The Big Donor Show, a Dutch so called reality show in which contestants would have raced for a kidney, turned out to be a big media stunt to raise awareness of the lack of kidney donors.

Initially identified as "Lisa," a dying patient, who was supposed to give away her kidney to one of the contestants, was actually an actress, 37-year-old Leonie.

The eager contestants though, were real, with real stories, who knew the show’s purpose.  

"We are not giving away a kidney here, that is going too far even for us,” Patrick Lodiers, the presenter, announced. Turning to the contestants, he added: “They are not actors, they are real kidney patients and their stories were deadly serious."

They all agreed to go along with a program that the makers insisted was to raise awareness of a genuine medical issue, while its detractors suspected it was simply an exercise to revive a flagging channel’s ratings.

"If the Big Donor Show had been real, it would indeed have been shocking but facts illustrate that the reality is far more so," said Paul Romer, managing director of Endemol Netherlands.

"In staging this program our goal has been to promote a debate about this crisis in the Netherlands. We have succeeded in spades."