Ben Elton - Dead Famous

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 manic-depressives 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 doctor’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. “Jump to it.”

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 hoity-toity little scrubbers like them holding back on the flesh. What did they think they were on telly for?