The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. After reading over this entire discussion, I'm not sure that even a redirect is suitable. If any editor chooses to create one, further questions about it can always be taken up at WP:RFD. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 00:58, 24 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Heat Is On (TV series)[edit]

The Heat Is On (TV series) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)

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Hoax. This series never existed. There is a similarly named one-off show — Sport Relief: The Heat is On — but that is completely unrelated. The single reference in the article is circular: the article dates from 2005; the reference dates from 2008 and is obviously based on the Wikipedia hoax article. — TREY MATURIN has spoken 00:52, 17 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Speedy Delete as a blatant hoax (WP:G3). Not seeing any sources that mention this before the article's creation in 2005. gobonobo ^{+ c} 01:20, 17 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Speedy was already declined by EurekaLott. — TREY MATURIN has spoken 01:27, 17 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  That decline was clearly invalid. This is so blatantly a hoax. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 20:09, 17 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete, per nom, seems like a hoax. Will be longest a hoax article has existed in WP, WP:HOAXLIST. Thanks, Indagate (talk) 08:21, 17 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Television and United Kingdom. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 11:22, 17 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Delete and preserve at the hoax museum. 17 years is a new record. It’s staggering that this flew under the radar for that long. Even the Teresa of Jesus, Child hoax (which I successfully AfD’d) circulated for less time and was added in good faith.

Who knows how many other hoaxes slipped through the cracks in or before 2005 and are still waiting to be exposed? 00sClassicGamerFan (talk) 16:53, 18 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Speedy delete as hoax and preserve at the hoax museum. This is a new record for the longest lasting hoax article, surpassing Ruda Real. We should look for other hoaxes on Wikipedia that lasted for over a decade. 142.161.173.231 (talk) 18:53, 18 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Redirect to Bobby Davro Delete – not a hoax it does appear to be a hoax, and possibly spread as a result of the WP article. A search for Bobby Davro brought up the following sources (which fail GNG but corroborate with each other that the show existed): Express UK, The Daily Mail...In the 1990s, he switched to BBC, with shows like Public Enemy Number One and talent show, The Heat Is On. And Garston-Entertainment UK He then went on to many Televison appearances and TV shows like On the Box, Sketch Pad, The Heat is on & Run the Risk. He has agents mentioning the show, Tony Denton Promotions, and Laughter UK, Central Fife Times - but nothing that spells N-O-T-A-B-L-E. There are probably mentions of the show in TV listings back in the 90s that can be found in the UK's newspaper archives which may verify that the show existed. I went through newspapers.com with a fine tooth comb using title + Bobby's name + 1990s + BBC and couldn't find anything. Atsme 💬 📧 02:43, 19 July 2022 (UTC) ^{added strikes & underlined text 20:38, 19 July 2022 (UTC)}[reply]

The mentions in Express and Daily Mail, both generally unreliable sources, are undoubtedly WP:CITOGENESIS. It isn't surprising that the intern or whoever at the talent agency tasked with writing up the blurb just cribbed from either Wikipedia or those articles. While it was supposedly a BBC show, it does not have a BBC programme ID and can't be found on their websites. There isn't a single mention of the show in any television database or reliable source. gobonobo ^{+ c} 04:03, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

WP:CITOGENISIS is the mainstay of online news media, with the exception of few, but it's referred to more often as PR wire. I am well aware that the sources I used are not RS for substantiating N or any fact-based news but CONTEXTMATTERS, and we're talking about a failed TV talent contest type of show. The other arguments here relative to it not being listed in the BBC lineup proves nothing. A better way to ascertain whether or not a TV show/series existed, is to look it up in a TV guide in local newspapers that are dated during the time the show presumably aired. I don't have access to a British newspaper archive that published a British TV guide, but if you're dependent only on its absence in a Google search, or in a Wikidata search for online BBC info, then I'm not convinced it didn't exist. REDIRECTs are cheap, and if someone is able to find that listing in a 1990's TV guide, it spares WP the embarrassment of further confirming it is an unreliable source, or that some of its editors failed due diligence. Atsme 💬 📧 10:29, 19 July 2022 (UTC) ^{Update 12:16, 19 July 2022 (UTC)} I requested verification from the talent agents listed for Bobby Davro and also contacted TV Guide UK for verification. If any of those sources cannot verify, I'm not certain if deletion in lieu of a redirect is the correct route. We know there are unreliable sources on the internet that mention the show, probably because of the WP stub, and that's why it may be better to go with the redirect to Bobby Devro which does not list that show. Perhaps it would prove helpful to our readers to add a short paragraph mentioning that it was a circular reference or something along that line, and hashtag the redirect, or use an anchor for a disclaimer. Atsme 💬 📧[reply]

