Dead famous

by Ben Elton

  Woggle is the nation’s pet. Mega-popular.

  David is the bastard. Hated.

  Kelly has phwoar factor. Popular.

  Dervla is an enigmatic beauty. Popular.

  Layla is highly shaggable but a pain. Disliked.

  Moon is a pain and not even very shaggable. Disliked.

  Gazzer and Jazz liked. (Not by feminists and intellectuals.)

  Sally, not registered much. When has, disliked. (Note: gay community think S. an unhelpful stereotype. Would have preferred a fluffy poof or lipstick lez.)

  Hamish not registered.

  Coleridge leafed through the clippings. Most of them confirmed the Peeping Tom memo. There was, however, some discussion about the fact that House Arrest Three was defying expectations and performing much better than had been predicted.

  ‘The saggy souffle rises!’ One headline said, referring to its prediction of the previous week that souffles do not rise twice, let alone three times. This was news to Coleridge, who had not realized that when the third series of House Arrest had been announced there had been much speculation that the reality show bubble had already burst. Coleridge had presumed that this sort of show was a guaranteed success, but he was wrong. The press clippings revealed that many shows conceived in the heady days when it seemed that any show with a loud and irritating member of the public in it was a guaranteed winner had failed to live up to their promise. And at the start of week one the new series of House Arrest was confidently expected to be a big failure. But it had defied all the grim expectations, and after seven shows had been broadcast it was already doing as well as its two predecessors. Nobody was more surprised about this than Geraldine herself, something that she freely admitted when she appeared on The Clinic, a hip late-night chat show, in order to promote week two. Coleridge slipped the video into his home VCR and instantly found himself struggling to reduce the volume as the screaming, blaring frenzy of the opening credits filled his living room and no doubt shot straight upstairs to where his wife was trying to sleep.

  ‘Big up to yez,’ said the hip late-night girl, welcoming Geraldine on to the programme.

  ‘Cracking first week in the house. We like that.’

  ‘Top telly that woman!’ Said the hip late-night guy.

  ‘Respect. Fair play to yez.’

  ‘Go, Woggle, yeah!’ Said the girl.

  ‘We so like Woggle.’

  ‘He da man.’ said the guy.

  ‘Who da man?’

  ‘He da man,’ said the girl.

  ‘Woggle, he da man!’ There was much cheering at this. The public loved Woggle.

  ‘Amazing,’ said Geraldine when the cheering had died down.

  ‘I mean, I thought he would be interesting and stir things up a bit, but I never realized he’d strike such a chord with the viewers.’

  ‘Yeah, well, he’s like a sort of pet, isn’t he?’ Said the girl.

  ‘Like Dennis the Menace, or Animal from the Muppets or whatever.’

  ‘I mean, you wouldn’t want to live with him yourself, but it’s top fun watching other people do it, big time!’

  ‘Woggle, he da man!’

  ‘Da top man. Respect! But the whole show is totally wicked,’ the guy added quickly, ‘so fair play to all of the posse in the house!’

  ‘Respect!’

  ‘Kelly’s my girl! Ooojah ooojah!’

  ‘You would fancy Kelly!’ Said the girl, punching her partner in the ribs.

  ‘Dervla’s easily the most beautiful.’

  ‘Dervla’s beautiful, that is true, and she melts my ice cream big time, so fair play to her for that, but Kelly, well, Kelly has…Something special.’

  ‘Big knockers?’

  ‘What can I tell you? It’s a boy thing.’ The boys in the audience let it be known that they agreed with this sentiment.

  ‘And don’t we so hate David?’ Said the girl.

  ‘We so do hate him.’

  ‘We so do not, not hate him,’ added the guy. There was much booing at the mention of David’s name, and the show’s producer dropped in a shot taken directly from the live Internet link to the house. David was sitting crosslegged on the floor playing his guitar, clearly thinking himself rather beautiful. There was more booing and laughter at this.

  ‘Sad or what?’ Shrieked the hip girl. Sipping his beer and watching all of this, three and a half weeks after it had been recorded, Coleridge was struck by how astonishingly brutal it was. The man on the screen had absolutely no idea that he was being jeered and ridiculed. It was as if the country had turned into one vast school playground with the public as bully.

