Fom the left: Hanne Fristad, Lone Brockstedt, Lise Jacobsen, Håvard Nygård, Arve Martinsen and program presenter Jonna Støme

Last year Oslo Prison was invited to participate in the popular ‘Showbiz’ program on the Norwegian National TV Channel, NRK. In each weekly program, the program presenters visit different workplaces in order to select Showbiz participants from among the employees. In the course of just two days, and with the help of a professional singing instructor and a choreographer, the employees have to learn both a song and a dance routine. Our own team competed against a team from Oslo Plaza Hotel and the episode in which we competed was broadcast last Friday.

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Text and photo: Knut-Erik Rønningen, published 25.03.09.

The program’s concept is that ordinary working people are given the opportunity to get a taste of realizing their own pop-star dreams. We have to admit that at first sight we didn’t exactly have hoards of potential pop-stars among Oslo prison’s 392 employees! But with excellent assistance from the prison’s Health Department we finally identified 12 sporty employees who were willing to attend auditioning. The 5 best singers were chosen from these 12, then sent to a hotel nearby for 2 days of practising. The song to be performed was not surprisingly ‘Jailhouse Rock’!

Applauded by inmates
-It was a lot of fun participating and it was really enjoyable to see how the program finally turned out, commented prison officer Lise Jakobsen. In her leisure time Lise sings in a band. –I thought we were exposed on TV quite naturally and completely OK. Fortunately, nobody made a complete fool of themself, added Lise who was at work the day after the program was shown on TV. -I was standing by the metal security detector when the inmates were passing on their way to the exercise yard so I missed all the excitement, but there was a storm of positive reactions from the inmates. They thought it was a whole lot of fun! No doubt it was strange for them to suddenly see us in a completely different role, said Lise who felt it was a little sad they didn’t manage to win. -But the most important thing of course was of course to take part in it all, quite simply because it was unbelievably enjoyable, she concluded.

Interesting process
The recordings were obviously made over a much longer period than the final program might have given the impression of, and a lot of in-house training was therefore necessary for our own finalists before they could perform in the grand final TV show at the Chateau Neuf Concert Hall in Oslo. –It was a very interesting process to be a part of and very enjoyable to see the end result, commented shift-leader Arve Martinsen, who chose to perform his song in an isolation cell. He also had to admit that the team was somewhat disappointed at losing. -But we were really satisfied ourselves for what we had managed to achieve. Everyone was pleased with the final product. And it was especially good to have the opportunity to show that even prison officers have more sides to them than most people seem to get the impression of, he concluded.

If you missed the program, don’t despair! You can view it here.

Lise Jacobsen performing her song on the prison roof.

Shift-leader Geir Kristiansen presenting his emotional
rendering of ’Christmas in Blue Mountain’. Unfortunately he
failed to be selected in the final team.