Dead Famous

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.”

DAY THIRTY-ONE. 3.10 p.m.

“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.”

DAY FOUR. 2.20 p.m.

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.”

Layla tried to be reasonable. “Surely, Woggle, you’re not saying that any type of group organization is fascism?”

“Yes, I am.”

There was a pause while the nine people who were trapped in a small house with this creature from the black latrine took in the significance of his answer. They were going to have to live with a man who considered organizing the washing-up tantamount to invading Poland.

Woggle took the opportunity of their stunned silence to press his advantage. “All structures are self- corrupting.”

“What are you talking about, guy?” said Jazz. “Because I have to tell you, man, you are sounding like a right twat.”

“Centrally planned and rigidly imposed labour initiatives rarely produce either efficient results or a relaxed and contented workforce. Look at the Soviet Union, look at the London Underground.”

“Woggle,” Layla was now sounding slightly shrill, “there are ten of us here and all I’m saying is that in order that the house stays nice it would be a good idea to rotate the housework.”

“What you are saying, sweet lady,” Woggle replied in his irritating nasal tone, “is that a person can only be trusted to act responsibly if he or she is ordered to do so.”

“I am so going to hate you,” said Jazz, speaking for the group.

“In the greater scheme of things,” Woggle said, “within the positive and the negative energy of creation, hate is merely the other half of love, for every season has its time. Therefore in terms of the universe as a whole, actually, you love me.”

“I fucking don’t,” said Jazz.

“Yes, you do,” said Woggle.

“I fucking don’t!” said Jazz.

“You do,” said Woggle.

Woggle never gave up.

DAY FIVE. 9.00 a.m.