by Dom Joly
‘Well, stick to fucking panto then . . .’ he shouted. There was total silence around the table. I downed a glass of wine and excused myself.
Hole in one . . .
Chapter 10
Help Wanted
Growing up, I always wanted to be a foreign correspondent. In 2008, I got the opportunity. The Independent sent me to Beijing as their special Olympic correspondent. I’d always dreamed of going to an Olympic Games, but to get to go to one in Beijing, as a reporter, was a double bonus. My shtick was going to be ignorance. People who reported from these kinds of events always tended to be experts in their field. I wanted to report on the Games from a layman’s point of view. What was it like to be a Joe Normal at the Games? What the hell went on in the Olympic Village? Who watches walking races? I was like a kid in a sweet shop. I stayed in a hotel bang in the middle of the Olympic Park. Every day I’d wander down to the bus terminal, peruse the different events on offer and decide what I was going to watch that day. I was soon explaining the Olympics to the folks back in the UK. Here was my informative breakdown of Greco-Roman wrestling.
A brief history and explanation of Greco-Roman wrestling
Greco-Roman wrestling is the world’s oldest known sport. Yet most Brits don’t seem to have much of a clue about the sport. Fortunately, help is at hand. In every venue is a ‘media lounge’, and these provide the lazy or ignorant journalist with more than enough information with which to write a very good article. I popped in to see a couple of bouts and found this leaflet invaluable – I attach it here below to give you, the readers, the same kind of insight that we top sports journalists get . . . It’s only fair.
Eligibility
1. Only countries that end in ‘an’ or ‘a’ are eligible to take part in the sport.
2. Contestants must be shorter than five feet five and have full body hair (front and back).
3. Contestants must at all times be accompanied, and regularly berated by, a 300lb trainer who resembles an angry bear that has been caught trying on lady bear outfits by his best bear buddies.
4. Competing nations must organise and bring along a rowdy bunch of short, aggressive-looking spectators – preferably with some sort of shady military background. They will deal with any border infractions of the segregated seating areas.
5. Contestants must be able to ignore any abuse from hostile crowds as to how homoerotic the whole affair is.
Rules
1. Contestants have to stand in a red and yellow target and then grapple with each other for prolonged periods of time, while wearing very tight leotards.
2. Occasionally, a referee will stop the match, dip his hand in a black sack and pull out a coloured ball. If the colour of the ball matches your outfit then your opponent must kneel on all fours in the central circle and you can attack him like a dog.
3. Contestants are discouraged, although not specifically banned, from consuming copious amounts of garlic and onions for breakfast.
4. Contestants must feign complete indifference to circumstances when they find themselves in a ‘hold’ that incorporates the opponent’s hairy testicles being squashed against the contestant’s face.
5. ‘Holds’ can only be from the waist up so ‘wedgies’ are illegal – contestants opting to not wear pants must get consent of opponent.
6. Contestants are not permitted to use their goats at any time during the contest except in the situation of a tie – then goats are allowed.
7. The flying of the Olympic flag is not intended as an affront to the integrity of any of the nations taking part. Flag-burning is strictly illegal and will result in a forfeit of two fighting cocks.
8. Contestants must, under no circumstances, rip off their leotard, simulate the wiping of their anuses on said leotard and then shove in referee’s face – the official’s decision is always final.
9. No Australians allowed (hygiene ruling).
10. Contestants must be prepared for a random drug test – the so-called ‘cock in the pot’. The tester will need to actually see the penis and is required by Olympic rules to check for prosthetics. Please do not take this personally or as an affront to your manliness . . .
History
Greco-Roman wrestling has been popular somewhere since the dawn of time. Obviously, it was first made really popular by the Grecos and the Romans. They would regularly organise inter-empire ‘meets’, where contestants would wrestle with each other for periods of up to two months before a result was declared.
The sport became so popular in Greco that it was used to settle the equivalent of ‘gazumping’. Were two buyers of a house to be in conflict, they would wrestle for the property.
