Dead famous

by Ben Elton

  ‘It’s pathetic, really,’ said Fogarty.

  ‘They even thank us when we give them some little treat or other, usually designed to get them to take their clothes off. It’s Stockholm Syndrome, you know.’

  ‘When captives fall in love with their tormentors.’

  ‘Exactly, and begin to rely on them, to trust them. I mean, how can that girl not have realized that as far as we’re concerned she’s a prop, an extra, to be used, abused and utterly misrepresented as we see fit?’

  ‘I suppose it is pretty obvious, now you come to mention it. But I suppose it’s not just the housemates who fall for it. The public believes in you too.’

  ‘The public! The public, they’re worse than us! At least we get paid to bully these people. The public do it for fun. They know they’re watching ants getting burnt under a magnifying glass, but they don’t care. They don’t care what we do to them, how we prod them, as long we get a reaction.’ Fogarty stared angrily at the screen upon which Kelly was still frozen.

  ‘The people in that house think that they’re in a cocoon. In fact it’s a redoubt. They’re surrounded by enemies.’

  DAY TWENTY. 6.15 p.m.

  It’s two-fifty,’said Andy the narrator, ‘and after a lunch of rice, vegetables cooked by Jazz, Sally asks Kelly to help : the screen showing various camera angles shampoo to Sally’s mohican haircut prior to �ed Geraldine.

  ‘I thought Layla’s cheese was our nadir but I reckon watching some great lump of a bird getting her hair washed has got to plumb new and unique depths in fucking awful telly, don’t you? Fuck me, in the early days of TV they used to stick a potter’s wheel on between the programmes. Now the potter’s wheel is the fucking programme.’ Fogarty gritted his teeth and continued with his tasks.

  ‘What shot do you want, Geraldine?’ He enquired.

  ‘Kelly’s hands on her head? Or a wide?’

  ‘Put Sally up on the main monitor — the close-up of her face, through the mirror. Run the whole sequence, right from where she bends down over the basin.’ Fogarty punched his buttons while Geraldine continued her reverie.

  ‘Tough time for us, this. Eviction night tomorrow but no eviction. That cunt Woggle has deprived us of our weekly climax. We are in a lull. A low point, a stall. The wind is slipping out of our fucking sails, Bob. The Viagra pot is empty and our televisual dick is limp.’ Andy the narrator emerged from the voiceover recording booth to get a cup of herbal tea.

  ‘Perhaps I could tell them what everyone had for pudding,’ he suggested.

  ‘David made a souffle, but it didn’t really rise. That’s quite interesting, isn’t it?’

  ‘Get back in your box,’ said Geraldine.

  ‘But Gazzer didn’t finish his, and I think David was a little bit offended.’

  ‘I said, get back in your fucking box!’ Andy retreated with his camomile.

  ‘Always trying to grab himself a few more lines, that bastard. I’ve told him, if he does one more beer ad voiceover he’s fucking out. I’m going to get a bird to do it next time, anyway…Stop it there!’ Fogarty froze the image of Sally’s face. Dribbles of shampoo foam ran down her temples; Kelly’s fingertips could be made out at the top of the screen. Sally’s hand was at her mouth, frozen in the moment of inserting a segment of tangerine into it.

  ‘Run it on, but mute the sound,’ Geraldine instructed. They studied Sally’s silent countenance for a few moments, as her jaw moved about, her lips pursed and her cheeks became slightly sucked in, then the lips parted a fraction and the tip of her tongue licked them.

  ‘Very nice,’ Geraldine observed.

  ‘I love a bit of muted mastication, the editor’s friend. Right, chop the tangerine off the front and run that sequence mute under Kelly’s dialogue about finding head massage sensual.’ Fogarty gulped before replying. It really seemed as if this time he had had enough.

  ‘But…But, Kelly made that comment to David while they were having the rice, chicken and vegetables that Jazz cooked. If we drop it over Sally’s face it will look as if…as if…’

  ‘Ye-es?’ Geraldine enquired.

  ‘As if she’s getting a thrill out of massaging Sally’s head!’

