Going, going, gone

The days of the shopping channel are coming to a close. Thank goodness, writes Tanya Gold, who has e

Last month Virgin Media, which owned bid tv, price-drop tv and speed auction tv, flogged the lot off to the German restructuring firm Aurelius. You may never have heard of them, but they were among the many TV auction channels that first appeared in Britain at the beginning of the millennium. They promoted shopping as leisure. You could ring up and bid for products, and see them sold to you on air. Part bingo hall, part Brent Cross, they took the furniture of daytime TV – the plastic presenters, the brilliant lighting, the faux cosiness – and twisted it into selling. And it sucked.

I should know. I have seen the horror. I have toured an auction channel. This is my story:

I am in west London, with a presenter called Adam. He looks like a refugee from Hollyoaks. I can see my reflection in his teeth. He leads me through the sample room, an empty TV studio filled with ping-pong tables and rocking horses. Past the “Wow Wall”, where emails from ecstatic customers are pinned up – “I have just missed out on a Gucci wallet because my husband is hogging the phone, the bastard” – and we are into the control room, where a producer is shouting, “We have ten seconds!” (to do what?) at a paddling pool.

We progress into the studio. It is white and polished and seemingly airless, like a Hollywood spaceship. It is dotted with television screens and images of pounds tumbling. Here another man, Mark, is selling an eternity ring. “Do you want to hike up and down the high street looking for a ring like this?” Mark asks the camera, like a sub-Mills & Boon hero. “You don’t need to leave the house, the lounge or even your favourite armchair. Just pick up the phone.”

Bidding for the eternity ring opens at £1,000 and the price will fall until all the stock is sold. A computer sets the prices and, no matter at what time you bid, you will always pay the final, lowest price. It falls to £497, £496, £495. “The question is not whether you can afford it,” says Mark. “You can’t afford not to buy it at that price.” He holds the eternity ring in his manicured claw. The presenters all wear make-up on their hands, Adam tells me, so their hands match their faces.

Why do the customers do it? “People are looking for a different experience,” says Adam. “It’s interactive. It’s exciting. It’s live. The customers get a thrill searching for a bargain. They think: ‘Oh my God – I have saved more money, more money, more money.’” Then he adds: “It’s a relationship.” It is not, but it can be Entertainment!

Sometimes the presenters at TV auctions get so bored that they make believe the handbags are puppets and pretend to make them talk. Some get over-tired and hurl the goods round the set. Others are accident-prone, and fall over, and break the floor, or split their trousers and scream. An American host once held up a picture of a butterfly – he was selling a camera – and said: “Look at that horse. The bushy tail. The big teeth. The hooves.”

Later, I meet the shopping-channel addicts, the victims on the other side of the screen, at a cafe. Sarah, 45, is a supply teacher from Cardiff. She earns £23,000 a year and spends all her leisure time watching shopping channels. She is large and blonde. Her bracelets jangle. “When I first watched, I just stood there with my mouth open. I couldn’t believe the prices. The presenters,” she says, “talk to you as if you were in the room. Sometimes they mention your name on air. You feel part of something.”

Her first purchase was a pair of Yves Saint Laurent sunglasses for £35, followed by Gucci bag after Gucci bag. See? She has brought them with her. During the on-air auctions, she says, “I melt in front of the TV. The drama is just fantastic. When I miss out on a bid I feel so deflated I want to cry. My breathing doesn’t go back to normal all night.”

Maggie, 39, is a play project co-ordinator. She is small and dark and looks nervous. “I was channel-hopping and I saw a Prada bag,” she says. “It was only £62. It seemed too good to be true.” From then on
she “watched like a ritual. I ordered something every day. I now have 15 pairs of sunglasses,
eight Gucci bags, two Christian Dior bags and three Versace bags.”

I try not to imagine her wearing them all at the same time. What’s the appeal, Maggie? “I watch Footballers’ Wives on TV,” she says. “My collection of bags is better than theirs. When I put my bag on I feel rich and lucky. But I don’t know who I am sometimes – sometimes I think I am some kind of Footballer’s Wife.” Both Sarah and Maggie are thousands of pounds in debt.

Back in the studio, the eternity ring is still falling. “Three callers are on the line and there
are only three rings left in stock,” warns Mark, as if an apocalypse is about to hit and squash the studio, the ping-pong tables, and us. The price tumbles to £273 and a red light flashes on the screen. It blinks 3-2-1-0, a symbol of a world that is passing. And I am glad. Going, going, gone.