Alan Carr
He’s very funny and he likes random booze, so he can make Mary Berry do some weird shots.
Vicky Pattison
Fellow north-easterner. Absolutely mint and so clever. Also, wouldn’t take any shit from Houdini.
Johnny Depp
I’d like Johnny to come but I’d request he came as Edward Scissorhands for two reasons: 1) so he can cut up the meat, and 2) because it would be funny as fuck to watch him try and eat peas.
Timekeeping
Actually leaving the house on time is so hard for me and I’m generally half an hour late everywhere I go. My friends have got clever about my bad timekeeping now, and if they want me to be somewhere at 9 p.m. they’ll tell me I have to be there at 8.30 p.m. so I’ve got a buffer.
I don’t know why I’m always late, I really don’t. I just don’t seem to be able to help myself. My friends will phone and say, ‘Are you nearly ready?’ and I’ll be like, ‘Yeah, I am actually!’ while I’m sat there in my pyjamas. I desperately want to be on time, or even early, but it never happens.
My God, can you imagine turning up somewhere early? I can’t. My friends hate my shit timekeeping and I know how annoying it is but it’s like a habit I can’t seem to break.
I really don’t understand people who are always on time. I seem to be forever fannying about and, before I know it, hours have passed. I’ll tell myself I’ll have a ‘quick’ bath, I’ll read a magazine and watch videos on YouTube, and all of a sudden I’ll realize I’m freezing cold and I have to top the hot water up. Another forty-five minutes later I’m still in there pretending I’m a mermaid. I love mermaids and I think part of the reason I have long hair is so I can feel a bit mermaidy. I was obsessed with The Little Mermaid when I was kid and it’s never really worn off. At the time I think I just really liked her long hair and the fact she had a shell bra, which seemed so cool. But now when I think about it, she gave up the most important things in her life – all her friends and everything that made her happy – for a lad. And just think about him for a minute. He liked her and she couldn’t speak. And she didn’t have any legs. So he basically liked her for the top half of her body and that alone. What a dick. And she was all, ‘He likes me, he likes me! I’m leaving the sea.’ Me and my mates talked for ages about what should have happened at the end of the film, and decided that when she changes she should get the head of a fish and human legs and genitals. That’d teach him. Although knowing the kind of dickhead he clearly is, he’d be all, ‘You don’t need to look at the mantelpiece when you’re poking the fire. I’ll hop on.’
But still, who wouldn’t want a Jamaican crab for a friend?
Making an entrance
I also genuinely think that part of the reason I’m late to the pre-pre-drinks is because I like walking in somewhere when all my friends are already there. Because they’ll have had some drinks so I get a bigger reception. I feel like I’m a bit of a novelty because they’ve already had about an hour of catching up with each other and I’m fresh entertainment. It’s basically a really sneaky way of being the headliner on a night out.
I never ask me dad what I look like before I go out because he always goes, ‘You’ve got far too much make-up on.’ But then if he didn’t say that, I’d know I hadn’t done the job properly and I’d put more on. I’ll always put another lot of bronzer on right before I leave the house just in case anyway, but if my dad doesn’t think I look orange enough I’ll ramp it up.
Me mam is my benchmark when it comes to my outfits and I know that if I ask her how I look I’ll be able to work out if I look good or not. She’s got quite an obvious code. If she says I look ‘nice’, ‘OK’ or ‘all right’, I’ll change. No one wants to be told they look ‘all right’ after spending five hours getting ready, do they?
If I’m wearing a shirt dress, I’ll often put jeans on underneath and then take them off when I get to one of my friends’ houses because otherwise me dad will say it’s too short. He doesn’t have Facebook so he’ll never know I’ve done a sneaky change later in the evening.27
Once I’m finally ready to go out I head straight to one of my mates’ places. I rarely have the girls round to mine before a night out because I don’t like everyone drinking around my little sister (that also means I never have to clear up the following day with a minging hangover).
