Dead Famous

The three police officers watched as Layla disappeared behind the baying crowd, heading straight for obscurity.

“I think we should definitely talk to her,” Coleridge said. “There’s a lot of anger there and we need to know more about it.”

“Besides which,” observed Hooper, “she knows them all better than we ever will. Perhaps she has a theory.”

“Everybody’s got a theory,” Coleridge replied ruefully, “except us.”

On the screens the remaining housemates still looked shell-shocked.

“Well, O hunters and killers,” Woggle said through a broken-toothed smile, “the people sided with life over death and light over darkness. It appears that the revolution beginneth.”

David got to his feet.

“You’re right there, Woggle. I’m going to have a word with Peeping Tom.”

DAY FOURTEEN. 10.45 p.m.

“I’m fookin’ coming with yez,” said Moon.

David and Moon stormed into the confession box together, where David made it clear that he had drawn the same conclusion that Layla had done earlier in the evening.

“You’ve betrayed us, Peeping Tom,” he said. “You know we did our best with Woggle. But we saw the banners out there and the people all shouting for him. They think we’re shits.”

“It’s not a question of betrayal,” Peeping Tom replied, Peeping Tom being Geraldine, of course, who was frantically scribbling down her replies and handing them to her “voice”, a quiet, gentle, soothing lady named Sam, who normally did voiceovers for washing-up liquid commercials.

“The public have simply seen something in Woggle that they find attractive,” the soothing voice continued.

“They find him attractive because that’s how you must have made him look!” David snarled. “I’m a professional, I’m in the business, I know your tricks. Well, let me tell you I’ve had enough! I didn’t come in here to be manipulated and made a fool of. I want out. You can get me a taxi because I’m leaving,” he said.

“Me fookin’ too!” added Moon. “And I reckon the rest’ll go too, and then all you’ll be left with is the plague pit with Woggle in it. It’s fookin’ obvious you’re taking the piss.”

DAY THIRTY-FOUR. 10.25 p.m.

Hooper pressed pause. “This is very interesting, sir. None of this stuff was ever broadcast. I had absolutely no idea that the inmates were so sussed out to what was going down.”

“Sussed out to what was going down?”

“It means…”

“I know what it means, sergeant. I’m not an imbecile. I was just wondering if you’d given any thought at all to how ugly it sounds?”

“No, sir, actually I hadn’t. Would you like me to hand in my warrant card for using inelegant sentences in the course of an investigation?”

DAY FOURTEEN. 10.46 p.m.

“Walking out would be very foolish. You would be sacrificing the chance of winning the half-million-pound prize,” Peeping Tom said, and Sam put every ounce of her ability to soothe into each syllable.

“I don’t care,” David said. “Like I said, I know this business. We’re just a bunch of stooges to Woggle’s funny man. I came in here to get the chance to show the world who I am, but you’ve turned it into a freak show, an endurance test, and I don’t want to play any more.”

“Me fookin’ neither,” said Moon.

There was another pause while Peeping Tom considered a reply. “Give us two days,” the soothing voice said finally. “He’ll be out.”

“Two days?” David replied. “Don’t lie to me. There isn’t another eviction for a week.”

“Give us two days,” Peeping Tom repeated.

DAY THIRTY-FOUR. 10.30 p.m.

“That’s amazing,” said Trisha. “Geraldine Hennessy must have known about Woggle all along. It’s obvious she had it ready up her sleeve.”

“The sly bitch!” Hooper agreed. “She said she got sent those clippings anonymously.”

“Kindly explain what you’re talking about and please don’t refer to our witnesses as bitches.”

“None of what we’ve just seen was broadcast, sir. We’ve only seen it because we impounded the tapes.”

“I’m amazed it wasn’t wiped,” Hooper added.

“That’ll be Fogarty. He hates Geraldine Hennessy.”

“What are you talking about?” Coleridge demanded once more.

“You must be the only person in the country who doesn’t know, sir. Woggle was wanted by the police. But it only emerged on day fifteen. It’s obvious now that Geraldine Hennessy knew all along; that’s why she was able to promise to get him out.”

DAY FIFTEEN. 9.00 p.m.

“I simply cannot believe that they have just made the whole thing up about Woggle,” Layla told the assembled press on the morning after her departure. She had spent all of the preceding night looking at tapes of the show and press cuttings collected for her by her family. It had been a grim business. She discovered that what coverage there had been of her had made her look like a snooty, self-obsessed airhead. Much of that impression had been given in the first handful of shows, for increasingly during the second week Woggle appeared to be the only issue of any real interest in the house.

“It was so not all about Woggle,” Layla protested. “There were nine other people in that house – interesting, strong, spiritual, beautiful people. It has fallen to me to speak up for all of us. We have spent our time under House Arrest interacting, talking, loving, hugging, being irritated and inspired by each other. Woggle, on the other hand, spent his time in the house being a dirty and unreasonable slob and spreading disease, and it is so not all about him.”

But as far as the public were concerned it was, and that morning even more so, because that was the morning that Geraldine put her Woggle policy into drastic reverse.

The sensational news became public about halfway through Layla’s press conference, and as it swept through the room Layla saw the interest in her and anything she might have to say diminish very rapidly to zero.

Geraldine had had to act, and act quickly. Woggle had been a colossal success, but he was now in danger of being an even more colossal failure. If the other inmates walked out now, as they were perfectly entitled to do,