  ‘While Sally,’ Geraldine replied, ‘with her grinding jaw and tense cheeks, sucky-sucky lips and little wet tongue tip, is positively creaming her gusset, and we, my darling, have got what can only be described as a half-decent lezzo moment.’ The silence in the monitoring bunker spoke loudly of the unease felt by Geraldine’s employees. Geraldine just grinned, a huge, triumphant grin, like a happy snarl.

  ‘We are in a ratings trough, you cunts!’ She shouted.

  ‘I’m paying your wages here!’

  DAY TWENTY-TWO. 6.10 p.m.

  Such a shame there was no eviction last night,’ the young woman was saying.

  ‘The last one was terrific,although I was sorry to see Layla go. I mean I know she was pretty pretentious, but I respected the integrity of her vegetarianism.’

  ‘Darling she was a poseur, a complete act, I hated her,’ said the man, a rather fey individual of about thirty. Chief Inspector Coleridge had been listening to them chat for about five minutes, and did not have the faintest idea who or what they were talking about. They seemed to be discussing a group of people that they knew well, friends perhaps, and yet they appeared to hold them in something approaching complete contempt.

  ‘What do you think about Layla going, then?’ Said the man, whose name was Glyn, turning finally to Coleridge.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know her,’ Coleridge answered.

  ‘Is she a friend of yours?’

  ‘My God,’ said Glyn.

  ‘You mean you don’t know who Layla is? You don’t watch House Arrest?’

  ‘Guilty on both counts,’ said Coleridge, attempting a little joke. He knew that they knew he was a policeman.

  ‘You simply do not know what you’re missing,’ said Glyn.

  ‘And long may that remain the case,’ Coleridge replied. It was an audition evening at Coleridge’s local amateur dramatic society. Coleridge had been a member of the society for over twenty-five years and had attended thirty-three such evenings previous to this one, but he had never yet been offered a lead. The nearest he had got was Colonel Pickering in My Fair Lady, and that was only because- the first choice had moved to Basingstoke and the second choice got adult chicken pox. The next production of the society was to be Macbeth, and Coleridge really and truly wanted to play the killer king. Macbeth was his favourite play of all time, full of passion and murder and revenge, but one glance at Glyn’s patronizing, supercilious expression told Coleridge he has as much chance of playing Macbeth as he had of presenting Britain’s next entry for the Eurovision song contest. He would be lucky to score a Macduff.

  ‘Yes, I am intending a very young production,’ Glyn drawled.

  ‘One that will bring young people back into the theatre. Have you seen Baz Luhrman’s Romeo and Juliet?’ Coleridge had not.

  ‘That is my inspiration. I want a contemporary, sexy Macbeth. Don’t you agree?’ Well, of course Coleridge did not agree. Glyn’s production would run for three nights at the village hall and would play principally to an audience that wanted armour and swords and big black cloaks.

  ‘Shall I read, then?’ He asked ‘I’ve prepared a speech.’

  ‘Heavens, no!’ Glyn said.

  ‘This isn’t the audition, it’s a prelim chat. A chance for you to influence me, give me your feedback.’ There was a long pause while Coleridge tried to think of something to say. The table that divided him from Glyn and Val was a chasm.

  ‘So when is the actual audition?’ He finally said.

  ‘This time next week.’

  ‘Right, well, I’ll come back then, shall I?’

  ‘Do,’ said Glyn.

  DAY TWENTY-THREE. 3.00 p.m.

  Sally was not yet satisfied with her new bright-red mohican hair.

  ‘I just want a tuft,’ she said, ‘like a shaving brush
.’

  ‘Well, just you leave it at that,’ Moon said.

  ‘I’m the bald bird in this house. Can’t have two of us, we’ll look like a fookin’ game of billiards.’ Sally did not reply. She rarely replied to anything Moon said, or even looked at her. Dervla was relieved that Kelly elected to administer the haircut in the living area. It had been agony for her on the Saturday when Sally had done the dyeing in the bathroom. Dervla always rubbed out her messages, of course, and they were only condensation anyway, but seeing Sally with her face so close to the very place where they appeared had been most disconcerting. As Kelly washed Sally’s hair and the mirror steamed up, Dervla had been gripped with an irrational fear that a message might suddenly appear, there and then, right in front of Sally’s eyes. She knew that this was unlikely, unless of course the man had decided to start writing to Sally.

  ‘All done,’ said Kelly.

