Dead famous

by Ben Elton

  ‘If that were my fate,’ said David, ‘then at least I would know that I had never compromised and that although my talent was not recognized I had never betrayed it. I would far rather be Van Gogh, tormented in life and dying unrecognized, than some comfortable portrait painter who prostitutes his talent for lack of faith in it. Winning is all. Consolation prizes are not worth having. I truly, truly believe that, Jason. I know you think me a pompous arrogant bastard…’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jazz.

  ‘And perhaps I am. But I mean what I say. You have to have everything or nothing, and so you will never be an actor, Kelly, and I say that as a friend who has your best interests at heart. Do yourself a favour. Find another dream.’

  DAY THIRTY-THREE. 2.35 p.m.

  Hooper pressed stop.

  ‘David knows what he’s doing, he just doesn’t know it isn’t working.’

  ‘You what?’ Asked Trisha.

  ‘Well, he’s not stupid. He must know he’s coming across as arrogant and mean. I think it’s his strategy. It’s not always the nice people who stay the course in these shows. Sometimes it’s the bastards. I reckon David wants to get noticed, noticed as someone great-looking, arrogant and uncompromising. In other words, a leading man, a star. I don’t think that man cares what he does or what people think of him. He just wants to be a star.’

  DAY EIGHT. 11.20 p.m.

  The girls were lying on their beds drinking hot chocolate. The talk quickly turned to Woggle, as it had done on many previous evenings.

  ‘He’s a nutter,’ Moon said.

  ‘He should be in a loony bin. He’s mad, he is.’

  ‘He is strange,’ said Kelly.

  ‘I just worry that he might do himself some harm or something. We had a kid like him at our school, except he had a Mohican instead of dreadlocks. Always sitting on his own and swaying, he was, just like Woggle, and he ended up writing on his arms with a knife, there was blood everywhere, the school nurse fainted, it was gross.’ Then Sally spoke. After Woggle, Sally was the most isolated of the group, and had so far come to prominence only once, when she had insisted on raising her Rainbow Lesbian and Gay Alliance flag in the back garden. It had not been a major incident, however, because despite Sally’s very best efforts nobody had objected. Moon’s comments about loony bins had touched a nerve.

  ‘Woggle’s not mad!’ Sally snapped.

  ‘He’s just filthy and horrible and politically unfocused. That’s all. He’s not mad.’

  ‘Well, he is a bit mad. Sally,’ Kelly said.

  ‘Did you see him trying to save that ant from the water that splashed out of the pool? I mean, how mad is that?’ The venom of Sally’s reply took everybody aback.

  ‘Listen, Kelly, you know absolutely nothing about it, all right?’ She hissed.

  ‘Nothing! People like you are so prejudiced and ignorant about mental illness. It’s pathetic! Absolutely pathetic and also disableist!’

  ‘I only said he was a bit mad. Sally.’

  ‘I know what you said, and I find it totally offensive. Just because a person has mental health issues doesn’t make them a disgusting anti-social pariah.’

  ‘Yes, but he is disgusting. Sally,’ Kelly protested.

  ‘I mean, I feel sorry for him and everything, but…’

  ‘And that’s the point I’m making, you stupid ignorant cow! He’s disgusting, he’s not mad. The two are not the same thing. Everybody’s so fucking prejudiced. Fucking grow up, why don’t you?’ Kelly looked like she had been slapped in the face. Sally’s anger had risen up so quickly that her fists were clenched and it almost seemed that she would lash out. In the monitoring bunker they twiddled desperately at their controls to get the hot-head remotes to swivel and focus on the relevant faces. Geraldine ordered both operators in the camera runs to push their dollies round to the girls’ bedroom immediately. That rarest of all events in reality television seemed to be developing: a moment of genuine, spontaneous drama.

  ‘Hey, steady on. Sally,’ said Dervla.

  ‘Kelly’s entitled to her opinion.’

  ‘Not if it’s oppressive of minorities, she isn’t.’

  ‘I haven’t got an opinion,’ wailed Kelly, tears springing up in her eyes.

  ‘Honestly.’

  ‘You do, you just don’t recognize your own bigotry!’ Sally snapped.

