Categories: just-for-fun, television
Date: 05 June 2009 23:21:55
From The Guardian:
Contestants from the French version of Temptation Island have won compensation for unfair dismissal as well as the right to be treated as salaried workers – paving the way for legal claims from other reality contestants and potentially heralding the death knell for the genre across the channel. Mon dieu.I am not a reality TV fan, but this had me howling and doubling over in laughter: the French are wonderful. And given, after Farli's wonderful review, I am reading Ben Elton's Dead Famous, the saying "Truth is stranger than fiction" certainly comes to mind!On the face of it, of course, this is a wonderful story combining a classic and noble French stress on the rights of the workers with, how shall we put it, a certain self-regard.
After all, three L'Ile de la Tentation contestants who spent 12 days wearing very little, massaging each other and dancing on an island off the Mexican coast can now call their participation work under French labour laws – which stipulate that no one can be made to work more than 35 hours a week with the right to overtime, holidays and even damages for wrongful dismissal upon elimination from the show.
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