Deep in the Forest Of Dean, Darren Packer swings helplessly from a harness attached to a zipline. “Agh, I’ve trapped a bollock!” he yells. The presenter had wanted to make a grand entrance to impress three young urbanites here to learn the ways of the woods. “Little help?” No one besides a startled finch moves an inch. They can only exchange puzzled glances, trying to avoid eyeballing Packer’s package. The crew stifle chuckles. Weirdly, this is all going as planned.
I’m on location with Glitchy, ITV2’s character-based prank show, which today is masquerading as a far-less-exotic Running Wild With Bear Grylls. In the minds of this episode’s contestants, they’re a) in a genuine reality series, and b) about to experience two arduous days of bivouacs and sharpened sticks. Everyone else here knows that there is no such thing as Darren Packer, because he is, in fact, actor Ryan Sampson, buried beneath a fake moustache, a wig, some appalling khaki clobber and a Welsh accent thicker than an X Factor runner-up. It’s a setup, a ruse. And I’m in on it. I am basically a spy.
Sampson – best known for playing Grumio in Plebs – has created a batch of alter egos to enact a string of similarly faux-reality scenarios upon the unwitting. Other episodes feature a Russian oligarch’s wife, a deranged interior designer and Judd Zuckerman, a hopeless relationship guru. I was originally expecting to “meet” Zuckerman a few days before in a shopping centre in Reading, to witness him dishing out disastrous dating advice, but due to a scheduling alteration I am instead in a forest. A forest where, I am informed, actual boars roam free.
Packer’s surly Australian co-presenter would be no help either in an encounter with wild beasts, because he’s actually a pleasant Irishman called Liam (Hourican, from Murder In Successville) whose survival skills are roughly on a par with Packer’s and mine: “Negligible.” But Glitchy’s conceit is that it’s actually Rory, demoted to “assistant” status, who has the bush-smarts. He sees the inept Packer – a wannabe Packham; a middle-aged, minor regional TV personality mired in ineptitude and Partridgian pride – for the fraud he is. The two bicker. Awkwardness ensues. And it’s the contestants’ mortified reactions to their squabbling that the cameras are really here for. Line-fluffs aren’t an option, and it’s all about maintaining the facade of realism for as long as possible.
“It is quite exhausting,” Sampson says later, free to chat as himself once the contestants are out of earshot. “The crew had to be briefed in how to do it. Say you need to give me an acting note, or if you want to go: ‘You need to re-deliver that line’, and it’s a spontaneous line, you can’t just say that outright.”
Once freed from the zipline, Packer conducts the contestants’ introductory interviews. “Now what you want to watch out for,” he warns, “are voles.”
“What’s a vole?” asks Danielle from London.
“Well,” Packer offers, quite seriously, “it’s kind of like a long stoat.”
“What’s a stoat?”
“Well, it’s basically a pointy mouse.”
There seem to be no misgivings about getting one over on such an amiable bunch. I meet them an hour earlier, before filming begins. One shakes my hand and introduces himself as Dabz from Leicester. Danielle, Claire the makeup artist informs me, has never been outside the M25, and almost had a panic attack caused by the appearance of a moderately fat bee. If I’m honest, I feel like something of a deceptive shit by keeping them in the dark.
“It’s relatively warm,” assures exec producer James as we amble through the trees, sensing my morals twisting like a Curly Wurly. “It’s taking the piss out of the characters rather than the contestants.” Each increasingly awkward set-piece – the zipline being but one example – is at Packer’s expense. Sampson also insists the point is that the joke is always on him: “I’m trying to create characters that are a bit hopeless,” he says, adding as he gestures to the Jurassic surroundings, “so you find yourself in places like this. No one wants to see you having a nice time.” The skit apparently ends with him accidentally shooting an endangered owl and desperately begging a contestant to take the blame.
Despite their insistence, though, prank shows are by their very nature laughing at a person’s ignorance of a situation. How do the cast of Glitchy keep a clear conscience? “There’s always a little part of you that feels a little bit guilty,” Hourican says, “but this isn’t nasty hidden camera.” Everyone is keen to get this point across. If Punk’d’s raison d’etre was to be as brutal as possible – making Justin Timberlake cry, basically – then Glitchy shares more with Trigger Happy TV’s good-natured silliness; seeing how far preposterous situations can be pushed without its “victims” calling bullshit.
I’m curious to find out if they can make it to the end unrumbled, but my time in the wild is over. Sampson pats down a loose corner of his moustache, bids me goodbye and slips back into the woods. Before I can say, “Watch out for the pointy mice, Darren,” he’s gone.
