Chat Ed : Welcome to this evening's MASTERS AND SERVANTS chat with Pat and Jon Parnell!
Pat : Hello it's Patsy Parnell the servant here!
simon : Hi Pat
kyle : ello
Jon : Hello everyone!
super ace : how much did it please you that andy dumped Jessica
THE ONE : did you have a say about jessica and andy spitting up?
Pat laughs
Pat : I found it quite emotional actually because if it's seriously true love then I will always stand by it and let it go ahead. It was emotional seeing the clip at the end, I liked Jessica and so I felt for her. If it was meant to be then we would have stood by it.
NP : Pat , was the editing of the program reflective of what really happened?
Lauren : Pat do you feel you were unfairly portrayed?
Pat : No it wasn't... I DID work, we all did. The teenagers didn't. As adults we all did though. Janet, Narissa and Jon - we all worked. And also tricks were played upon us by the camera crew as well, what they were doing was that they would say to the servants 'don't do this, go away' or whatever and they would try and create a lot of tense feelings between families. If they weren't there I feel it would have been more relaxed.
fay : i thought you were going to be like the previous families and leave after the first day after the others had spent a week working all hours for you. Do you think it is harder to be servants the second week because there is no incentive to stay?
Jon : No, not at all. We felt that because they worked the whole week with us we felt obligated to work for them, so… come what may. If we didn't do it then it would have been like we didn't care about it and we did.
lwilsonuk : Did it make Jon feel guilty hearing the nice things said by the other family after the nasty things he said?
Jon : I don't remember saying any nasty things, so no I didn't feel guilty. When I watched it and saw what nasty things they said about Pat it made it more bearable to say the things I did say. They were certainly nastier to Pat. I thought that was out of order, but obviously I didn't hear that during the programme filming so I'm able to say it now. Pat worked very hard and you only saw one hour out of 100 hours of filming, so you have to remember that.
Eileen : I'm sure most of the people taking part in the programme are decent human beings in a normal situation so what do you think it is about the experiment that seems to bring out the worst in people?
Jon : It's not like that at all. What happens is, there is so much time involved, we worked from 6:30am - 9:30pm so you just didn't get any rest, so it ultimately gets to you and sleep deprivation gets to you too. It's not like we don't like them, we saw them on GMTV today and we were looking forward to seeing them, we don't have a problem with them at all.
Dr Katie : Have you watched the rest of the series ... do you think you had a worse time than other families?
Pat : Yes we did watch it, but no I think we all shared a similar experience. We were all there to survive. At the end of the day we all did 100 hours of filming and what everybody sees is 50 minutes. It's less than 1% of what was filmed. But it was a massive experience and one that I will never forget. I enjoyed it immensely and I am now sitting here with the Hastings-Evans family form last week's programme and I actually did like my family, I respected them all.
AlexMCFC : Pat, Do you agree when the other family said you thought you were 'above them'? (socially speaking I think)
Carli : Are you a snob Pat?
Pat : No I am not a snob. That is how they felt, that is not how I feel. At the end of the day Jon and I came from a background where we have worked ourselves up the ladder. We were prepared to give our all to the work ethics of life to achieve. Some people choose other ways i.e. to live off social security. We chose to pay our taxes and our national insurance, I have a job and I clean my own house. I actually can't afford to have a cleaner. I'm pretty mad when I get my payroll and I think how much tax I've paid and I think why is my tax so heavy? And it's because my tax is paying for people who are not working.
von : were you angry that they were happy for your son and their daughter to spend the night together?
Pat : Umm... I discussed it with Andrew, of course I wasn't happy but Andrew turned 17 a couple of days afterwards...at this point the more you say no to a teenager the more they want to do exactly what they are not allowed to do. At the end of the day Andrew decided Jessica wasn't for him though. She is a lovely girl though, she has a great personality. She loved Andrew to pieces. At the end of the day what people had to realise is that you see a large picture of something but you have to look deeper.
jesst : Do you think you have anything in common with the other family?
