Dead Famous

Coleridge slipped the video into his home VCR and instantly found himself struggling to reduce the volume as the screaming, blaring frenzy of the opening credits filled his living room and no doubt shot straight upstairs to where his wife was trying to sleep.

“Big up to yez,” said the hip late-night girl, welcoming Geraldine on to the programme. “Cracking first week in the house. We like that.”

“Top telly that woman!” said the hip late-night guy. “Respect. Fair play to yez.”

“Go, Woggle, yeah!” said the girl. “We so like Woggle.”

“He da man!” said the guy. “Who da man?”

“He da man,” said the girl. “Woggle, he da man!” There was much cheering at this. The public loved Woggle.

“Amazing,” said Geraldine when the cheering had died down. “I mean, I thought he would be interesting and stir things up a bit, but I never realized he’d strike such a chord with the viewers.”

“Yeah, well, he’s like a sort of pet, isn’t he?” said the girl. “Like Dennis the Menace, or Animal from the Muppets or whatever.”

“I mean, you wouldn’t want to live with him yourself, but it’s top fun watching other people do it, big time!”

“Woggle, he da man!”

“Da top man. Respect! But the whole show is totally wicked,” the guy added quickly, “so fair play to all of the posse in the house!”

“Respect!”

“Kelly’s my girl! Ooojah ooojah!”

“You would fancy Kelly!” said the girl, punching her partner in the ribs. “Dervla’s easily the most beautiful.”

“Dervla’s beautiful, that is true, and she melts my ice cream big time, so fair play to her for that, but Kelly, well, Kelly has… something special.”

“Big knockers?”

“What can I tell you? It’s a boy thing.”

The boys in the audience let it be known that they agreed with this sentiment.

“And don’t we so hate David?” said the girl. “We so do hate him.”

“We so do not, not hate him,” added the guy.

There was much booing at the mention of David’s name, and the show’s producer dropped in a shot taken directly from the live Internet link to the house. David was sitting crosslegged on the floor playing his guitar, clearly thinking himself rather beautiful. There was more booing and laughter at this.

“Sad or what?” shrieked the hip girl.

Sipping his beer and watching all of this, three and a half weeks after it had been recorded, Coleridge was struck by how astonishingly brutal it was. The man on the screen had absolutely no idea that he was being jeered and ridiculed. It was as if the country had turned into one vast school playground with the public as bully.

“All right, that’s enough of that,” said the guy, clearly having an attack of conscience. “I’m sure his mum likes him.”

“Yeah. Big up to David’s mum! But can you please tell him to cut that hair?”

“And to stop playing that guitar!”

The interview passed on to the unexpected success of the third series so far.

“So you defied the snooties and the sneerers, and the show’s a huuuuugge hit,” said the guy, “which is quite a relief, Geri, am I right? Tell me I’m right.”

“You are so right,” said Geraldine, “and if I wasn’t a bird I’d say my balls were on the line with this one. I’ve sunk every penny I have into it. My savings and all of my severance pay from when I left the BBC. I’m the sole director of Peeping Tom Productions, mate, so if it fails I haven’t got anybody to blame but me.”

“Gutsy lady!” the girl enthused. “We like that! Respect!”

“Too right I’m a gutsy lady, girl,” said Geraldine. “I gave up a cushy job as controller of BBC1 to do the House Arrest thing, and everybody expected this third series to fall on its arse.”

“Yeah, Geri, you really went out on a limb leaving the Beeb,” the hip late-night guy said. “I know your name has often been mentioned as a possible future Director General.”

“Yes, I think they wanted to offer it to me,” she said, “but stuff that, I’m a programme maker, I ain’t spending my day kissing politicians like Billy here’s arse. I ain’t grown up yet.”

The camera pulled out to reveal Billy Jones, who was the other guest on The Clinic, and who was smiling indulgently. Billy was the Minister for Culture and had agreed to appear on The Clinic as part of the government’s strategy to reach out to youth.

“I regret greatly that I shan’t be having my arse kissed by a lady so charming as you, Geraldine,” Billy Jones said, and got a laugh.

“So, Billy,” said the girl, turning to him with a serious expression on her face. “How do you rate House Arrest, then? Top telly or pile of poo?”

“Oh, House Arrest is so top telly,” said the Minister of Culture. “No way is it a pile of poo.”

“And what about people who say that telly is dumbed down? That we need more, I don’t know, history programmes and classic drama-type stuff?”

“Well, certainly there is a place for history-type stuff and all that classic drama malarkey, but at the end of the day politicians, teachers and social workers need to be listening to young people, because I don’t think, right, that history and stuff is really very relevant to what young people are interested in today.”

“Big up to that,” said the hip late-night guy. “We like that!”

“Because at the end of the day,” Billy continued, “what politicians and teachers and stuff need to do is connect with what kids are really into, like the Internet. We think that the Internet and the web are terribly important, and of course these wicked experiments in reality TV like House Arrest.”

By the time the show was ending and the final band was being introduced, Coleridge had fallen asleep. He woke up to the vision of a sweating American skinhead wearing only board shorts and 90 per cent tattoo coverage shouting “I’m just a shitty piece of human garbage,” at the screen.

He decided it was time to go to bed. Geraldine had had a lucky escape with her show, that was clear. By rights, it seems, it should have been a flop.

David, on the other hand, had not been so lucky. He was the fall guy, the national joke, and Geraldine had made him so. If David had known this, Coleridge reflected, he might have been tempted to take some kind of revenge on Peeping Tom, but of course he could not have known, could he?

DAY THIRTY-THREE. 10.15 a.m.

The picture of Woggle on the map on the incident room wall was almost completely obscured by the numerous tapes that terminated on it. Trisha had just completed the pattern by running a ribbon to him from Dervla, with the words “pubic hair row” written on it.

Dervla had seemed so determined to be quiet and serene, so like the muse in an advert for Irish beer. But you couldn’t maintain that if you followed Woggle into the bathroom.