Usually one of my friends will come and pick me up and give me a lift, or I’ll subtly say to me mam, ‘Have you got a taxi number?’ and wait for her to offer to take me. We both know it’s a bit of a game and sometimes she doesn’t play along so I’ll pretend to call a taxi. I won’t actually ring the number but I’ll make out I’m having a conversation with someone until she feels guilty and caves in. It’s so weird. We both know we’re being twats but we still do it.
We all take our own alcohol but we’ll share mixers, and whoever is hosting usually gets some crisps and things in. Kelly will make proper nibbles and put plastic cups on the table. She’s a really good host, unlike me. If ever people do come to mine, I don’t organize anything. They’re lucky if they get something to drink their booze out of, let alone some Kettle Chips.
Early drinking days
I had my first ever drink at the age of ten, and it was my granddad Tommy’s fault. I asked him for a mocktail with sparklers and umbrellas. I drank half of it and apparently I started being really loud and stuff. It turned out it was a piña colada with a shitload of rum in it.
I didn’t drink again until I was about fifteen, so I was quite a late starter. We went to the rec and we were sitting on the swings while people played rave music on their phones (we were dead cool).
My friend had kept an open bottle of Lambrini underneath her bed for two weeks and it tasted so bad we tried to dilute it with blueberry Panda Pops. She also had a quarter litre of cheap vodka so we added that too and I think I got alcohol poisoning. I vommed everywhere and had the proper shakes.
When I got home my parents could totally tell. I hate the smell of Chinese food so my dad purposely ordered one for himself so I’d learn my lesson. It bloody worked because I didn’t drink again until I went to sixth-form college.
The first pub we ever managed to get into was when I was only fifteen, and the lads would get a pint in and we’d drink Coke and play pool. God knows how I got in because I looked so young and I still get asked for ID now.28
My friends and I talk about really random stuff when we’re together and sometimes that pre-going-out loud, shouty hour is my favourite part of the night. We’re weird friends in a way, but I feel like you know you’ve got a great set of mates when you can talk about really strange stuff and no one questions it. There’s a real variety relationship-wise and some of my friends are engaged or married, while others have been single for years. One of my mates has got twin babies so she hardly ever comes out, but when she does it makes me feel dead guilty about how ridiculous I am. She’s trying to bring up two small children and the rest of us are talking about whether pouring vodka into our eyeballs would get us drunk quicker.
Sometimes when we’re chatting I’ll say, ‘This is why we’re single,’ because some of the things we discuss are ludicrous and any lad who was listening would think we were unhinged.
Me single mates all think I’m weird cos I’m not always texting with a lad. Anytime we’re out, they’ll all be on their phones. But I think people have lowered their basic standards for what’s classed as an interesting conversation. They’ll get a message saying, ‘What R U Up 2?’ and they show you it and they’re like, ‘He’s dead funny and flirty.’ I can’t be bothered with all those constant updates. It’s hard dating now, even compared to three years ago. Social media has just gone mental.
Tinder
I don’t get Tinder. Some men have a photo of them getting married as their Tinder photo. I’m sometimes sitting next to my mate and a picture of a penis flashes up and I’m like, ‘What was that?!’ And she’s like, ‘Oh, we’ve been messaging.’ One minute you’re mes
saging and it’s all, ‘How was your day?’ and then the next minute there’s a picture of a penis. I block them straight away but I have a mate who’s like, ‘Give him a chance.’ I’m like delete, block, done.
It’s not exactly the most romantic story for the grandkids, is it? ‘I met your granddad on a dating website and then he showed me a photograph of his penis and I knew he was the one.’
I’ve always been a bit sceptical about dating apps, but I put myself on Tinder a while ago because everyone was raving about it. I was sat at home ready to look through loads of profiles, but after I swiped right on three lads thinking they were probably knobheads it said, ‘You’ve run out of people in your area.’ I set my distance to within forty kilometres! How can there only be three people to reject within forty kilometres? That right there is why I’m going to be alone for ever.
There’s also not much mystery when you meet someone online because on some sites you already know if they want to settle down or not, if they’ve got kids, what they do . . . What have you got to find out on a first date? Where’s that excitement? Although having said that, some people will say they’re not looking for a relationship – code for just wanting sex – but how do they know? They could meet the love of their life.
