How many people do you suppose speak to those women when they go to buy half a white loaf? But didn’t they look terrific? It put me in the mood, and now I’m walking more or less right through their harem, the Mediapark in Hilversum. I’m on my way to the head office of John de Mol Productions. What has happened to the ladies? Not one to be seen, only cars passing slowly by occupied by men without mustaches. The buildings are not cooperating either. They are laid out according to the allotment principle. Can we put an extra box somewhere? Yes, there’s room between those two, next to that other one. OK, just give me the planks and I’ll nail them in place.

Three cane sofas with soft green cushions are arranged in a U-shape in the waiting room of the head office. The tiles on the floor are shiny and a slightly lighter green, the walls are lighter still, while the door frames revert to a darker green. The TV set opposite the sofas is switched on. Just as I sit down, someone on the screen sits down too on the sofa set crosswise in a living room – on closer inspection he is lying rather than sitting. It’s a man with a troubled look in his eyes. A woman leans over him. There are confessions, things start getting emotional. The man shakes and starts sobbing. I don’t like to see a man cry, real men don’t do that. I know people have different ideas about that nowadays, but as far as men are concerned I am still one of the old school. There is a remote control on the table within reach, but before I can lean forwards to pick it up, the crying scene changes to a out-door shot with a different man and a different woman, both on horseback. The woman’s horse bolts, throwing her – she lies there unconscious. The man leans over her, a troubled expression on his face. Behind me I hear reception noises, a number of different good-mornings, thank-you-for-waitings, and one don’t-let-your-coffee-get-cold.

In the room of the charming (female) press officer is a board bearing a handwritten message: `Don’t be perfect, be effective’. I have forgotten to describe the exterior of the building I am in. It is a four-year-old square box. From the outside it could be an old people’s home or a block of nurses’ flats. Just like the boxes stuck to other boxes on the allotments. The press officer’s room is adjacent to the ballet studio in the building next door. You can hear them rehearsing. The office staff do aerobics there when there is no dancing going on.

Then comes the guided tour. Every administrative office in the Netherlands works with MS-DOS computers, but De Mol’s desks are fitted out with Apples. I like that, it’s a threatened species, I have one at home too. A loose black cable some ten or so metres long runs along the corridor from the administration to a printer that spews out salary slips. We descend to the studio, the biggest in Europe. I stand in astonishment at the mass of lights hanging from the ceiling as tall as a church’s. Then on to the next studio, all inside the same building, with a door that has to be opened with a magnetic card. Suddenly I find myself in the NOB scenery building department. On to Events Studio 21, the Hollywood of the Low Countries. This must look terrible from the outside too.
But inside hundreds of people from all over the country have dinner and watch the Fantasy World Dinner Show from behind their plates. The theme is the Big Bang and the evolution which followed it. Breathtaking panoramas pass before your eyes, while amazing light, smoke and laser effects almost turn fantasy into reality. That’s what the folder says. A ticket costs around two hundred guilders. I had never heard of it, but there are still nine-hundred people who pay to come to Studio 21 every Friday night, and the same number on Saturday night.

‘Shall I conclude the guided tour by showing you the car park?’
It’s the press officer. ‘Let’s just see the best route to take. I get lost here myself on occasion.’ The car park has been turned into the interior of an Egyptian pyramid for a couple of weeks. I see an indoor car park full of sand, wooden walls with hieroglyphics, and a couple of columns of painted foam. Seen through the lens of the camera, this will shortly look like the interior of a pyramid. Personnel have to park farther on for the time being. They don’t grumble, TV reality has priority above all other realities, including architecture. Everything in the Mediapark is tuned to what the camera sees.

And the camera never leaves the head office, as I am now doing, en route for the exit.