TOWIE was almost called 'Totally Essex', ITV executive admitted

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/mar/30/towie-totally-essex-itv

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The plot has thickened in the legal action over who came up with the idea for hit reality show The Only Way is Essex, after it emerged that a senior ITV executive admitted the show was almost called "Totally Essex".

Former Big Brother winner Brian Belo is suing ITV and Lime Pictures, the producer of The Only Way is Essex, claiming they lifted the format for the show from an idea he developed. Bello alleges that TOWIE infringes copyright and is a breach of confidence.

Belo claims that he developed a programme idea called Totally Essex, along with Sassy Films and Massive TV, and has a teaser video promoting a show that features many of the stars of the ITV2 reality programme.

ITV and Lime have said that TOWIE is an "original concept" that they developed and that Belo's claim is "totally without foundation".

However, in an at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival last summer Claire Zwolker, the ITV entertainment executive who commissioned TOWIE, admitted that the show was almost called Totally Essex.

"It was called Project Essex for the longest time," she said, speaking as part of a panel on TOWIE hosted by Daybreak presenter Kate Garraway. "We went through a few titles that we weren't able to use or that weren't quite right. It was about to be called Totally Essex."

Zwolker added that she subsequently went through songs on her iPod for inspiration and came across Yazz's 1980s song The Only Way is Up, which provided the kernel of the name TOWIE.

All3Media, parent company of Lime Picture, said TOWIE is an "original concept created and developed by an award-winning team at Lime Pictures".

On the Edinburgh panel Ruth Wrigley, co-creator of TOWIE, admitted that the idea that was first pitched to ITV did not have anything to do with an Essex location.

Before ITV took it on Lime Picture pitched it to Channel 4, as a cross between Big Brother and Hollyoaks, but the idea was rejected.

"At the time it was set in Bournemouth, to be honest it wasn't [even] set in Essex," she said. "it was set on the beach in a surfy resort in Bournemouth. A very cool surfy scene. It was Claire [Zwolker] who said 'if you set it in Essex I might be interested'."

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