  ‘All right, that’s enough of that,’ said the guy, clearly having an attack of conscience.

  ‘I’m sure his mum likes him.’

  ‘Yeah. Big up to David’s mum! But can you please tell him to cut that hair?’

  ‘And to stop playing that guitar!’ The interview passed on to the unexpected success of the third series so far.

  ‘So you defied the snooties and the sneerers, and the show’s a huuuuugge hit,’ said the guy, ‘which is quite a relief, Geri, am I right? Tell me I’m right.’

  ‘You are so right,’ said Geraldine, ‘and if I wasn’t a bird I’d say my balls were on the line with this one. I’ve sunk every penny I have into it. My savings and all of my severance pay from when I left the BBC. I’m the sole director of Peeping Tom Productions, mate, so if it fails I haven’t got anybody to blame but me.’

  ‘Gutsy lady!’ The girl enthused.

  ‘We like that! Respect!’

  ‘Too right I’m a gutsy lady, girl,’ said Geraldine.

  ‘I gave up a cushy job as controller of BBC1 to do the House Arrest thing, and everybody expected this third series to fall on its arse.’

  ‘Yeah, Geri, you really went out on a limb leaving the Beeb,’ the hip late-night guy said.

  ‘I know your name has often been mentioned as a possible future Director General.’

  ‘Yes, I think they wanted to offer it to me,’ she said, ‘but stuff that, I’m a programme maker, I ain’t spending my day kissing politicians like Billy here’s arse. I ain’t grown up yet.’ The camera pulled out to reveal Billy Jones, who was the other guest on The Clinic, and who was smiling indulgently. Billy was the Minister for Culture and had agreed to appear on The Clinic as part of the government’s strategy to reach out to youth.

  ‘I regret greatly that I shan’t be having my arse kissed by a ady so charming as you, Geraldine,’ Billy Jones said, and got a laugh.

  ‘So, Billy,’ said the girl, turning to him with a serious expression on her face.

  ‘How do you rate House Arrest, then? Top telly or pile of poo?’

  ‘Oh, House Arrest is so top telly,’ said the Minister of Culture.

  ‘No way is it a pile of poo.’

  ‘And what about people who say that telly is dumbed down? That we need more, I don’t know, history programmes and classic drama-type stuff?’

  ‘Well, certainly there is a place for history-type stuff and all that classic drama malarkey, but at the end of the day politicians, teachers and social workers need to be listening to young people, because I don’t think, right, that history and stuff is really very relevant to what young people are interested in today.’

  ‘Big up to that,’ said the hip latenight guy.

  ‘We like that!’

  ‘Because at the end of the day,’ Billy continued, ‘what politicians and teachers and stuff need to do is connect with what kids are really into, like the Internet. We think that the Internet and the web are terribly important, and of course these wicked experiments in reality TV like House Arrest.’ By the time the show was ending and the final band was being introduced, Coleridge had fallen asleep. He woke up to the vision of a sweating American skinhead wearing only board shorts and 90 per cent tattoo coverage shouting ‘I’m just a shitty piece of human garbage,’ at the screen. He decided it was time to go to bed. Geraldine had had a lucky escape with her s
how, that was clear. By rights, it seems, it should have been a flop. David, on the other hand, had not been so lucky. He was the fall guy, the national joke, and Geraldine had made him so. If David had known this, Coleridge reflected, he might have been tempted to take some kind of revenge on Peeping Tom, but of course he could not have known, could he?

  DAY THIRTY-THREE. 10.15 a.m.

  The picture of Woggle on the map on the incident room wall was almost completely obscured by the numerous tapes that terminated on it. Trisha had just completed the pattern by running a ribbon to him from Dervla, with the words ‘pubic hair row’ written on it. Dervla had seemed so determined to be quiet and serene, so like the muse in an advert for Irish beer. But you couldn’t maintain that if you followed Woggle into the bathroom.

  DAY EIGHT. 9.30 a.m.

  It’s day eight in the house,’ said Andy the narrator, ‘and Dervla has fust had a shower.’ ‘Woggle!’ She shouted, emerging from the shower room, clutching a bar of soap.

  ‘Yes, sweet lady.’