  ‘Everybody hates and stigmatizes the mentally ill and blames them for society’s problems. They’re denied treatment, ignored by the system and then when once in a blue moon something happens, like some poor schizo who never should have been returned to the community gets stuck inside their own dark box and sticks a knife in someone’s head or whatever, suddenly every mild depressive in the country is a murderer and it’s just ignorant fucking bollocks!’ Sally was getting more and more upset. The other girls had not seen this side of her before. The knuckles on her clenched fists had turned white; there were angry tears in her eyes. Kelly appeared horrified to have been the cause of all this hurt, but also astonished at how emotional Sally had so quickly become.

  ‘I’m sorry, Sally, all right?’ Kelly said.

  ‘If I’ve said something stupid I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to, but really there’s no need to cry about it.’

  ‘I’m not fucking crying!’ Sally shouted. Moon had been lying on her bed listening to the conversation with a look of tolerant bemusement on her face. Now she raised herself up and joined in.

  ‘Sally’s right, but she’s also wrong,’ she said with a patronizing air of authority.

  ‘Woggle ain’t genuinely mad, he’s just a twat with body odour, but on the other hand I wouldn’t be too certain about how nice and cosy the average loony is. Sally…’ Sally tried to interrupt angrily but Moon continued.

  ‘Or ‘people with mental health issues’ as you choose to put it. I’ve seen nutters, real nutters, dangerous fookin’ bastard nutters, and let me tell you, darling, society’s right to be scared of them, I know I fookin’ was.’

  ‘That is just ignorant shit,’ said Sally.

  ‘What would you know about it? How would you know anything about the mentally ill?’

  ‘Well, what would you know about it yourself. Sally?’ Said Dervla thoughtfully. Her face had a slightly troubled look about it. But before Sally could answer Dervla’s question. Moon pressed on.

  ‘I know plenty about it. Sally!’ She barked, seeming suddenly to be as upset as the other girl, ‘and I’ll tell you why: because I spent two years, did you hear me, love? Two fookin’ years in a mental hospital. Have you got that? A hospital for the insane, a loony bin and that is why. Sally, I fookin’ hate nutters.’ For a moment the room fell silent. The other girls were simply astonished at this sudden and unexpected bombshell.

  ‘You never did,’ said Kelly.

  ‘You’re having a laugh.’ But it appeared that Moon was not having a laugh.

  ‘So don’t tell me about people with mental health issues. Sally! I lived with them, I slept in their rooms, ate at their tables, walked the same corridors, stared at the same shitty walls for two years. So don’t give me any of that One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest crap! Like they’re the bloody sane ones — the fookin’ heroes.’ Sally clearly wanted to reply, but could find no words in the face of Moon’s onslaught, which continued unabated: ‘Oh yeah, I’m sure there’s plenty of nice ones about the place, plenty of nice sweet little manicdepressives who don’t hurt anybody but their mums and dads and themselves…But I’m talking about nutters. The ones that scream and tear at themselves in the night. All night! The ones that lash out when you pass them on the ward, trick you with their cunning, grab you, touch you, fookin’ try and eat you.’ The other four young women sat on their, beds and stared at Moon. Sally’s passion had come as a surprise, but this was something more, much, much more. This was shocking. Moon had been so cheerful, so funny right from the first day, and now this.

  ‘But why? Why were you there, Moon?’ Dervla’s voice was calm. Sweet and reassuring, like a doc
tor’s or a priest’s, but those who knew her would have heard the anxiety in it. They would have known that she was scared.

  ‘Were you ill?’

  ‘No, I wasn’t ill,’ said Moon bitterly.

  ‘But my fookin’ uncle was ill. My uncle is a sad sick ill bastard.’ She stopped, and seemed to be considering whether to go on. Layla asked if she wanted a hand to hold. Moon ignored her.

  ‘He abused me, right? Not the full business, never rape, but plenty enough. A year it went on until one day I told my ma, that cow. I can say it now because she’s dead. I never thought she’d believe her brother and not me, but he was a powerful man in the local community, I suppose, a doctor. And he had friends, counsellors, other doctors and the like, and between them they managed to make it all look my fault. I was a nasty lying little slut and a dangerous fantasist to boot. Maybe it woulda’ been different if me dad had been around, but God knows where he is. God knows who he is.’

  ‘They managed to get you committed?’ Dervla asked, astonished.