Loads of my friends are on Plenty of Fish, but I would honestly rather just meet someone in real life. It’s really shallow judging someone simply on a photo and you’re basically saying to them, ‘I don’t like the look of you and can’t be bothered to give you the time of day.’ They could be the nicest person in the world, but if they don’t look nice in their photo, they’re fucked.
I also get guys asking if I’m ‘her off Gogglebox’ and I deny it and pretend someone’s set up a fake profile in my name. I know, it’s twatty. Someone once tweeted and said, ‘I’ve just seen Scarlett Moffatt on Tinder’, and I got really defensive and said it wasn’t me. I don’t know why I lied; I was just embarrassed.
One of my mates saw this guy she liked on Plenty of Fish and she kept showing us his picture. I knew I recognized him from somewhere so we did some digging via Facebook, and it turned out that the reason I knew him is because he’d been in the papers the week before. It was a big news story because he’d set light to all the pot pouri in his ex-girlfriend’s house. Her house may have smelt lovely when she walked in, though.
I don’t send rude Snapchats either. On Snapchat I mostly send photos of dogs and stupid selfies where I’m pulling faces.
And I’ve never done the whole ‘Netflix and chill’ thing. Well, I went round to my mate’s house to watch a film with him and told my friends, and they just kept raising their eyebrows and I had to be like, ‘No, I’m actually watching Netflix.’ I reckon the reason it’s a thing now is that there are no films you want to watch on there, so you end up making your own entertainment. I can’t decide whether Netflix will be dead happy with the saying or not.
Group roles
We’ve all kind of got different roles in my friendship group. My mates may disagree, but I think Sam and I are the funny ones. We’re like the Ant and Dec of the group. Sometimes we’ll have a conversation between us for fifteen minutes and no one else will speak during that time because they’re too busy listening to us two talking shit.
Sarah is like the mam of the group, so she’s the one who always makes sure everyone is all right and she’s quite sensible. She’s still dead funny but she keeps us in check and if it wasn’t for her I’d probably be dead or in prison. At the end of the night, when someone is suggesting we go on to an awful club, she’ll be the one to rein us in. I also behave myself a lot more when she’s around, which is a very good thing.
Kelly’s the really bad influence. Say it gets to 1 a.m. and someone says, ‘Shall we have one more and head off?’ she’ll be like, ‘Or we could do this . . .’ and I’ll end up getting in at 10 a.m. She always knows someone who’s having a house party somewhere, and we’re not even sure how she knows these people let alone how she knows they’re having a party.
There’s this girl I know whose sole purpose of going on a night out is to meet a lad. She’ll be really keen to go to a certain bar and when we get there we’ll spot a boy she likes. I don’t know why she tries to be sneaky about it because we all know what she’s up to, but we play dumb because it adds to the fun of it.
My friend Hannah is really shy when she’s sober, but as soon as she’s drunk she turns into a proper crazy woman. It’s like she’s been possessed by the spirit of a drunken lunatic and she’ll be dancing like a nutter and talking to anyone and everyone.
I tend to find that it’s my friends who have got kids who are the ones who will get most wasted on a night out. It’s like, in their head, they’ve only got one night every few months to really enjoy themselves, so they’re properly unleashed. Thankfully they don’t spend all night talking about their kids. Can you imagine how boring that would be? I mean, I like some kids, but I don’t want to bloody chat about them.
Mad shit
This is the part of the night where we’ll just talk about whatever’s in our head. Quite often we’ll just say the name of a celebrity or something that’s in the news and then everyone will start weighing in with their opinion. I’m going to choose a small selection of the things we’ve talked about recently.
Justin Bieber
What can you say about the Bieber? He’s got more followers than the population of the UK. He looks like Ellen DeGeneres. He’s twenty-two and he’s a multi-millionaire. Of course he’s surrounded by supermodels and fast cars. Who wouldn’t be? At twenty-two any millionaire celeb would park on the street because they can afford the parking fine.