  ‘Can you please remove your pubic hairs from the soap after you have finished showering?’ It was their own fault, of course. Woggle would have been quite happy not to shower at all, but the group had made a personal appeal to him to wash thoroughly at least once a day.

  ‘That way in a month or two you might be clean,’Jazz had observed. Now they were paying the price for their finickiness. Woggle’s matted pubic mullet had never seen such regular action, and the unaccustomed pressure was causing it to moult liberally. Dervla waved the hairy bar of soap in his face. She had thought hard before confronting Woggle. Quite apart from the fact that she did not like scenes, she also knew from her secret informant that Woggle was a very popular person outside the house. Would having a row with him alienate her from the public? She wondered. On the other hand, perhaps it would do the public good to get some idea of what she and the other housemates were having to deal with. In the end, Dervla could not help herself: she just had to say something. Woggle tended to do his cursory ablutions in the middle of the night, and, being first up, it was always Dervla who encountered his residue.

  ‘Each morning I have to gouge a small toupee off the soap, and the next morning there it is again, looking like a member of the Grateful Dead!’

  ‘Confront your fear of the natural world, 0 she-woman. My knob hair can do you no harm. Unlike cars of which you have admitted you own one.’ In one single bound Woggle had got from his lack of social grace to her responsibility for the destruction of the entire planet. He was always doing that.

  ‘It’s got nothing to do with fucking cars!’ Dervla was shocked to hear herself shout. She had not raised her voice in years. Hers was a calm, reflective spirit, that was her thing, and yet here she was shouting.

  ‘Yes, it has, 0 Celtic lady, for your priorities are weirding me out, man, messing with my head zone. Cars are evil dragons that are eating our world! Whereas my hair is entirely benign, nonvolatile dead-cell matter.’

  ‘It is benign non-volatile dead-cell matter that grew out of your scrotum’ Dervla shouted.

  ‘And it makes me want to puke! Sweet Virgin Mary Mother of Jesus Christ, where does it all come from! We could have stuffed a mattress by now! Are you using some kind of snake oil ointment down there?’ Unbeknown to Dervla, Woggle was actually a little hurt by her attack. Nobody ever credited Woggle with having feelings because he seemed so entirely oblivious to everybody else’s. But Woggle actually liked Dervla, and he fancied her, too. He had even been to the confession box to confess his admiration.

  ‘There is definitely a connection between us,’ he said.

  ‘I’m fairly certain that at some point in another life she was a great Princess of the Sacred Runes and that I was her Wizard.’ Confronted now by this attack from one he clearly rated so highly, Woggle attempted to assume an air of dignified distance.

  ‘I remain unrepentant of my bollock hair,’he muttered.

  ‘It has as much right to a place in this house as does every other item of human effluvia, such as, for instance, the pus from Moon’s septic nipple ring, which I respect.’ It was a clever ploy. Moon had insisted that the whole group look at her septic nipple the night before and had won herself no friends in the process.

  ‘Hey! Leave my fookin’ nipple out of it, Woggle!’ Moon shouted now from where she sprawled on the purple couch.

  ‘I’ve told you. How was I to know that dirty bastard in Brighton was using shite metal ‘stead of gold, which he said it was. He said it were fookin’ gold, didn’t he? The bastard. Besides, I’m using Savlon on my nipple and I don’t leave what comes out of it all over the fookin’ soap.’

  ‘Yes, don’t try and change the subject,’ Dervla insisted.

  ‘Moon’s doing what she can about her nipple infection and you should clean the soap after you use it. And not just the soap: clean out the plughole too. It looks like a St Bernard dog died there and rotted.’

  ‘I shall clean up my hair,’ Woggle said with what he assumed was an air of ancient and mighty dignity.

  ‘Good,’ said Dervla.

  ‘Z/,’ Woggle continued, ‘you promise to renounce your car.’

  DAY THIRTY-THREE. 2.30 p.m.

  Every time the ‘not yet watched’ pile of tapes began to look a little smaller and less intimidating, somebody brought up more from the cells. They seemed to go on for ever.

  ‘It’s day eight, and Jazz and Kelly are chatting in the garden.’

  DAY EIGHT. 3.00 p.m.

