Recently Countdown was pulled from the broadcast schedules and placed on hiatus.
The public haven't been told why - just that something happened during the recording of the last episode. A friend of mine is involved with the making of the show and has handed me a copy saying it'd interest me - I can see why they thought of me after watching it.
The episode in question starts off strange right off the bat. You can see Rachel, the co-presenter, doesn't look like her usual self. She looks both taller and bustier than normal - which given her normal appearance is quite something.
Nick, the main host, picks up on this straight away and comments to Rachel that she looks 'big' today.
Rachel looks confused, asking "Big? What do you mean big?" before laughing it off.
After this, Nick drops it and gets on with the show.
However, its not long until Nick brings it up again. After the first round he stops and asks Rachel if she is feeling OK.
She again looks confused and says she's fine. Nick turns to the contestants asking them to back him up.
"Is it me, or is she getting bigger?" he asks, the panellists all nod and answer in the affirmative.
Rachel just shrugs in response to this and the show goes on.
A few rounds in and Rachel's growth is apparent for all to see, except herself. Her increasing size means she's taking up more and more of the screen without realising it. Several times throughout the show, contestants have to ask her to stand back because she's blocking the board. On the third or fourth request to move out of the way you can hear her audibly sigh in frustration before stepping back and snapping, "Can you seen now?"
At one point the word 'tit' comes up in the letters. At Rachel's new size her ample bosom is on level with the word causing a ripple of laughter through the audience. Completely unaware of what is making everyone giggle Rachel just turns to the camera with an awkward smile. Its obvious the laughter is getting to her though as you can see the anger building up in her eyes - when they're not off the top of the screen.
Its only towards the end of the show that Rachel appears to be becoming more aware of the change she is going through. As she tries to show the solution for the final maths round, she struggles with the 'tiny' pen in her hand, complaining that its too small. Her growth appears to accelerate as she gets angrier - you can see her clothes pulling tighter on her causing rips in places and her top's zip to start pulling apart.
Its not long after this that Rachel bangs her head on the studio roof. She stamps her foot madly down in a fit of rage, the impact of which is the camera being knocked over. Its at this point that the recoding abruptly ends.
The official excuse for the show's hiatus is that they are 'retooling' it. My friend says the truth is they're looking for a replacement to Rachel since she can't fit in the studio any more. However, no one seems to want the job once they find out they'll be taking it from an angry giantess.
My hope is they keep Rachel and maybe just move to a bigger studio... and try not to piss her off in future.
Meta: Rachel Riley is an obvious choice for giantifying, but I actually used to have a real life connection to her which has always made me think twice about collaging her. However, my mind was made up after seeing Badger2020's work involving enlarging women on British daytime TV. There's something about a giant woman popping up in the most mundane of places which actually makes the world feel a bit more exciting.
I wanted to recreate the success I had with Presenter slowly grows into a Mini-Giantess. I think the addition of the overlays really helped sell the illusion of them being real screenshots, to the point it actually fooled a few people - so I thought if it ain't broke don't fix it. All I did different this time was user higher quality screenshots and take more time making the individual collages, rather than the rush job I did before.
It turns out the countdown studio isn't great for conveying growth. There's little to reliably reference scale against there, so despite the fact I've actually upped Rachel's size quite a bit in all these shots, it doesn't really show.
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