DianeDG : they were both too young for a serious relationship anyway
Pat : Yeah they were, Diane. Janet loves her family and she is a Mother who stands by her family and I am the same, so we have that in common. A Mother and Father's love at the end of the day, whatever you do in life, it's always there. You come home, tail between the legs and it's there. Janet had her girls around her and I respect that.
DaveBurton : Pat / Jon - at the end of the days, where did you go? they did not show whether you slept in the trailer over the evenings?
Jon : No we did on the first two nights. There were 5 of us so it was decided to put us into a B&B in the local town. Which was good because it was so small for us in that caravan and it was very cold in there.
looby : jon do you think channel 4 deliberately organizes a clash of class to ensure good TV/
Jon : Well, you know, RDF made it but I think it would have been very boring if it was just 2 weeks of cleaning. If we were used to having servants then it would have been fine. But none of us were used to it. But inevitably it made good TV. It would have been boring if it was all too perfect.
keasy : if needs arised would either of you take employment as servants rather than claim benefits?
Jon : We'd never claim benefit but umm... well yes because I could definitely do it. I wouldn't do it as my chosen employment
piglet : Did you learn anything new about yourselves - if so was it good or bad?
susie : you should hope that you never have to claim benefit but some people have no choice!
Jon : Well we could have been disappointed in some aspects of it but we weren't. What was said behind our backs was obviously different to what we heard, but then the same goes for what we said about them. I'm not sure I learnt anything specific from it, but you don't have to learn things to enjoy something. I really did like it though. Sometimes I did regret things I said, especially if it upset someone else. I wouldn't have changed anything though. This year has been dominated by it.
flukey : Jon, I think you did well as a servant, but were let down by Pat from day one. Do you think you could have taken more control of your apparently lazy wife?
MYRA : do you personally believe that you were a good servant and master?
Jon : Again you didn't see everything... you saw what they wanted to show. She did more than that. She had an attitude I'm not denying that, but she did do a lot more work than was shown. It's a bit unfair to say she was lazy, unfortunately that was how an element of it was portrayed. Myra, I was probably a crap master because in truth if I had been a master for longer I would have got better. But we didn't have enough time to realise what we were supposed to do. So we were better servants than masters.
Chat Ed : Our half hour with Pat and Jon is almost up, so last few questions now...
Lady Chatterly : How did Jessica and Andy get on during GMTV today?
Jadie-B : Does Andy regret that he had a romance on telly?
Jon : Andy hated today, he dreaded meeting her again. He has a very low temptation threshold...and it didn't take him very long to woo Jessica.
Cynfyn : Sounds like Andy is a stud
Jon : She is extremely funny and full of personality. She was great on one end of the scale and useless at the other. She's not stupid, she's very sensitive, but I think she scared him off a bit - he didn't want anything too heavy too soon.
Earwig : A question you must of been asked all the time - Would you do it again if so what would you change?
ToM : Did you enjoy the experience of being on masters and servants
Jon : I would do it again.
Jo : You are very brave Jon, I bet Pat wouldn't
Jon : You would work in a proper house that needed servants, one that needed all the work and not just a normal house. We enjoyed it massively, Tom. They all had spirit and personality. It was good fun.
Chat Ed : That's it! Thanks for coming and talking to us Pat and Jon!
Lushgirl : One last thing ...your boys were brillant.... did u both proud...
Earwig : bye!!!
sammy : byeeeeeeeeeeee
Pat : Goodbye everyone... We loved them all. The whole thing was a game at the end of the day and it's just a TV programme. And hey guys... it was super to do!
north east : byeeeee
MichSam : byeee
Vicky : Bye. I really enjoyed the program
Sophie : goodnight!!!!!
eleanor : later tel andrew hes well fit 4 me pleaseeeee
Agent X : Thanks! Bye!
Eliza : Byeeeee
Dougie : Goodbye Pat & Jon. Thanks for entertaining us!
Pat leaves the room
Jon leaves the room