  ‘I like it,’ Sally replied, having inspected the little red tuft which was all that remained of her hair.

  ‘When I get out I’m going to have my head tattooed.’

  ‘What will you get done, then?’ Kelly asked.

  ‘I thought perhaps my star sign. It’s the ram, except obviously I’m not having a male animal on my head, so I’d have to have a ewe.’

  ‘Well, that doesn’t sound very empowering. Sally,’ Dervla observed.

  ‘Be a fucking lioness, Sal,’ said Jazz.

  ‘I mean, let’s face it, them pictures they make out of the stars are just total bullshit anyway. Three bloody dots and they draw a bull round it,or a centaur. It’s ridiculous. If you actually do join the dots all you get is a splodge, like an amoeba or a puddle. Born under the sign of the puddle.’

  ‘Actually, Jazz,’ said Moon, ‘it’s not just about the fookin’ shapes, is it? It’s about the personality, the characteristics of people born under certain signs.’

  ‘It’s bollocks,’ Jazz insisted.

  ‘People say…Oh, Virgo, dead brave, or Capricorn, really clever and introspective. Where are the star signs for all the stupid boring people, eh? I mean, the world’s full of them. Don’t they get to be represented celestially? Taurus — we’re really dull and don’t get our rounds in…I could tell you was a Libra, they’re very flatulent.’

  ‘You know fook all, you do, Jazz,’ said Moon.

  ‘Do you know that?’

  DAY TWENTY-FOUR. 10.00 a.m.

  So what’s a sweatbox when it’s at home?’ Asked Gazzer.

  ‘It says here that it’s an ancient Native American tradition,’ Hamish replied.

  ‘Native American?’

  ‘Red Indian to you, I imagine,’ said Dervla. The housemates had been given their instructions for the weekly task, and so far Gazzer was not impressed.

  ‘So what the fahk is it?’

  ‘Exactly what it sounds like,’ said Hamish, who was reading the instructions.

  ‘A box in which you sweat. From what it says here it sounds pretty similar to a sauna, except a bit more friendly. It says this is a historical task because they were used by Native American fighting men.’

  ‘And women,’Sally interjected.

  ‘Native American fighting women.’

  ‘Were there any?’ Asked Kelly.

  ‘I thought they were just squaws.’

  ‘That’s because history is written by men,’Sally assured her.

  ‘Women warriors have been denied their place in the chronicles of war, just like women artists and scientists never got credit for doing an amazing amount of art c and science which their husbands took credit for.’

  ‘Wow, I had no idea,’ said Kelly, genuinely surprised.

  ‘Well, think about it, Kelly. History…His story.’

  ‘Oh, yeah.’

  ‘Can we get back to this fahkin’ sweatbox?’ Gazzer protested.

  ‘What are we supposed to do about it?’ Hamish applied himself once more to Peeping Tom’s note.

  ‘Well, we have to build one, for a start. They’ll give us instructions and all the stuff we need, and when we’ve built it we have to use it.’

  ‘Use it?’ Dervla enquired.

  ‘Well, apparently after these Native Americans had had a fight, or a sports day or whatever, they’d wait till it got dark and then get into a hot confined space all squeezed up tight together and sweat.’

  ‘It sounds totally homoerotic,’ said Sally.

  ‘Most military rituals are, if you didn’t know.’

  DAY THIRTY-EIGHT. 4.45 p.m.

  Homoerotic, oh, for heaven’s sake,’ Coleridge snapped.

  ‘Sounds reasonable to me,’ Hooper replied.

  ‘Yes, of course it does, sergeant! So easy to say, so impossible to contradict. Why is it that everybody these days insists on presuming a sexual motive for absolutely everything? Military rituals homoerotic? Why, for heaven’s sake!’ Was Freud to blame? Coleridge rather thought that he might be, or else Jung, or perhaps some imbecile from the sixties like Andy Warhol.

  ‘Whatever you say, sir,’ said Hooper. Coleridge let it go, as he let so much go that bothered him these days. At the end of the day, as the inmates of the house were so fond of saying, it wasn’t worth it.

  ‘I still cannot quite believe that these people actually agreed to do this task. I mean, four hours in that thing, naked.’