Under the reign of the Sun King Louis XIV, the sport was made illegal in France. Louis felt that the sport was far too sexually provocative and admitted that he ‘liked to watch it . . . almost too much’. It was only re-legalised in France in 1976, after a submission to the Ministry of Justice by world-famous mime artist and passionate wrestling fan Marcel Marceau.
Oscar Wilde once went to a Greco-Roman bout at Yale while on a lecture tour of the USA. On leaving seven hours later, he remarked that sport had never really been his thing but if it was compulsory then ‘surely this must be the one’.
Conspiracy theorists even believe that Greco-Roman wrestling rights might be behind the Russian invasion of Georgia. Russian hardman Vladimir Putin is a keen Greco-Roman wrestler and there is a theory that the actual Russian objective is the Georgian training school in Gori, where they keep their training goats.
It was quite the two weeks. I saw almost every sport known to man. Under the nervous gaze of Radio 5 Live’s Peter Allen, I harangued the American basketball team for queue-barging on a trip to the Great Wall of China. I visited a restaurant that only served meat from every part (and I mean every part) of the donkey. I even found myself just seven metres above the finishing line as Usain Bolt smashed both the 100m and the 200m sprint records. I was doing that rare thing – being a witness to history. All too soon, however, it was over and, as the firework display to end all firework displays exploded over the Chinese capital, I fought my way through the world’s biggest traffic jam to attend the British Closing Ceremony party.
The myth that you can see the Great Wall of China from space is just that, a myth, but that night, thanks to a Chinese invention – fireworks – I was pretty sure that you could have seen Beijing from the Moon. For fifteen minutes, as Boris Johnson was awkwardly waving the Olympic flag in the stadium, the Chinese capital came to a standstill as it was lit up by the most impressive firework display since the US lit up Baghdad.
I was in a taxi, and all the traffic just stopped and everybody got out of their cars and gazed upwards as though some fiery comet was headed towards earth. I abandoned my cabbie and walked the rest of the way. I was headed for London House, a private members’ club in the popular Houhai district where the Beijing handover party was taking place. It was a real B-list event – Boris, Beckham and Brown (Gordon) were expected, and security was tight. Inside, champagne was flowing and miniature bowls of fish and chips were being circulated by puzzled-looking local waitresses.
I bumped into an old acquaintance – the editor of Beijing Time Out. He told me that the original plans for the handover had been far more grandiose. An initial guest list of 2,500 had to be rapidly culled to 600 and many embarrassing, last-minute phone calls had been made, rescinding invites. Subsequently, the local expat community were not, it would be fair to say, big Boris fans.
His jingoistic speech, however, treading all over diplomatic niceties and having a pop at the French as well as claiming pretty much all of sport as British, got a drunken ovation from the audience and mild applause from a slightly embarrassed-looking Prime Minister Gordon Brown. It was a stupidly humid night, and the garden was really heating up. I suddenly found myself live on Sky News, being interviewed alongside a rather gorgeous and still ridiculously shy Leona Lewis. To my right, I could see Jimmy Page and Jackie Chan. T
o my left was David Beckham, talking live on the BBC – it was all very surreal.
The competing groups of security and press officers were going mental as they tried to shield their protégés from over-excitable revellers. Beckham had a man-mountain of a security guard with him whereas the prime minister’s security detail looked far less intimidating, but they all did that talking-into-your sleeve thing that the American secret service always do when hustling Bush about. I said hello to Beckham and asked him whether he was enjoying Beijing?
‘Yeah . . . It’s gweat . . .’ he replied. Possibly the most uninspired question and answer session of the whole Olympics . . . What can I say? I was new to being a reporter.
My contact within the prime minister’s entourage asked me whether I wanted my picture taken with The Boss? I briefly thought Bruce Springsteen had arrived but then, out of nowhere, Gordon Brown appeared in front of me.
‘Hello, Dom, how are you enjoying Beijing?’ This was clearly the question du soir so I followed Beckham’s lead: ‘Yeah . . . It’s gweat.’
Brown nodded and smiled his big awkward smile.
The prime minister looked hot and sweaty. I looked unbelievably hot and sweaty. This was going to be a distinctly unattractive photograph.