  ‘Yeah, you wouldn’t have thought it could happen, would you? To a young teenage girl, in our day and age, but it did, and I got put away for trying to tell the world that I’d been touched up by my uncle.’ There was silence in the room. For the first time since they had all entered the house, nobody had anything to say. The silence was echoed in the monitoring bunker, where Bob Fogarty, Pru, his assistant editor, various production managers and all their Pas were stunned.

  ‘That is incredible,’ said Fogarty.

  ‘Yes, it is, isn’t it?’ Said the voice of Geraldine Hennessy.

  ‘An incredible load of bollocks.’ They turned round in surprise. Nobody had noticed Geraldine enter the bunker, but in fact she had been watching for some time. She had come on from dinner with her current boyfriend in tow, a beautiful nineteen-year-old dancer whom she had met backstage at the Virgin summer pop festival.

  ‘I never thought Moon would be the one to go for the lying trick, I really didn’t. I must say I’m impressed.’

  ‘She’s lying?’ The various editors and Pas asked in astonishment.

  ‘Of course she’s lying, you stupid bunch of cunts. Do you really thing I’d put an abused kid out of a loony hospital into my happy little game show? Bollocks! Woggle’s as mad as I go. That bald bitch’s mum and dad are alive and well and living in Rusholme. He’s a tobacconist, she works in a dry cleaner’s.’ There was great relief in the bunker at this and also excitement. It seemed that perhaps the game inside the house might turn out to be more interesting than they had feared.

  ‘Look at her smirking to herself ‘cos it’s dark and the others can’t see,’ Geraldine said, pointing at one of the remote camera feeds.

  ‘She knows we can see, though, oh yes! She’s having a laugh, isn’t she? She knows the public loves a stirrer. You get much more famous being naughty than nice. Get me a coffee, will you, Darren? Use the machine in my office, not the shite this lot drink.’ The impossibly beautiful nineteen-year-old boy grumpily stirred his perfect body and went off to do as he was bidden.

  ‘Lucky you did your research, Geraldine,’ Fogarty remarked.

  ‘If you didn’t know Moon was lying I imagine we’d all be pretty nervous now.’

  ‘I’d have known anyway,’ Geraldine replied pompously.

  ‘Those idiot proles in there might manage to manipulate each other, possibly even the public, but not me, mate.’

  ‘You think you would have guessed she was lying even if you didn’t know?’

  ‘Of course I would. That woman’s never been near a mental hospital in her life. She’s watched too many films, that’s all. People don’t scream and shriek in those places. If they do they get sedated pretty fucking sharpish, let me tell you, and the only grabbing and touching that goes on is by the nurses. Mental hospitals are quiet at night. All you can hear is weeping, shuffling and wanking.’ For a moment Geraldine had a faraway look in her eye. To her assembled staff she seemed almost human. The next moment she was herself again.

  ‘Right, package all that stuff up. I’m not using it now, I’m concentrating on Woggle. Besides, I’m not having some bald cunt like Moon influencing the public this early on. I influence the public, not the bloody inmates. Keep it, though. Could be useful later.’

  ‘What, you mean put it in out of sequence?’ Fogarty was taken aback.

  ‘Maybe,’ replied Geraldine.

  ‘Who’d notice the difference?’

  ‘But…But the time codes on the video…They’d be out of sequence. We couldn’t adjust them.’

  ‘Of course you can, you silly arse. They’re just numbers on a screen, you can change them. Just go into the Apple menu and dig out the control panel.’

  ‘I know how to do it, Geraldine,’ Bob Fogarty replied coldly.

  ‘I meant we couldn’t do it morally, professionally.’

  ‘Our moral and professional duty is to provide good telly to the public, who pay our wages. We are not fucking anthropologists, we are entertainers, mate. Turns. We work on the end of the pier along with the illusionists, the mystics, the magicians, the hypnotists and all the other cheating shysters who make up this great business we call show. Now stick the whole thing in a separate file and hide it somewhere.’ The team said no more, working on in silence, hoping that if Geraldine did want to do something as outrageous as broadcasting house events out of sequence it would not be them whom she instructed to do it. Back on the screens the attention of the editing team was drawn by a flurry of bras and knickers. The girls were getting ready for bed.

  ‘Nipple-watch!’ Shouted Geraldine.