  ‘Well, Dervla tried to object, didn’t she?’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Coleridge thought, Dervla objected, the one he secretly rather liked. For a moment he felt glad that she had objected. Then inwardly he cursed himself. He had absolutely no business liking any of them, or being glad about what they did or didn’t do.

  DAY TWENTY-FIVE. 8.00 p.m.

  The sweatbox, which the housemates had been instructed to build in the boys’ bedroom, was half finished. The false floor had been laid, underneath which the heating elements were to be installed; the support poles for the roof were in position and work had begun on stitching the thick plastic for the walls. The construction so far looked rather small and uninviting, with very little prospect of its looking any better when it was finished.

  ‘I am so not sitting naked in that thing with a lot of nude boys,’ Dervla said. [Missing text] Dervla went to the confession box and asked to be allowed to perform the task in her bathing suit.

  ‘It’s high cut on the thigh and a lovely pattern,’ she said. The answer when it came was broadcast to the whole house.

  ‘This is Peeping Tom,’ said a much sterner voice than usual, a voice that normally did ads for BMWs and aftershave.

  ‘The traditional Native American sweatbox experience was undertaken naked, and this is the manner in which Peeping Tom requires the task to be performed. As with any of the group tasks, all housemates must comply with the rules and if any single housemate fails to do so then the whole group will be deemed to have failed and will therefore lose a percentage of their food and drink for the following week.’ It was jaw-dropping cynical and Geraldine knew it, which was why she had no intention of allowing this outrageous instruction to be aired publicly. Clearly she was blackmailing Dervla into stripping, but the public were to be given the illusion that the housemates one and all simply could not wait to get their clothes off.

  ‘I cannot believe they’re trying to get away with this,’ Dervla fumed. Then Sally spoke up.

  ‘Actually, Dervla, I really think that we should do this, because I am worried that we might come across as racist if it looks like we think we’re too good for a legitimate ethnic custom, particularly one with such obviously homoerotic overtones.’ Sally was pleased that Peeping Tom had provided her with an opportunity to hold forth on the one area about which she felt truly passionate.

  ‘As a lesbian woman of mixed race I know what it’s like to have my customs and rituals held in fear and contempt by the majority community. Peeping Tom is offering us the opportunity to experience the bonding rituals of an oppressed indigenous group. I think we should try to learn from it.’

  DAY TWENTY-SIX. 9.15 a.m.
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  Bob Fogarty waited until the following morning’s production meeting to make his complaint. He wanted his objections to be noted publicly. It was difficult for him to find his moment because Geraldine was roaring with laughter so much as she recalled Sally’s unlikely take on the weekly task.

  ‘All I’m trying to do is persuade them to feel each other up and it turns out I’m a champion of minority rights. Anyway, all ethnic and sexual bollocks aside, Dervla will have to get ‘em out for the lads or nobody gets a drink next week.’ Fogarty had to stand up to get her attention.

  ‘Geraldine, we are coercing this girl into taking her clothes off against her wishes.’

  ‘Yes, Bob, we all know that. Why are you standing up?’

  ‘Because I think it’s morally corrupt.’

  ‘Oh, do fuck off.’ Fogarty had finally had enough.

  ‘Ms Hennessy, I cannot prevent you from using profanity to punctuate your sentences, but I am a grown man and a highly qualified employee and I am entitled to insist that you do not use such language towards me or those who work under me.’

  ‘No, you’re fucking not, you cunt. Now sit down or fuck off.’ Fogarty did neither. He just stood there, shaking.

  ‘You think you can do me for constructive dismissal?’ Geraldine asked.

  ‘For swearing? Grow up, Bob. Even this cunt of a country isn’t that pathetic yet. If you walk out it’s a straight resignation and you get bugger-all. Now, are you staying or are you going?’ Fogarty sat down.

  ‘Good. You may be an arsehole, but you’re a talented arsehole and I don’t want to lose you. And besides which,’ Geraldine went on, ‘Dervla is free to leave that house at any time. She could have walked out there and then, and she could walk out now. But she hasn’t done, has she? And why? Because she wants to be on telly, that’s why, and at the end of the day, if she has to take her clothes off to do it, then you can bet your last quid she’ll allow herself to be persuaded.’ Bob stared down into his coffee. He looked like a man who needed a bar of chocoate.