I looked around for someone to take the photo and Brown pointed out Mark Byford, the deputy head of the BBC, in charge of all its journalism.
‘He’ll know what he’s doing,’ laughed the prime minister and I handed my camera over. Byford took two photos and handed it back – they were badly out of focus.
Sarah Brown had a look and snorted: ‘That’s the problem when everyone’s drunk, give the camera to me.’ She grabbed her husband, placed him next to me again and took a great picture.
Thank God for sober First Ladies.
I returned home triumphant. I’d been a foreign correspondent and not completely screwed it up. Sure, it’s not like I’d been in a war zone or covered a famine, but it was a big tick on the bucket list.
By now my travel writing had attracted publishers and Simon & Schuster offered me a deal to write a couple of travel books. I immediately set about planning my first one, documenting my love of travel to slightly dodgy destinations. Using a contact I had made while in Beijing, I was off to North Korea as well as Cambodia’s Killing Fields, skiing in Iran and a weekend in Chernobyl. I couldn’t wait.
Travel writing is, in my opinion, the best job in the world, but it didn’t pay very well. I had a wife, a life and two kids to pay for, and they needed to be kept in the style to which they had become accustomed.
It was at this moment that I got my annual offer to appear on I’m a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here! The selection process for this show seems to be that they ask pretty much everyone in showbiz whether they are interested. They see who says yes. Then they try and cast a perfect TV storm. American celeb? Check. Ageing actor? Check. Blonde girl in bikini? Check. Hunky but simple male? Check. Troubled personality? Check. Misunderstood sports star? Check. Chubby comedian? Check.
Everyone I knew and trusted in my life told me not to do it. So I said yes, because I’m a contrary old bastard. Also, I have very few actual life skills but the one thing I do possess is the ability to ad-lib and to be funny on the hoof. Most comedy is scripted and tightly controlled. I’m rubbish at that. My comedy is about reacting to events and firing off other people. This leaves me with very few formats that fit the bill. I’m a Celeb could be a fantastic window-display for me. It could also be a place where everything went terribly wrong. What if my black dog returned? What if there was a thick, tattooed footballer in there? What if I went mental and took the whole camp hostage and started to eat human flesh? It was too late. I had signed up: ‘Alea iacta est.’
It was all very cloak and dagger. I had travelled secretly to Brisbane under the ironic code name of Happy. Very hush-hush, except for the paparazzi who greeted us at Brisbane airport. To be honest, they rather spoiled the hush-hush element but we were still moved around as though we were on some form of Cold War spy exchange.
I was transferred by my security detail to a hotel about twenty minutes away from the hideous Gold Coast, with only a chaperone for company. I had to inform said chaperone of my whereabouts in the hotel at all times and I had to hand in my mobile phone and laptop, as we weren’t allowed to use the internet. Fortunately, my Australian chaperone seemed blissfully unaware of iPads so I had full use of the web for the duration of my stay. I was also not allowed to leave the grounds of the hotel unless it was in a prearranged convoy. To be honest, the security was intense and a little over the top. It very much felt like my guards hadn’t quite made the cut for the army and rather resented the fact that this was all they were good for.
The weather was good and I lay by the pool all day reading books, and slowly started to forget that I was in Australia to do anything but have a holiday. When the day of my ‘entry’ actually came, I was surprisingly resentful. First came ‘Dr Bob’, the show’s bearded doctor, who gave me a quick once-over and talked me through some of the deadlier types of ‘critters’ that I might encounter. The chat left me terrified, as he rattled through the long list of things that could kill me. I’d tried to keep my arachnophobia a secret but it wouldn’t be for too long. They’d actually asked me on a form, ‘What do you fear most?’ As though I was going to assist them in my torture . . .
I wrote that I had a pathological fear of good food and comfy pillows.
Speaking of pillows, the only personal things I was allowed to take in were three pairs of underwear, three pairs of swimming trunks and one luxury item. I hummed and haahed for ages about what to take. Most people take photos or pillows. One person took a pillow with a photo printed on the pillowcase. Jenny Eclair took in fake tan, Aggro Santos, the rapper, took in a bottle of after-shave shaped like a gold ingot . . .
