Not even an ex-member of Boyzone makes Sam Wollaston fall for a ridiculous conman show
Ah, excellent, The Real Hustle (BBC3), surely one of the most ridiculous programmes ever. We seem to be in Paisley, Scotland, and the Real Hustlers are joined by Shane Lynch, dressed as a tramp (not much disguise needed) as their celebrity helper. The mark is a lad coming out of a bureau de change. With nearly £500! Maybe that's normal in Paisley. Actually, it turns out he's got over a grand on him, in cash.
Anyway, he's got a lot more money than sense, because he allows himself to be led off to a special van, where two of the team pretend to inspect his money using a special machine. And then he lets himself get led off by Shane and someone else, into a building, where other members of a team are pretending to be involved in a covert surveillance operation. They persuade him to help them in a sting to catch the original scammers, when actually they're all scammers working together. Oh, and he has to use his own cash as bait.
And at no point does this idiot ask these people who they are, or ask for identification. He just hands over his money. Given his foolishness, I think he deserves to lose it. But the whole thing is ludicrous. I don't believe a scam like this has ever happened, simply because it wouldn't be worth it. So they get £1,000 out of it, but it's taken five people, plus one celebrity, and a special van, and a couple of UV machines, and a rented flat with lots of fake equipment. It's got to have cost several times that to carry out. And it's on a busy high street, so they're all going to be on CCTV and now have to disappear, to Paraguay. Pah!
I love the way they also pretend it's some kind of public service, too – that they're showing us this stuff so we can avoid it happening to us. Yeah, but it isn't going to. Even if we were as foolish as the poor chap in Paisley. Oh, but I did learn one useful thing. If you go into a pub and a guy you've never seen before asks if he can try the Find the Lady card trick on you, for all the money in your pocket, you should probably say no. No shit, Sherlock.