Joseph Matt - Cam Boy

Maybe I was prying too much. Maybe she really did love her job as much as she let on. I guess I’ll never know. There was no time to think about it any longer either way – we were pulling into Paddington Station.

When we hopped off the train the first thing I did was seek out the toilets so I could have a much needed piss (for a 30p charge of course, nothing says ‘Welcome back to London’ like being charged to use the fucking toilet!), then headed outside to the smokers area for a cigarette. It was early December – frosty and dark outside, and as such, I found it especially hard to enjoy my fag. I was freezing cold and my hands were trembling with every drag of it. In case you haven’t sussed by now, I hate the winter…

Jess took a variety of shots of me leaving the station and we waited for a cab to reunite us with Mobeen.

Together once more, the three of us went for an evening meal in a posh Soho restaurant – again, paid for by the team. I even got treated to a Mojito cocktail (my all time favourite!) whilst we killed time until 10.30pm. That was when Fifty and Dean – a gay sex shop located just around the corner on Old Compton Street, would be closing its doors to the public and opening them to us. Obviously sex shops respect the privacy and right to anonymity of their customers, so that was the primary reason we had to wait.

I’m not sure if it was the cocktail that finished me off, the fact that it had been such a long day, or a combination of both – but I was well and truly knackered by the time we made it to Fifty and Dean. What made it worse was the fact that it was so damn hot inside, and I was still lugging around the same big old blue rucksack I’d been carrying round with me the entire day. I desperately wanted to put it to one side, but Mobeen insisted I keep it over one shoulder for ‘continuity’ purposes.

I browsed through some of the rails of fetish gear and made half-assed comments to the camera like…

“Ooh now this is pretty cool.”

And…

“This could work well in one of my cam shows!”

But I didn’t buy a single thing while we were there. It wasn’t that I didn’t like anything that was on sale there – far from it in fact! I just found it all royally overpriced, and to be frank, I wasn’t really in the mood for shopping. I had a brief, slightly forced chat with the guy at the counter who, it transpired, had seen me on Cam4broadcasting before.

“You’re much shorter in real life,” he said, in his thick Irish accent.

Thanks mate…

I was completely shattered by the time I arrived at the Travel Lodgethat Jessica had pre-booked for me to stay in. I didn’t arrive there till close to midnight (Mobeen having dropped me off), but instead of going straight to bed, I pottered around in the bathroom. I wanted to look as flawless as possible for the shoot with Matt Spike the following day, so I had a quick shave, tweezed my brows and applied another layer of self tanner to my face where I could see it was beginning to go patchy and fade.

Whilst I waited for the tan to develop, I sat on the kingside bed and had a quick flick through the TV channels, eventually settling on watching a re-run of the previous week’s episode of ‘ The Apprentice’.

I thought it was funny that here I was, taking part in a BBCshow myself, and viewing another in my down time. I watched it with a critical eye and couldn’t help but put myself in the contestant’s shoes. ‘ Webcam Boys’ was in no way as big of a budget programme as something like ‘ The Apprentice’ was – but still, I wondered how many retakes simple scenes like walking in and out of the boardroom would have taken, and paid closer attention to the edit than I normally would have.

I realised how easy it was to say one thing and mean another. And I wondered how I myself would be edited to appear when the show I’d signed up for went to air. I’d not met any of the other participants, so I genuinely had no idea who else had been cast, and what their background stories were.

Would I get less air time because they were more interesting than I was? Would I be painted as the weird creepy kinkster with an unexplained fetish for leather and latex?

I’d spent a lot of time with both Jess and Mobeen over the last few days, and they didn’t seem in any way intent on screwing me over, but even from as far back as day one there was always this little niggling piece of doubt at the back of my mind – a voice that kept reminding me, ‘these aren’t your friends Joey, they have a TV show to make’. However friendly they seemed, I knew that if I gave them a reason to dislike me, however petty, they had the power to make me look like a fool in the editing suite.

And I know that the large majority of the British public, or at least those that watch these kinds of shows, have a tendency to take everything at face value and not consider any of what goes on behind the scenes. I admit that I’ve been guilty of it myself in the past – we’re led to believe that what we see on screen is the whole truth, exactly as it happened, when in fact that isn’t always the case.

The credits rolled and I checked the time. 1.30am. Check out time was 11am but I had to be ready to leave with Jess and Mobeen by 10. The photo shoot was to take place at Matt’s that afternoon and I knew I had to be on top form for it.

I set my alarm for 9 so I had time to shower off my fake tan and smarten myself up in the morning. I then popped a couple of valium, and lay down in the centre of the bed until I fell asleep.

The next thing I knew, I was rudely awoken from whatever dream I was having by the shrill sound of my phone alarm, ringing in my ear.

‘No way’ I thought. ‘No fucking way can it be 9am already.’

But of course it bloody was . I could have quite happily slept for another 6 hours, but I had a schedule to adhere to, and like it or not, I had to be packed, ready and all checked out in the next 60 minutes.

I poured myself a strong cup of coffee, layered up and went and sat outside on the front steps by the entrance to the hotel to light up a cigarette. Unfortunately I’d been designated a ‘ No Smoking’ room. Still, I never did anything in the morning without having had a coffee and a cigarette first, so if that meant I had to face the bitter cold outside then so be it!

After a quick cigarette, I dashed back to my hotel room, took a swift shower and made sure everything was all packed up nicely and that the room was as tidy (or as close as I could manage to tidy) as it had been when I’d arrived.

The next thing I knew it was 10am, and Mobeen was ringing to check on my whereabouts.

“I’ll be with you in a second,” I said. “I’m just checking out now.”

5 minutes later I’d handed in my key card at Reception and ventured outside once more to meet up with Mobeen and Jessica, who were parked just round the corner.

“ Morning Joseph,” Mobeen said.

“Hey guys,” I said, still wiping the sleep from my eyes.

“How did you sleep?” Jess asked.

“Well,” I replied. “And you?”

“Great” they both said – almost, but not quite, in unison.

“So what I was thinking…” said Mobeen. “What might be really cool, because we haven’t done it yet, is if we call a black cab for you and Jess, and have her interview you in the back of that, whilst I follow behind in the car.”

“Sure,” I said.

I couldn’t help but wonder in that moment if perhaps Mobeen had watched that re-run of ‘ The Apprentice’ himself, and was drawing inspiration from it, or if this had been the idea all along. Maybe Matt Spike would turn out to be Alan Sugar in disguise.