The rules stated that you were not allowed furniture, games or anything electronic.
I eventually opted for a disposable camera. They were terrified of anything that could allow you to internalise, this being a recipe for bad telly. They wanted you bored, irritable and vocal – anybody sleeping in the day was woken up immediately and if they did not comply, then the whole group was punished.
Back in the hotel, all my personal belongings were taken off me and signed for one by one. The atmosphere in the room was quite tense – I felt like a condemned man on the morning of his execution. It was crazy. I was just off to muck around on telly, not headed for the scaffold, but your head started to play tricks with you. I was walked to a car in an underground basement and driven to the coast where we drove around randomly for ages while whispered conversations were had over walkie-talkies. Nobody would tell me anything about what was going on – it was a sackable offence. I was entering the bubble and was decidedly not prepared for it. In shows I’d made before, you did the job and then you could have a chat with the crew, josh around a bit – it made the whole thing fun. Not in this show. From first contact, I realised that this was going to be different. The isolation element was an integral part of the experience. ‘Time is a luxury,’ said one of the producers to me when I asked him the time. Everybody I came into contact with, including Ant and Dec, had strips of gaffer tape over their watches. Any question or light-hearted greeting was met with silence and stony indifference. It was very dispiriting and dehumanising – just as it was meant to be.
Finally the call came through to the 12-year-old producer in the car, and I was driven to a helipad. There I was joined by an equally dazed Jenny Eclair, who had just got off the plane from London. ‘I met you once in the Groucho . . .’ These were her first words to me on camera. Our fates were sealed. We were celebrity arseholes and deserved everything we were about to get.
We were choppered for forty-five minutes into a different world. When we landed, everybody was in combat gear and it looked like we’d just been taken prisoner by some Colombian terrorist group. We were ordered into canoes and set off into the unknown. Jenny and I tried
to josh with each other but it was hollow talk – we were both a lot more nervous than we were prepared to admit. I assumed that we were heading for the main camp but the evil masterminds behind the show had other ideas. We arrived in an isolated campsite at dusk. The sounds from the jungle army of insects were ear-splittingly loud – I started to feel a bit panicky, disorientated. I looked to the crew for support but they looked back blankly – we were in this alone. I was knackered – the adrenaline comedown was enormous and I just wanted to sleep on one of the two camp beds by the makeshift fire. The production had other plans. We had to earn stars to get meals for our future camp-mates. We were ushered into the Shack of Terror.
The first thing I saw in the tiny shack was three stupidly large spiders on the table in front of us. It was classic fight or flight psychology, and my instincts were screaming FLIGHT! Fortunately, Jenny was made of sterner stuff and she bullied and cajoled me into staying for the whole experience, as more and more heinous ‘critters’ were deposited into the shack during our four-hour ordeal. I managed to work out the time by snatching a glimpse of a time code on one of the cameras – it was a tiny moment but it felt like an enormous victory. Jenny and I eventually crashed out on our beds and fell asleep. By that stage, I would have been able to sleep on a bed of spiders, but fortunately the producers hadn’t thought of that idea . . . yet.
The following morning we were awoken at dawn, and handed a phone. We had to phone the camp and request that two celebs of our choice come to rescue us. This was our first glimpse of the cast. (I had to pretend that I didn’t know the list – I’d been checking online.) Unlike many previous years, I actually recognised quite a few names – Britt Ekland, Nigel Havers, Shaun Ryder, Lembit Opik, Linford Christie . . . There were a couple of people whom I’d never heard of but it wasn’t quite as low-rent as most years. There was a pleasing lack of soap-stars for one thing. Jenny and I opted for Havers and Ryder to come and ‘save’ us. An hour later and we were led to a jungle clearing, where a helicopter landed and our two ‘saviours’ got out nervously. They had already been in the jungle for four days and were showing clear signs of institutionalisation. They were terrified that they were about to be subjected to some new torture and were incredibly mistrustful of us. Havers, who had never seen the show before coming in, was in a state of almost perpetual shock. It was becoming more and more difficult to remember that we were in a ‘light entertainment’ programme.