But he could get better hair.
Someone told me he just wears his Calvin Klein pants once and then throws them away. I can believe that. I bet he doesn’t even get them out the box. His assistant has to open the boxes at the beginning of the week and lay his week’s pants out for him. That’s like part of their job description: Pant Opener.
And I reckon he wears more than one pair a day on average. And Calvin Klein are like £35 per pair of pants. So let’s say ten pairs a week, cos some days he doesn’t change his pants. That’s £350 a week, or £18k a year.
At some point in the future there’ll be oil that’s mainly made from Bieber pants. I bet that’s like the most premium oil ever.
If I was him, I’d sell them on eBay. I might pitch that as a business. Bieberpants.com. ‘Hello Dragons, I am looking for £400,000 for a 1.5 per cent stake in my company, Bieberpants.com.’
But he does have shit hair. It’s swings and roundabouts really. Maybe he’d rather have less followers and nice hair.
Beyoncé
Everyone absolutely bops her and I don’t understand why. Mainly Beyoncé wiggles her arse about, doesn’t she, and it is a very impressive arse. It feels like that will never stop being a way to be famous. I like a lot of her music, but people talk as if she’s changing the world. Mainly, though, I’m sick of everyone tagging Jay-Z and Beyoncé in photos and hashtagging them #relationshipgoals. They’ll be there cuddling and people start saying they want a relationship like Jay-Z and Beyoncé. To be fair, I reckon some of the people saying that have probably had their sister beat their boyfriend up in a lift. Achievable goals and all that.
Maybe if you stopped hashtagging on your phone and actually talked to a human being you’d have a relationship.
Bad Girls
I feel like I spent most of my young teen life watching Bad Girls. It’s that ITV show where they’re in prison. It was amazing. I’m not sure if I should have watched it – it was pretty racy for then. The first time I ever saw a girl kiss a girl was in that t.A.T.u video and then suddenly the video was everywhere. They were, like, young Russian girls and you weren’t sure how much they were into it, or whether there was something else going on. ‘OK, if we kiss now, we can see family?’ It was a catchy song, though. And then they just disappeared. Maybe they’re in the same place as the Cheeky Girls?
&nb
sp; Also, I reckon that’s where Will.i.am got his idea for spelling his name like that.
Jamie Oliver
I can rag on Jamie Oliver all day. I don’t know why he exists. He saps the fun out of everything. A sugar tax?! He still serves sugary drinks at his restaurants, doesn’t he? He said, ‘Oh, I’ve made them more expensive,’ but don’t serve them at all if you feel that strongly. I swear, his wife deserves a medal the size of a dustbin lid. I don’t know how she copes. I remember the Naked Chef back in the day when he was playing drums and riding a moped. My sister will never know the joy of chocolate cake in pink custard, because he’s got rid of it. No potato smiley faces. Why would you do that to kids?
Everyone I know basically ate chips, turkey drummers and beans every meal. And we turned out all right. Sometimes it would be green custard and then everyone would be in such a good mood for the rest of the day. You used to get mashed potato in an ice-cream scoop. They have a pasta bar at my little sister’s school. They don’t need a pasta bar, they’re nine. There’s plenty of time for pasta bars. Everyone talks about kids growing up too fast because of the internet and music videos, but no one’s talking about pasta bars. Let kids be kids!
I watched his annual Christmas programme and his advice was basically to cook the entire meal in goose fat. And now he’s all worried about sugar? I reckon it’s just a fashion thing, isn’t it? Even Nigella has gone healthy because everyone else has.
His fifteen-minute-meals thing – it was basically just showing off. ‘Look how quickly I can do my job.’ It’s like me showing off how quickly I can change the printer cartridge or something. It’s bad enough when you try and make something off the TV and it doesn’t look like it should, now you just have one more thing to worry about: that you haven’t made it quickly enough. My mates always say that he does loads of good with the Fifteen restaurant and stuff, but that doesn’t make up for the pasta bars in schools.
Scarlett Says Page 8