• Update: As of July 23, 2022 - not one reply from the agents I emailed. There is so much information on the internet that simply cannot be trusted, and that includes pretty much all of it, leaving us little to choose from beyond peer reviewed scientific journals...but even then, we have to be on the look-out. Atsme 💬 📧 11:58, 23 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Lol, time for ((R from possible hoax))? Interesting that his own agents mention the show, and it gave me pause, but The 90s saw Bobby switching channels to the BBC, appearing on television shows such as Public Enemy Number One and the talent show The Heat Is On. (from his agents) seems copied verbatim the old Davro article--see this Wikipedia clone for example. Hopefully he or his agents will respond with conclusive evidence. Ovinus (talk) 17:52, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It could've been a PR wire that everybody used. Redirects are cheap, and they give us an opportunity to provide our readers with correct information, provided my email requests pan out. There was a reason the admin rejected the speedy nom, and that is what raised a red flag for me. I know little to nothing about British TV, but it's obvious the sources suck out loud. So, what are our options? Some of our readers will see those crappy sources (and don't know they're crappy), and believe them. But then, WP's BLP on Bobby doesn't list that show. If there's a chance the show existed back in the 90s, and a reader did see it, then WP loses credibility, not the crappy sources. It's also possible that it is a hoax that grew from WP & caused this dilemma. If I don't get a response from the 2 sources I contacted, then delete is the obvious way to go but I wouldn't add it to any hoax list until it's confirmed as such, especially if it originated in 2005 as a WP hoax, and remained in circulation for 17 years. Talk about chipping away at our credibility...wow! Atsme 💬 📧 18:25, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Could also tweet at Davro himself; he's apparently quite active on Twitter. But yes, declining the speedy was a good call, and that seems to be common practice for even moderately ambiguous cases. Ovinus (talk) 18:50, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I tried it and got nothing. Many celebs have PR folks and/or agents watching/responding on social media sites for them, so it's rare that the celeb him/herself will actually respond. Atsme 💬 📧 12:03, 23 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete It's most certainly NOT a hoax, folks. It was schlock TV of the worst sort, but it was actually a thing. It's just not a notable thing. Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 04:52, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Except it most certainly is a hoax… the agent’s website is a copy-and-paste of an older version of Davro’s Wikipedia article, which, of course, linked back to the hoax article. Took me 15 seconds and 4 clicks to establish that. — TREY MATURIN has spoken 05:33, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• I disagree at this point in time that this is a hoax. Your research is flawed, and unconvincing to this editor, who happens to be a retired television producer, that it is a complete hoax. Find the British TV guides for that time period - check local newspapers before hanging the "hoax" tag on it. If it were a hoax, it could've been a speedy, and yet, here we are at AfD. Atsme 💬 📧 10:37, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  A search of the BBC Genome Project shows that there was an endurance contest reality series of the same name shown in August and September 2001, long after this alleged 1990–94 series (which does not show up at all). There was also a programme on global warming called Environment: The Heat is On, aired in 1991.

  So yes, the article here is certainly a hoax. Case closed. 00sClassicGamerFan (talk) 10:53, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • I have checked the British newspapers available via ProQuest, Newspapers.com, Gale, etc., and there really is nothing. Here's a representative TV guide from 1992—it mentions Davro's role in Public Enemy Number One, but this show is not listed. The same was true in all the many other papers I checked. I tend to be pretty reluctant to label things hoaxes, but it's the only explanation here... Extraordinary Writ (talk) 18:22, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete. I do think this is a hoax. The original version made all sorts of extravagant claims about winning a BAFTA and "cocaine-fuelled prostitute orgies"—if any of that was true, this show would have attracted boatloads of press coverage, so the fact that there's nothing in any of the contemporaneous sources available via ProQuest, Newspapers.com, or elsewhere on the Internet makes it clear that we're dealing with a hoax. The post-2005 mentions are interesting, but they're all from dubious sources that likely aren't even enough to satisfy WP:V, which is a deal-breaker. (Put another way, there's a reason that we don't trust the Express and the Daily Mail, and it's that they have a reputation for doing things like getting their information off of Wikipedia.) I am of course glad to reconsider if reliable pre-2005 sources can be found, but that seems very unlikely indeed. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 05:25, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note also that an IP on the same range as the one who created this article added more obvious nonsense about The Heat is On here. This article was clearly not a good-faith contribution. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 05:42, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete/begrudgingly move to WP:HOAXLIST. Clearly a hoax—albeit an impressively long-lived one—especially when you consider where it does appear in sources. Always either straight from Wikipedia or with so little context that it's clear this article was used. The first edits to the page, as mentioned by Extraordinary Writ, don't help its case. With an old hoax like this one it's going to be forever ingrained in the Internet in some form. Ovinus (talk) 05:43, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I give up. Delete it with fire anyway. Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 05:46, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It happens.... This article is definitely a lesson to how vigilant and skeptical we need to be. I wouldn't have questioned it had I come across it organically. Ovinus (talk) 05:52, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete. It's possible that The Scotsman may be a quality newspaper but the cited (and only) source is neither reliable nor does it confer notability. The mention of The Heat Is On is the briefest of all fleeting mentions, and being based on an interview with Les Dennis it has nothing to do with this TV series whatsoever and the mention of could even be an error of memory. If a 1994 show existed then there would be a mention of it somewhere on the Internet and in the BBC archives. The only mention of a TV programme of the same name is on IMDB about a 2001 reality show but although there is a full list of cast and production team, there is no description of what the show actually was. So whether or not the article is a hoax, it certainly does not belong in Wikipedia. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:40, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  It is a hoax. Every news mention of the show is copied from Bobby Davro's Wikipedia article. 142.161.173.231 (talk) 02:19, 20 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Speedy Delete, all evidence suggests that this is a hoax, or at the very least everything except the title is a hoax. Even if it is not a hoax, it is extremely obvious this is non-notable. Devonian Wombat (talk) 23:23, 20 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. This is an obvious hoax. (It's already been added to the list of hoaxes; perhaps that shouldn't have been done until it was actually deleted?) O.N.R. ^(talk) 08:09, 22 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete Suprised it was not seen earlier. scope_creep^Talk 10:07, 23 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.