as the thing that was causing the problem (the Facebook Connect for the Disqus comments) has been there a good long while and I didn’t think it was causing a problem…

I think this makes for another great argument as to why you should all swap to Firefox. ;-)

I’ll try and take this issue up with the appropriate people so I can return the Facebook button, in case anyone uses it. If you have been, you ought to be able to login via the Disqus site and then come back to comment without issue… I think.

Anyway, if you notice things what are broken, please let me know and I’ll try to make them be unbroken. :-)

There’s been a bit of a kerfuffle related to the US version of the show, unlike ours which is totally kerfuffle free…

Apparently as one of the puff pieces they do about how awesomely fit contestants end up becoming they had a camera crew on hand to film a contestant running a marathon.

Only that isn’t exactly what happened, according to a variety of people who were actually there.

According to David Kleeman, a read of the blog at TV Barn:

I’m also big into the marathoning community and knew back in January that one of the members of the Black team (either Blaine or Dane) had attempted a marathon in Arizona, but did not complete it. Instead, he had been picked up by a van along the course and dropped back down somewhere prior to the finish and then he crossed the finish line and collected a medal a la Rosie Ruiz.

Apparently when the show aired that segment it made the claim that Dane had finished the entirety of the marathon and included footage of him crossing the finish line and receiving his medal and so on.

In actuality he was disqualified when the deception was discovered and thus is not on the list of runners to have finished the race.

The producers have since fessed up… kinda. They’re blaming unspecified parties for not telling them that the story they told them to go out and shoot was not exactly what they went out and shot.

In a more recent blog update Dane is quoted claiming to have gone back and run the missing 3 miles later in the day, alongside the producer’s apology.

It would seem that a contestant completing a marathon – even if it was a bit slow – would be achievement enough. But apparently not a good enough story for the producers of the show.

Just another reminder to be a little skeptical when it comes to what you see on TV… or the internet!