It's just a Tweet for help

Reality TV fans the world over are flicking through their EPGs hoping to find a replacement for The Hills, which finished its six-season run run last week. Audiences were left shocked by the final scene, which pulled the cameras back to reveal that the show's characters were performing on a soundstage, rather than out in the real world.

According to the show's creator, Adam DiVello, the last shot was devised as "a nod to how much work goes into making it feel like a scripted show." But not everyone's taken it that way, with many believing that this was a final-act reveal that the show was more rehearsed than anyone had realised.

Several cast members have added to the conspiracy by speaking out about how staged the show was, and that much of the animosity between the 'characters' was staged for the cameras. Unfortunately, it seems as though someone forgot to tell Spencer Pratt.

Long established as the show's villain, Heidi Montag's estranged husband seems to have confused the role he played on the show with real life, and has subsequently turned his own life into a kind of surreal piece of performance art. You know, like James Franco, but without the thesis at the end of it.

Described on Wikipedia as 'Reality television personality and part time rapper', the self-confessed fame whore has struggled to adjust to life after fame. His wife may have undergone a whole Joan Rivers-worth of surgery in a single day, but she seems happy to distance herself from the world of celebrity. Spencer, on the other hand, is choosing to leave sanity behind instead.

He recently relaunched his website kingspencer.com, in the process pronouncing himself "creator and writer of one of the most famous websites in the world". Spencer's posts range from idle speculation (Bradley Cooper relationship w Renee Z is a sham... He's gay!) to downright defamatory (Brody Jenner likes to choke girls when he has sex w/ them). But they're all written with all the clarity and focus of Peter Greenaway's doodle pad.

Spencer's tweets aren't much better. There's something desperately delusional about someone who will publicly send a message to MTV saying "It's pilot week over at the network. I know I didn't have time to submit my pilot so I hope you are thinking of me when buying projects." Failing that, he also offers such telling insights as "being alive is so cool" and "having no friends makes life super easy".

Having already attempted to crash The Hills' wrap party disguised as Robinson Crusoe's unkempt flatmate, it seems as though Spencer is having something of a meltdown. Unfortunately, because he's fogged the boundaries between reality and perfomance, it might be that these cries for help will go unheeded. Then again, when the only thing you crave is an audience, would that be such a bad thing?

If this is reality, I'll take the Matrix

It's worth remembering, the day before we launch into a tenth series of Big Brother, that it was actually MTV that first pioneered the notion of the augmented reality documentary series. Originally broadcast in 1992, The Real World brought seven or eight housemates together and then sat back and filmed the fireworks. Interestingly, when the show was originally pitched, there were talks of it being a scripted documentary - real strangers, real people, but pre-prepared story and character arcs for them to play out. The idea was scrapped and the rest is TV history.

Flash forward eight years, and suddenly The Real World felt a little passe. We were all too busy watching the adventures of a crooked banker, a scouse handyman and a lesbian nun. Suddenly, Big Brother was the one to beat and although The Real World kept on ticking (22 seasons in it's still going strong) it lost some of its dynamism.

So we should hardly be surprised that MTV reverted to that original idea of a scripted, staged and meticulously cast 'reality-based' show. The Hills debuted in 2006, and portrayed the adventures of four rich, beautiful twenty-somethings finding their way in Los Angeles. To most people 'finding one's way' means flat-hunting, job interviews and the occasional date. On 'The Hills' it means leaked sex tapes, poorly-received fashion lines and naked picnics with Playboy playmates. The dialogue makes you long for the Brechtian sophistication of Beverly Hills 90210 and its characters display all the appeal of an angry baboon in a sack. Still, the viewers seem to like it, and its stars have been elevated to household names.

Perhaps the most famous are Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt, the on-off-on-off couple who recently married. They're currently languishing in a Costa Rican hotel, having walked out of 'I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here' on its second day.

Still, the 48 hours they spent in the camp were eventful enough, with Spencer volunteering to be baptised by runt-of-the-Baldwin-litter Stephen and Heidi declaring "My goal is to be a true disciple of Jesus, a Mother Teresa helping the poor and the hungry." Funnily enough, I believe Mother Teresa laid down the original demo vocals for Heidi's single 'Overdosin'. Unfortunately for viewers and masochists alike, Spencer and Heidi found it all a bit too much, and decided to leave, claiming "Super-celebrities don't belong in the jungle. They belong in Hollywood with the paparazzi."

Having already threatened to quit twice during the first day in the camp, the doltish duo finally left the show, only for Spencer to take to Twitter 24 hours later, claiming "I am praying to Jesus to have NBC forgive me and allow Speidi back! The jungle makes you do crazy things." Aside from the fact that deities have busy day jobs and probably aren't too concerned with who's drinking intestine milkshakes on a bush-tucker trial, I'm more concerned with the fact that Pratt feels perfectly comfortable referring to himself and his wife in the third person singular.

My 'Speidi' sense is tingling, I think I'm going to be sick. And I haven't even had to eat any jungle critters...