  What’s the worst job you’ve ever had?’ Said Jazz. He and Kelly were sitting by the pool revelling in the sunshine and the fact that they must look absolutely terrific on camera in their tiny swimming costumes.

  ‘No doubt about that,’ Kelly replied.

  ‘Being a film extra. I hated it.’

  ‘Why’s that, then?’ Asked Jazz.

  ‘It don’t sound too bad to me.’

  ‘Well, I think it’s all right if you’re not interested in being an actor. Then you just take the money and eat the lunch and try and spot a star, but it’s really rough if you actually want to get into the profession properly like I do. Then being an extra makes you feel like you’re just never going to get anywhere.’

  ‘So you want to be an actress, then?’

  ‘Oh God, I’d love it. That would be sooooo cool! Except you don’t say actress any more, you know. They’re all just actors nowadays, even the women, because of feminism. Like Emma Thompson or Judi Dench or Pamela Anderson or whatever. They’re not actresses, they’re actors.’

  ‘Is that right? Sounds a bit weird to me.’

  ‘Well, I think so too, actually. I mean, they’re women, aren’t they? But we’ve all got to get used to it, otherwise it’s offensive, apparently. I’m not sure, but I think it goes back to a time when apparently all actresses were prostitutes, and I suppose Judi Dench doesn’t want anyone thinking that she’s a prostitute. Well, you wouldn’t, would you?’

  ‘No, not if you’re a classy bird like her, certainly not,’ Jazz conceded.

  ‘So that’s what you want to be then — a lady actor?’

  ‘Absolutely, that’s why I’m in here. I’m hoping I’ll get noticed. I went in the confession box the other day and did a speech I’d learnt off The Bill about a girl doing cold turkey in the cells.’

  ‘Fahkin’ hell, girl, well pushy.’

  ‘Yeah, I rolled around on the floor and cried and everything. Don’t know if they’ll show it, though. I’d do anything to get to be an actress. That’s why I did the extra work. I thought I might learn something and even make a few contacts, but I hated it.’ David was swimming in the pool. Elegantly completing a series of gentle, desperately mannered laps in a perfectly unhurried breaststroke. A breaststroke which announced to the world that not only did David swim absolutely beautifully but that he had absolutely beautiful thoughts while he was doing it. He had been listening to what Kelly was saying.

  ‘I don’t believe that anyone who would take ext
ra work can truly want to be an actor, Kelly. I advise you to find a more realistic dream.’

  ‘You what?’ Said Kelly.

  ‘Fuck off, David,’ said Jazz.

  ‘Kelly can dream what she likes.’

  ‘And I can offer her advice if I wish. Kelly’s a big girl. She doesn’t need you to protect her, Jason.’

  ‘Jazz.’

  ‘I keep forgetting.’

  ‘Come on, then, David,’ said Kelly.

  ‘What do you mean, a more realistic dream?’ David hoisted himself up out of the water, quite clearly conscious as he did so of the splendid, glistening, dripping curves and tone of his muscular arms. He paused halfway out of the pool, arms stretched taut, taking his weight, shoulders rippling and strong, firm, shadowy clefts at his collar bone. His legs dangled in the pool and the hard, wavy plane of his stomach pressed against the terracotta edge.

  ‘I meant exactly what I said.’ David emerged from the pool completely, in one single, graceful, uncluttered movement.

  ‘Acting is the most demanding vocation imaginable. Harder, I think, perhaps, than any other.’

  ‘Bomb-disposal expert?’ Said Jazz, but David ignored him.

  ‘You have to believe in yourself utterly, and consider your dream to be not a dream but a duty. If you’re prepared at the very beginning to accept second best, then I suggest it is inevitable that you will never achieve your end. I personally would wash dishes, clean cars, wait on tables, rather than accept any job in the profession other than one I considered worthy of my dream. John Hurt resolved at the outset of his career to accept only leading roles, you know. I’m told he suffered thirteen years of unemployment as a result. But, ah, what triumph was to follow.’

  ‘Well, what about all the actors who aren’t John Hurt?’ Jazz asked.

  ‘The ones who suffered thirteen years of unemployment and then suffered another thirteen years of unemployment and then died of alcohol poisoning. What if that’s what happened to you?’