Ben Elton - Dead Famous

David, beautiful in his big shirt, did not even open his eyes when he spoke. “Perhaps for the first week or so we should just do our own chores. I’m detoxing at the moment and am only eating boiled rice, which I imagine will be rather easier to clean off plates than whatever bowel-rotting garbage Garry, Jazz and Kelly choose to gorge themselves on.”

“Suits me,” said Gazzer. “I always clean my plate with a bit of bread anyway.”

“Yes, Garry,” said Layla, “and I’m not being heavy or anything, but perhaps you should remember that the bread is for everyone . I mean, I hope you think that’s a chilled thing to say? I’m not trying to diss you or anything.”

Gazzer simply smirked and returned to his push-ups.

“Wouldn’t doing our washing-up individually be a bit silly, David?” said Kelly.

“And why would that be, Kelly?” David opened his eyes and fixed Kelly with a soft, gentle, tolerant smile that was about as soft, gentle and tolerant as a rattlesnake.

“Well, because… Because…”

“Please don’t get me wrong. I feel it’s really important that you feel able to say to me that I’m stupid, but why?”

“I didn’t mean… I mean, I didn’t think…” Kelly said no more.

David closed his eyes once more and returned to the beauty of his inner thoughts.

Hamish, the junior doctor, the man who did not wish to be noticed, made one of his rare contributions to the conversation.

“I don’t like house rotas,” he said. “I had five years of communal living when I was a student. I know your sort, Layla. Next you’ll be fining me an egg for not replacing the bogroll when I finish it.”

“Oh, so it’s you that does that, is it?” said Dervla.

“I was giving an example,” said Hamish hastily.

“I’ll tell you what’s worse than a bogroll finisher,” Jazz shouted, leaping into the conversation with eager enthusiasm: “a draper! The sort of bastard who finishes the roll, all except for a single sheet , which he then proceeds to drape over the empty tube!”

Jazz may have been a trainee chef, but that was just a job, not a vocation. It was not what he wanted to do with his life at all. Jazz wanted to be a comedian. That was why he had come into the house. He saw it as a platform for a career in comedy. He knew that he could make his friends laugh and dreamt of one day making a rich and glamorous living out of this ability. Not a stand-up, though; what he wanted to be was a wit . A raconteur, a clever bastard. He wanted to be on the panel of a hip game show and trade inspired insults with the other guys. He wanted to be a talking head on super-cool TV theme nights, cracking top put-downs about ex-celebrities. He wanted to host an award ceremony . That was Jazz’s ambition, to be one of that elite band of good old boys who made their living out of just saying brilliant things right off the cuff . He wanted to be hip and funny and wear smart suits and be part of the Zeitgeist and just take the piss out of everything.

First, however, Jazz needed to get noticed. He needed people to see what a cracking good bloke and dead funny geezer he was. Since entering the house he had been looking for opportunities to work his ideas for material into the conversation. The mention of empty toilet rolls had been a gift.

“The draper is a toilet Nazi!” Jazz cried. “He doesn’t have to replace the roll, no, ’cos it ain’t finished yet, is it? He’s left just enough for the next bloke’s fingers to go straight through and right up his arse!”

Jazz’s outburst was met with a surprised silence, not least perhaps because he had chosen to deliver most of it directly into one of the remote cameras that hung from the ceiling.

“You don’t even know if they’ll broadcast it, Jazz,” said Dervla.

“Gotta keep trying, babes,” Jazz replied. “Billy Connolly used to gig to seagulls when he was a Glasgow docker.”

“Look! Please!” Layla protested. “Can we please just chill! We are trying to organize a rota.”

“Why don’t we just take it easy and see what happens?” said Hamish. “Things will get done, they always do.”

“Yes, Hamish, they will get done by people like me and Layla,” said Dervla, the soft poetry of her voice becoming just a little less soft and poetic, “after which people like you will say, ‘See, look, I told you things would get done,’ but the point will be that you didn’t do them.”

“Whatever,” Hamish replied, returning to his book. “Make a rota if you want. I’m in.”

“You see, sir,” said Hooper, pressing pause once more, “Hamish backs off, he doesn’t want to be noticed. Only the noticed get nominated.”

Coleridge was confused. “Didn’t Hamish go to the confession box and say that his ambition was to have sex before he left the house?”

“That’s him – the doctor.”

“Well, wouldn’t saying something like that get him noticed?”

Hooper sighed. “That’s different, sir, the confession box is for the public . Hamish needs to be a bit saucy in there so that if he does get nominated for eviction by the housemates , the public won’t want to evict him because he says he’s going to have sex on television.”

“But surely that would be an excellent reason for evicting him,” Coleridge protested.

“Not to most people, sir.”

The shrugs of the rest of the group indicated that Layla and Dervla had won the day, and since the inmates of the house were allowed neither pencil nor paper Jazz, drawing on his training as a chef, suggested that they make the rota grid out of spaghetti.

“Spag sticks to walls,” he said. “That’s how you check it’s done. You chuck it at the wall and if it sticks it’s done.”

“Well, that’s fahkin’ stupid, Jazz,” said Gazzer. “I mean, then you’d have to scrape your dinner off the wall, wouldn’t you?”

“You don’t throw all of it, you arsehole, just a strand or two.”

“Oh, right.”

“Jazz lightly boils some spaghetti,” said Andy the narrator, “and makes a rota grid on the wall.”

“Bitching,” said Jazz, admiring his handiwork. “Now each of us can be represented by grains of boiled rice. The starch will make them stick.”

“Wicked!” shouted Moon. “We can each personalize our grains, like them weird fookers in India or wherever who do rice sculptures. I saw it on Discovery, they do all this incredible tiny detail and the really, really philosophical thing about it is, it’s too fookin’ small to see?”

“Well, that’s just fahkin’ stupid, isn’t it?” Gazzer opined.

“It’s not! It’s a fookin’ philosophical point, ain’t it? Like if a tree falls in a forest but nobody hears it. Did it make a noise or whatever. These blokes don’t do it for you or me. They decorate grains of rice for God.”

“You’ve lost me.”

“That’s because at the end of the day you’re dead thick, you are, Garry. You think you’re not, but you are.”

They all began to discuss how they could individualize their grains of rice, and it was at this point that Woggle spoke up from his corner. “People, I have yet to speak, and I think that this domestic fascism is totally divisive. The only appropriate and equitable method of hygiene control is to allow work patterns to develop via osmosis.”

They all looked at Woggle.

“Listen, guy, I have to tell you,” said Jazz. “The only thing developing via osmosis on you is mould.”