Ben Elton - Dead Famous

“Not me,” said Hamish, “I believe in science.”

“Yeah,” Garry agreed, “although religion is good for kiddies, I think. I mean, you’ve got to tell them something, haven’t you?”

“I’m quite interested in Eastern religions,” said Moon. “For instance, I reckon that Dalai Lama is a fookin’ ace bloke, because with him it’s all about peace and serenity, ain’t it? And at the end of the day, fair play to him because I really really respect that.”

“What sort of science do you believe in, then, Hamish?” Dervla asked.

“The Big Bang Theory, of course, what else?” Hamish replied pompously. “They have telescopes so powerful nowadays that they can see to the very edges of the universe, to the beginning of time. They know to within a few seconds when it all began.”

“And what was there before it all began, then?” asked Moon.

“Ah,” said Hamish. “You see, everybody asks that.”

“I wonder why.”

“Yeah, Hamish,” Jazz taunted. “What was there before?”

“There was nothing there before,” said Hamish loftily. “Not even nothing. There was no space and no time.”

“Sounds like in here,” Jazz replied.

“Fook all that, Hamish, it’s bollocks.”

“It’s science , Moon. They have evidence.”

“I don’t see what you’re arguing about,” said Dervla. “It seems to me that accepting the Big Bang theory or any other idea doesn’t preclude the existence of God.”

“So do you believe in him, then?”

“Well, not him . Not an old man with a big beard sitting in a cloud chucking thunderbolts about the place. I suppose I believe in something , but I don’t hold with any organized religion. I don’t need some rigid set of rules and regulations to commune with the God of my choice. God should be there for you whether you’ve read his book or not.”

Coleridge and Trisha had caught this conversation on the net. The House Arrest webcast played constantly in the incident room now.

“I should have arrested that girl for obstruction,” he said. “There’s one young lady who could do with a few more rules and regulations.”

“What’s she done now?” said Trisha. “I thought you liked her.”

“For heaven’s sake, Patricia, did you hear her? ‘The God of my choice.’ What kind of flabby nonsense is that?”

“I agreed with her, actually.”

“Well, then, you’re as silly and as lazy as she is! You don’t choose a god, Patricia. The Almighty is not a matter of whim! God is not required to be there for you ! You should be there for him !”

“Well, that’s what you think, sir, but -”

“It is also what every single philosopher and seeker after truth in every culture has believed since the dawn of time, constable! It has always been commonly supposed that faith requires some element of humility on the part of the worshipper. Some sense of awe in the smallness of oneself and the vastness of creation! But not any more! Yours is a generation that sees God as some kind of vague counsellor! There to tell you what you want to hear, when you want to hear it, and to be entirely forgotten about in-between times! You have invented a junk faith and you ask it to justify your junk culture!”

“Do you know what, sir? I think if you’d been around four hundred years ago you’d have been a witch-burner.”

Coleridge was taken aback. “I think that’s unfair, constable, and also unkind,” he said.

The brief conversation around the dinner table had died out as perfunctorily as it had begun, and the housemates had returned to the uncomfortable contemplation of their own thoughts.

What could possibly be going on out there?

They speculated endlessly, but they did not know . They were cut off, at the centre of this mighty drama and yet playing no part in it. Not surprisingly, they had begun to turn detective, conjuring up endless theories in their own minds. Occasionally they took their thoughts to the confession box.

“Look, Peeping Tom,” said Jazz on one such occasion. “This is probably really stupid. I never even thought to say anything about it till now, I just think maybe I ought to say it so you can tell the police, and then it’s done, right? Because I reckon it ain’t nothing anyway. It’s just I was in the hot tub with Kelly and David. I think it was about the beginning of the second week and Kelly whispered something in David’s ear that freaked him out. I think she said, ‘I know you,’ and he didn’t like it at all. It did his head in big time. Then she said the weirdest thing. I don’t know what, but I think she said, pardon my French, ‘Fuck Orgy Eleven’, and he was polaxed, man. That, he did not like.”

“Great,” said Hooper, who had now joined Trisha at the computer. “Two weeks staring at those bloody tapes. We wrestle one piss-poor clue out of the whole thing, and now it turns out this bastard knew about it all along anyway.”

“Well, at least he left it till now to tell us,” said Trisha, “and gave you the satisfaction of working it out for yourself.”

“I’m thrilled.”

Hooper may not have been thrilled, but everybody else was, because it took the press, who were also monitoring the Internet, all of five minutes to find out what Fuck Orgy Eleven was, and of course who Boris Pecker was. The news of this juicy development hit the papers the following morning, to the delight of the legions of House Arrest fans. David’s downfall was complete.

It was eviction day, but many long hours would have to pass before the excitement of the evening. As usual the Peeping Tom production team had been racking their brains trying to think of things for the housemates to do. It wasn’t that interest in the show was waning, far from it. House Arrest remained the single most watched show on the planet. Geraldine had just brokered a worldwide distribution deal for the following week’s footage of US$45 million. It was more a matter of professional pride. Peeping Tom knew that it was running a freak show, but, freak show or not, it was still a television programme and they were responsible for it. The general feeling at the production meetings was that some artistic effort was required, if only for form’s sake. The week’s task had been a success. Geraldine had challenged the housemates to create sculptures of each other, and this inspired thought, with all its possibilities for psychological analysis, had provoked an incident of genuine spontaneous drama. An incident that once more confounded the sceptics who thought that House Arrest had run out of shocks.

The trouble started when Dervla returned from her second visit to the police station. She was tired and upset after her grilling from Coleridge. Then there had been all the gawpers and reporters outside the house, screaming at her, asking if she had killed Kelly, and if it had been a sex thing. And finally there had been the looks of doubt and suspicion on the faces of her fellow housemates when she re-entered the house. Even Jazz looked worried.

All in all, she was in no mood for jokes, so when she noticed that Garry had placed a kitchen knife in the hand of his half-finished representation of her, she flipped.

“You bastard!” Dervla screamed, white with fury. “You utter, utter bastard.”

“It was a fahking joke, girl!” said Garry, laughing. “Joke? Remember them? After all, you are the coppers’ favourite, love!”

At which point Dervla slapped him across the face with such force that Garry toppled backwards over the orange couch.

“Fahk that!” said Garry, leaping up, tears of pain and anger in his eyes. “Nobody slaps the Gaz, not even a bird, all right? I intend to give your arse a right proper spanking, you nasty little Paddy bitch!”