Ben Elton - Dead Famous

“Sir!” said Hooper. “We’re doing fourteen-hour days minimum to get through this! You have absolutely no right to extend them by constantly going off on one!”

There was an embarrassed silence, which lasted for the time it took for Coleridge to unwrap his Mars Bar. Hooper’s face was red. He was tired, angry and annoyed. Coleridge, who had had no idea he was being so irritating, was slightly sad.

“Well,” he said finally. “Let’s get on.”

“People under House Arrest, this is Chloe. Can you hear me? The first person to leave the house will be,” Chloe left a suitably dramatic pause, “… Layla.”

Layla looked like she had been hit in the face with a cricket bat, but nevertheless managed to enact the time-honoured ritual required from people in such situations.

“Yes!” she squeaked, punching the air as if she was pleased. “Now I can get back to my cat!”

“Layla, you have two hours to pack and say your goodbyes,” Chloe shouted, “when we will be back live for House Arrest ’s first eviction! See you then!”

Layla was stunned.

They were all stunned.

Even Woggle beneath his blanket was stunned. He had presumed like everyone else in the house (except Dervla) that his presence there had been evenly reported and, although he considered his conduct to be exemplary, he had not expected public sympathy. Years of sneers and contempt from almost everybody he met for almost everything he said and did had led Woggle to presume that the viewing public’s attitude to him would be the same as that of the four fascists who had stripped him in the garden and attacked him without any provocation.

But the public’s attitude wasn’t the same at all, they loved their little goblin, the traumatized troll. He was their pet, and although Woggle could have no idea of the dizzy heights to which his popularity had risen, he was astonished and thrilled enough simply to have avoided eviction.

He poked his head out of his blanket briefly. “Fuck you,” he said to the assembled inmates and then submerged himself once more beneath his cover.

Then Layla howled with anguish. She actually howled . The injustice of it all was clearly nearly unbearable. The tears streamed down her face as she rocked back and forth on the purple couch in an agony of self-pity. She could obviously not believe that the public had chosen Woggle over her! Woggle!

Layla went to the confession box to vent her spleen.

“You bastards!” she stormed. “It’s fucking obvious what you’ve done! Somehow you’ve made him the victim, haven’t you? You’ve been having a laugh and we’re the joke, aren’t we? I’m the joke! You know what Woggle’s like! What we’ve had to put up with! He doesn’t clean up, he doesn’t help out, he stinks like the rotting corpse of a dead dog’s arse! Everyone wanted him out, but you haven’t shown all that, have you? No! You can’t have done or he’d be going, not me!”

“If she’d shown a bit more spirit like that before, she wouldn’t have been nominated,” said Hooper, who had enjoyed watching Coleridge wincing at some of Layla’s choice of phrases.

“But she’s wrong about the eviction,” said Trisha. “Certainly, Peeping Tom skewed the coverage in Woggle’s favour, but everyone could still see what a slob he was. Layla would have been voted out whatever. The mistake the people who go on these shows make is to imagine that anybody actually cares about them. As far as we’re concerned, they’re just acts on the telly, to be laughed at.”

On screen Layla was beginning to break down. “I think some of my flea bites will leave scars, you bastards! The ones around my bottom have gone septic!”

“Ugh!” said Trisha.

“Too much information!” Hooper protested.

“If I do get ill I shall sue you,” Layla fulminated. “I swear I will! I’m going now, but one more thing: I know you won’t broadcast this, Geraldine Hennessy, but I think you’re a complete and utter shit and I will hate you for ever!”

“Hate you for ever,” Coleridge repeated. “That’s a long time, and it was only three weeks ago. I doubt she’d have got over it yet.”

On the screen Layla went into the girls’ bedroom to get her bag. Kelly joined her. “I’m really, really sorry, Layla,” Kelly said. “It must feel rotten.”

“No, no, it’s fine really…”

But then Layla broke down again, falling into Kelly’s arms and sobbing.

“Kelly is comforting Layla, but what Layla doesn’t know is that Kelly nominated her for eviction,” said the voice of Andy the narrator.

“They just love pointing it out when that happens,” Hooper remarked. “It’s the best bit of the show.”

“You have to be strong, right?” Kelly said, holding Layla close. “Be a strong woman, which is what you are.”

“That’s right, I am, I’m a strong, spiritual woman.”

“Go, girl. Love you.”

“Love you, Kelly,” said Layla. “You’re a mate.”

Then Layla went back into the living area and hugged everybody else, including, even, extremely briefly, Woggle.

Her hug with David lasted nearly a minute.

“The evictees always do that,” said Hooper. “Have a great big hug. Pretending they’re all big mates really.”

“I think while they’re doing it they mean it,” Coleridge said. “Young people live on the surface and for the moment. That’s just how it is these days.”

“You are so right, sir,” put in Trisha. “I’m twenty-five and I’ve never held a considered opinion or experienced a genuine emotion in my life.”

For a moment Coleridge was about to insist to Trisha that he was sure this was not the case, but then he realized she was being sarcastic.

“Layla, you have thirty seconds to leave the Peeping Tom house,” said Chloe’s voice on the television.

As she stepped out of the house Layla was bathed in almost impossibly bright light, which turned her and the house behind her bleach white. A huge bald security man in a padded bomber-jacket stepped forward and took her arm. He led her onto the platform of a firework-bedecked cherry picker which lifted her up and over the moat while the crowd cheered. Peeping Tom took great pride in its house exits; they turned them into what appeared to be huge parties. They bussed in crowds, let off fireworks and criss-crossed the air with search lights. As Layla was lifted high over the shrieking throng a rock band played live from the back of a lorry.

Then came the short limousine journey to the specially constructed studio and the live interview with Chloe, the beautiful, big-bosomed, ladette-style “face” of Peeping Tom. Chloe was no mere pretty face, however, like the girls who presented the more mainstream shows. No, Chloe was a pretty face with a tattoo of a serpent on her tummy and another of a little devil on her shoulder, which was of course much, much more real.

Chloe met Layla at the door of the limo. She looked rock-chick stunning in black leather trousers and a black leather bra, while Layla looked hippie-chick stunning in a tie-dye silk sarong and cropped silk singlet. The women hugged and kissed as if they were long-lost sisters instead of complete strangers, one of whom was paid to talk to the other.

The crowd went berserk. Literally berserk. They whooped, they hollered, they screamed, they waved their home-made placards. There was absolutely no provocation for this madness beyond the presence of television cameras and the well-established convention that this was how up-for-it young people were supposed to behave in the presence of television cameras.