  They all had their styles. Sally got into bed in her T-shirt and knickers. Kelly allowed the occasional flash as she whipped off her shirt and dived into bed. Moon was happy to wander about in front of the infra-red cameras entirely naked. Layla and Dervla were the most coy: both put on long nighties before removing their underwear. When Geraldine saw this on the first night she had made a mental note to catch both of these prudes out at some point, in the showers, probably, or perhaps the pool, and put their nipples out in the Sunday night special compilation. She wasn’t having hoitytoity little scrubbers like them holding back on the flesh. What did they think they were on telly for? The atmosphere in the bedroom was sombre. On previous nights the girls had laughed and giggled as they got into their beds, but on this occasion there was silence. Moon’s revelations had rocked them all. Not just because it had been such a sad and shocking tale, but also because her distress would so obviously appeal to the public’s sympathy and give her the edge when eviction time came. It was very strange to have to remember all the time that every conversation was a conversation between rivals who were competing against each other for the affection of the public. Then Moon spoke.

  ‘Oh, by the way, girls,’she said.

  ‘All that stuff I just told you. That were rubbish, by the way. Sorry.’ There was another moment’s silence.

  ‘What!’ Layla,who rarely shouted, was furious.

  ‘Don’t worry about it, love,’ Moon said in a calm, matter-of- fact voice.

  ‘I were ‘having a laugh. Take me mind off me septic nipple.’

  ‘You said you’d been abused’

  ‘Well, everybody says they’ve been abused these days, don’t they?’ Moon replied.

  ‘Blimey, if you look at the posters them charities put out, apparently every fookin’ kid in the country’s getting touched up on a more or less continual basis.’

  ‘What’s your game, Moon?’ Said Dervla with barely controlled fury.

  ‘Told you. Just thought I’d have a laugh,’ Moon said.

  ‘Plus, I thought our Sally was getting a bit too serious, hopping into Kelly a bit strong about fookin’ loonies, that’s all.’

  ‘You rotten bitch,’ said Layla.

  ‘You cow,’ said Kelly.

  ‘That was a pretty low trick. Moon,’said Dervla.

  ‘I don’t think sexual abuse is a very funny subject.’


  ‘Well, it passed the time, didn’t it?’ Moon said.

  ‘Night.’ There was another long pause. Finally Kelly broke the silence.

  ‘So were you telling the truth about your breast implants, then?’ She asked.

  ‘Oh, yeah, couldn’t do without me kajungas, could I? I reckon they help me with me balance when I’m on the trapeze.’ As peace once more descended upon the room, Dervla thought she heard Sally sob.

  DAY THIRTY-THREE. 5.10 p.m.

  It had been six days since the murder, and Sergeant Hooper and his team continued with the huge task of trawling through the vast archive of unseen Peeping Tom footage. Searching diligently for any hint of an incident that might have turned somebody’s mind to murder. It was gruelling work even for Hooper, who was a big House Arrest fan, fitting their audience profile and advertiser expectations perfectly. Hooper was the opposite of Coleridge, a very modern copper, a hip, mad-for-it, bigged-up, twenty-first- century boy with baggy trousers, trainers, an earstud and a titanium Apple Mac Powerbook. Hooper and his mates never missed any of the various reality TV shows, but even he was being ground down by the task he now faced. Fortunately not all seven hundred and twenty hours a day of camera activity were available to the police, the vast bulk of it having been discarded on a daily basis by the Peeping Tom editors. But there were still hundreds of hours left, and watching it was like watching paint dry. Worse, at least paint did eventually dry. This lot seemed to stay wet for ever. Hamish picking his nose again…Jazz scratching his bum. The girls doing their yoga, again. Garry doing more press-ups. Garry doing chin-ups on the doorframes. Garry running on the spot…Hooper was beginning to despise the people in the house, and he did not want to. Quite apart from the fact that he did not think it would help him in his detection work, in a way these were his people. They had similar interests and ambitions, a similar honest conviction that they had a right to be happy. Hooper did not want to start thinking like Coleridge. What was that man like? Always banging on about the housemates having no sense of ‘duty’ or ‘service’ or ‘community’. As if wanting to have it large made you an enemy of society. Nonetheless, they were seriously beginning to wear him down. It was just that they never did anything, and, more irritatingly, they never thought anything. That most defining of all human characteristics, the capacity for abstract thought, was pressed solely into the service of…of…Nothing. Hooper cursed inwardly. He was even beginning to think like Coleridge. And of clues to a murder there were none. Until Trisha spotted something. Not much, but something.