Tribute to a hot extra

I’m quite a fan of the theatre sports TV show Whose Line Is It Anyway?

It apparently originated as a British radio show which became a popular British TV show, hosted by Clive Anderson. It was then revived by Drew Carey and Ryan Stiles in America where it ran for about six seasons, rating reasonably well.

Producers loved it. It cost nothing to produce but was very funny.

But for me, one of the funniest things about the show was the American TV producers’ subtle manipulation of who’s visible on camera.

If you look behind Drew Carey as he’s seated at the desk, there’s inevitably about three super-model hot women sitting among the audience. There's never an uggo on screen. They all look like they've just stepped from the pages of some Anorexia Today glossy.

For the UK version; look behind Clive Anderson and it looks like a selection of rejects from a genetics research laboratory – all glasses, teeth and Adam’s apples. And that’s just the women.

It works in theory; people expect to see only attractive people on TV unless it's 60 Minutes or Jerry Springer. But there is a risk. In one episode of the American show there was one woman who was so hot… like a young Denise Richards on a good hair day hot… that I completely lost track of the show.

I was sitting there saying: “Just hurry up and finish the hoe-down and cut back to the hot girl!”

I was nearly in tears of regret when that episode ended. I had been briefly in love. Or at least infatuated.

So here’s to you hot girl over Drew Carey’s shoulder. Gone but not forgotten.