Ben Elton - Dead Famous

Kelly did not look as if she was trying to be horrid, but it certainly came across that way.

“I mean, if you have such a great time with him, and learn so much, what are you doing in here? You might be in here for nearly two and a half months. How old is he?”

“Nearly four.”

Garry was trying to work out what was going on. Was this woman criticizing his heartfelt confessional? Surely that was against the rules?

“Well, I think you’re mad, then,” Kelly continued. “I mean, at that age he’ll be changing every day. You’re going to miss it.”

“Yeah, I know that, Kelly, that’s fahking obvious. I might even miss his birthday and I’m gonna be dead choked up -”

“So what are you doing in here, then?” Kelly repeated.

“Well, because… Because…”

Now Coleridge could contain his frustration no longer. He almost shouted at the screen, which was very unlike him. “Well, come on, lad! Be honest, why don’t you, for once in your life? Surely it’s obvious! Because you have a right to be in that damned stupid house. You have a right to do exactly as you please. To lead an entirely selfish and irresponsible life while wallowing in the mawkish sentimentality of fatherhood when you feel like it! Come on, lad! Be a man! Answer the girl.”

“Sir,” said Trisha. “Shut up.” She stopped, shocked at her audacity.

“I’m sorry, sir, I…”

“I did not hear anything, constable,” said Coleridge quietly, resolving once more to try to contain himself.

On the screen Garry was still lost for words.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Kelly continued. “I’m not knocking you for having a kid or nothing like that. My sister’s got two by different blokes and they’re brilliant. I just think, you know, if you do have a kid, shouldn’t you be out there trying to look after it? Instead of sitting in here. That’s all. I mean, only seeing as how you love him so much.”

Garry, normally so quick with a clever line and a put-down, was at a loss. “Well, as it happens, Kelly,” he said finally, “I’m doing this for him.”

“How’s that work, then?” said Kelly.

“To make him proud of me.”

“Oh, I see.”

On the following evening’s edition of House Arrest Dr Ranulf Aziz, the show’s resident TV psychologist, gave his opinion for the benefit of the viewers.

“See Garry’s body language, now his shoulders hunched, his jaw set, this is a classic quasi-confrontational stance, with overtones of semi-concealed malice and undertones of mental violence. We see it mirrored in the animal kingdom when a great beast is denied access to the best portion of the kill. Garry’s arms are firmly folded, just as a lion or a tiger might shift its weight to its rear haunches, demonstrating current passivity but a willingness to attack violently and with extreme rage.”

Chloe, the sparkly, spunky, batty, booby House Arrest babe, put on her intelligent face. “So you’re saying Gazzer’s a bit naffed off?”

“That is indeed what I’m saying, Chloe. Gazzer is a bit naffed off big-time.”

Gazzer was more than naffed off. He was speechless with rage, his heart and soul were a boiling, bubbling pit of hurt and anger.

He covered it well, in that he only looked furious. “Yeah, well, whatever,” he said.

“I didn’t mean to say anything, Gazz,” Kelly replied. “You know, I’m just saying, that’s all.”

“Yeah, right, whatever,” Garry said again. “Who wants a cup of tea, then?” He turned away from the group but there was no escape from the cameras, and a hot-head followed him to where the kettle was. There were tears in Garry’s eyes and he was biting his lip so hard that a thin line of blood could be seen emerging.

How dare she? It was incredible. It wasn’t his fault that him and the mother didn’t get on any more. What was he supposed to do, camp outside their house twenty-four hours a day? He had to have a life, didn’t he?

He did love his kid. She had no right. No right at all.

Layla had been back at work for only an hour when she left again.

Back at work? It was incredible. Terrible. Devastating.

During all the time she had been in the house, and indeed ever since she had received the thrilling news that she had been selected to join the House Arrest team, Layla had hardly dared to think of what she would be doing three days after leaving. Of course, she had allowed herself to dream a little and in her wildest fantasies had imagined herself juggling offers to model gorgeous clothes and to present exciting television programmes about beauty products and alternative culture. In her worst moments of fear and doubt she had feared being lampooned in the tabloids and having to go on radio chat shows to defend her dippy-hippie ways. What she never ever imagined, however, was that she would be going back to work.

The brutal fact was that nobody was interested in her. The story of Woggle’s rise and spectacular fall had been the Peeping Tom story of the first fortnight, and now even that was becoming old news. The show had moved on. Layla had been useful to the press only in so much as she could talk about Woggle, and now that this one small nugget of notoriety had disappeared, she was just the beautiful but vain hippie one who got chucked out first.

The one who wrote shit poetry. The one who was obviously entirely and completely absorbed in her own beauty and wonderfulness.

That was how Peeping Tom had presented her, when they presented her at all. As a snooty, stupid cow whose one redeeming feature was that she was highly shaggable. However, since the Woggle story had placed matters of the heart firmly on the Peeping Tom back-burner, even that tainted card had been totally underplayed.

Added to all of this was the fact that Layla’s final act in the house had been to go into the confession box and to tell the world that she had clusters of septic flea bites around her anus. This had been the sole snippet of Layla’s last rant that Geraldine had chosen to broadcast, and it considerably dampened her immediate sexual allure on the outside.

Layla had gone into the house with a chance of stardom and she had emerged just two weeks later as a desperate wannabe who had turned into a sad loser. Even her friends were looking at her differently.

“Couldn’t you have stopped the others from being quite so mean to Woggle?” the more radical of them said. “I mean, in a way he was right. What is the difference between a fox and a flea?”

“I think you should have let David read your poem for you when he offered,” her mother said. “I’m afraid that refusing did look rather precious, dear.”

Layla felt that her life was ruined, and for what? Nothing. She was despised and, more pressingly, she was broke. Peeping Tom did not pay its contestants (except the winner). They were given a small stipend to maintain their rent or mortgages while they were in the house, but that was it. Ex-contestants were expected to fend for themselves, but the only offers of paid employment that Layla had received since leaving the house were to pose nude for men’s magazines. In the end, with weekly shopping to be done and bills to be paid, she had no choice but to ask for her old job back, which had been as a shop girl in a designer clothes shop.

“What do you want to come back for?” the manager said, astonished at Layla’s enquiry. “You’re famous, you’ve been on telly, you must be rolling in it.”

Nobody believed that Layla, who had been on telly every night for a fortnight, could possibly need a job in a shop.

But she did, and they were happy to take her back, thrilled to have a famous person working for them. Thrilled, that was, until they found themselves with a shop full of idiots with nothing better to do than snigger from behind the dress racks at somebody who had been on the television.