So you're saying that if a crazy man tells me he can see the future using eggs I should maybe ignore him? Oh, this is too complicated for me.

I'm watching The Real Hustle: High Stakes. They are doing a con called "The Psychic". In it, one of the hustlers has set himself up as a fortune teller, done a bit of trickery, and told a woman she needs to put a load of money somewhere safe so that he can nick it later.

Now that's all well and good, but really? This is a woman who thinks he's got psychic abilities and that an egg was genuinely full of blood. You could get more cash out of her by not getting her to put loads of it in a box for you to steal. I doubt if there's any upper limit on how much money I could get out of her if I was an unscrupulous conman, at least before I came up against the wall of her total earnings over her lifetime. This is not exactly a Derren Brownian level of sophistication being discussed here. When your con relies on the mark being the single most gullible person in all of London, it really doesn't matter what you do: nobody watching a show about Here Are Some Cons So You Can't Get Fooled By Them was ever in any danger of falling for that one.

I guess really that the idea that there exist psychics who aren't conning their customers is what's annoying me here.

The Unreal Hustle

A very odd thing happened to me on the way to a lecture this morning. As I got on the bus, I noticed a large film crew sitting on the back seat. It's something you don't miss. I paid for my ticket and sat down. Two stops later, the fat guy from The Real Hustle" wearing a suit. This was odd.

Fat Guy announced that he was from the council and was asked to check everybody's tickets/bus passes, etc... Whilst he was checking them, he kept stealing bags and purses of the bus passengers, only to give them back twenty seconds later.

My stop arrived. In the process of me leaving the bus, one of the BBC cameramen urged me to sit back down as they needed to film some reaction shots.

"And why can't I leave exactly?" I wondered aloud
"Well, if we cut to a different camera and you keep appearing and disappearing from the bus, people are going to think it's faked"
"So, to make it look like it isn't faked.. you're faking it?"

It was truly an odd morning.

Hustle and Bustle

Occasionally, we get spin-offs. Sometimes, these can be watchable (such as Frasier, Torchwood and Ashes to Ashes. I don't care if the last one hasn't aired yet, it's going to be brilliant). Sometimes, they aren't so watchable (such as Joey, Celebrity Big Brother or Swiss Toni). However, sometimes we get some things which are worse than a spin-off. I don't know if this particular genre even has a name, but I'm on about the programs which discuss the show that's just been aired. I'm talking about rubbish such as "Pure 24", "Wife Swap: The Aftermath" and "Russell Brand Talks About His Genitals After Big Brother Has Aired".

The rubbish episodes of The Real Hustle always follow the same plotline, kind of like My Family.

However, one of these particular shows is half enjoyable. I'm on about BBC3's "The Real Hustle". It isn't technically a discussion show, it's an original show in it's own right. But the fact is they couldn't have just called it "Conmen" or "Attractive People Rob Pedestrians". No, they had to try and leech in the Hustle fans. The show is utterly hilarious though. Sometimes, the cons are good. Othertimes, they are a bit rubbish. The rubbish episodes of The Real Hustle always follow the same plotline, kind of like My Family. It's always like this:

NARRATOR:
"Sometimes, people can try and sell you stuff which is actually cheaper than what they say it is, we call this hustle "The Selling Things for More Expensive Than They Actually Are Scam".

[GIANT TITLE ON SCREEN: "The Selling Things for More Expensive Than They Actually Are Scam."]

NARRATOR:
"Alex has walked in to this unsuspecting building with a bottle of champagne/box of televisions/eight billion pounds. He then convinces somebody to take it for a cheap price"

ALEX:
"Would you like this expensive item for a cheap price?"

UNSUSPECTING PERSON:
"Yes."

NARRATOR:
"What the unsuspecting person doesn't know is that what they've just paid for the item is actually MORE than what the item cost. Hahaha. What an idiot!"

*Flashback*

ALEX:
"You see, what I did was replace the expensive looking item for a cheap imitation"

NARRATOR:
"But how did he do it?"

ALEX
"I replaced it with an imitation product.""

NARRATOR:
"Let's see that from ANOTHER angle"

...etc, etc...

UNSUSPECTING PERSON:
(Talking to camera) "I don't know what happened. He came in and said that it was expensive and was selling it for cheap. What a fool I feel."

[CUT TO: Alex in the studio]

ALEX:
"Always remember that before somebody sells you something, make sure you check I.D and don't be a fucking idiot."

Brilliant. In every episode, there is always at least one scam which follows this exact structure.