Psycho babble, if that?s what the chat shows on television are all about, then the millions who watch them are now having a collective convulsion. Recently, in England, popular chat shows, like The Vanessa Show, were accused of planting ?bogus? guests among their audiences to pretend to be what they were not ? nervous wrecks. Producers made these ?guests? unburden imaginary souls on the small screen for an agreed price, for the pleasure of emotional voyeurs and viewers whom chat shows were supposed to ?help?. The expose by one of the country?s more widely read tabloids forced the British Broadcasting Corporation to confess. That the British prime minister, Tony Blair, appeared on a show to talk about his wife, Cherie Blair, was taken as a sign that the ?chat?, however American its origins, had arrived. Sadly, three programmes have been taken off the air since the revelations and from February 15 the guests on ?The Vanessa Show? have been ?required to provide documentary evidence, proving that they are who they say they are?. The scandal must be seen in the light of the producers? psychological approach towards target audiences. Mannequin on screen If a non-achiever is asked to invent incidents that are supposed to have wrecked his or her life just for the pay, does it not subvert the understanding on the basis of which the shows are sold? Remember how Nikki Bedi?s show got kicked off the air just because the guest made derogatory remarks about M.K. Gandhi? Imagine what will happen if guests are discovered to be well tutored dummies paid for spewing lies. Deceit robs such programmes of their raison d? etre. Chat shows, after all, are promoted as confessional platforms where the emotional outbursts of an unhappy person are looked upon sympathetically. Therapeutic in their value, they are meant to encourage others to unburden their souls, thus reducing stress. Chat shows now have a dedicated audience. False ?guests? simply discredit the programmes. It is a different matter if an inhibited sufferer is unable to talk about personal trauma and a ?bogus? guest retails it with the person?s permission. Otherwise it is sheer deceit for the sake of commercialising the saddest human failings. The whole shoddy business is like planting a spy in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. The expose of the British chat shows is a warning to their Indian counterparts as well. Fighting to increase popularity, to bag sponsorships, it is quite a temptation for programmers to exploit jobless drifters. For example, Neena Gupta?s chat show was dumped by Doordarshan as it was not able to get sponsorship after 19 episodes. Sorry tales retold But producers and programmers would do well to remember that the queen of gab, Oprah Winfrey, did not make her millions by merely passing the mike around to depressed middleaged, unhappily married adults, violent teenagers or harassed parents. Market surveys have proved that people benefited from her shows which have now become a support structure for dysfunctional American families. Indian clones ? Kiran Juneja, Priya Tendulkar, Shatrughan Sinha and others ? may hereby be warned. The quality itself leaves much to be desired, as do the overly made up anchors, whose lives have been subjects of much gossip. Most chat shows still have feeble showings on television ratings of programmes. But popularity is picking up as the traditional emotional support structures crack in India and the country decides to begin ?talk? about it. A few among them, like Kiran Kher?s show, called ?Purush Kshetra?, deals with varied issues and tries to break taboos. Some others, like ?Cho?s Panchayat?, anchored by Cho Ramaswamy and another one by Netru Indry Nallai (yesterday, today and tomorrow), anchored by the Tamil writer, Sivasankari, in true Oprah Winfrey style, are quire successful. Faithful followers have never questioned the honesty of these programmes till now. Any evidence of cooked up sob stories or made to order ones will discredit these shows, break the tenuous emotional link with their audiences, and will reduce them to downmarket adda sessions among people afflicted with the disease of verbal diarrhoea.