Chapter Four

CHAPTER FOUR -

I can tell you now. I was under contract not to say anything, but it’s all sorted now. I had been down to be one of the runners and riders in the next series of Celebrity Big Brother - well I had been until fate intervened. No really. As you probably know the producers sort out different categories they'd like to fill – what they call generic types - and then go about finding the people to fill the archetype. I was down to be "Bloke around 40, ethnic background, no hair, bad teeth, once promising career on the wane". Talk about method acting, it was a role I was born to play.

Bastards. I was this close - really - to getting the gig when they said they'd changed their mind and were going to give it to the bloke in East Enders who’s got the market stall next to Alfie. Apparently they said it was because he'd been on EastEnders it gave him a 'higher recognition factor'. Well, I said, I've visited the set of Albert Square and… he bloke who’s got the market stall next to Alfie? Blimey. "I've been on Kilroy too" I said but they weren't listening. Bastards. Think of the opportunities that've been snatched from my grasp. The appearances on This Morning, maybe even I could have got back that old Agony Ant column I used to do where I used to write about problems from the animals point of view. (As a column it didn't last long).

So anyway. Here we are. Standing on Platform 4 at the train station, ready to take part in Celebrity Train Journey, a light-hearted game in which a number of people you've never heard of - moi excepted - spend an afternoon and an unspecified portion of the evening trying to get through a train journey from Brighton to Birmingham. This was an idea they'd come up with, something they'd put together for the people who hadn't quite made it to the final of Celebrity Big Brother.
"It's like going in to the UEFA Cup when you don't quite make it in The Champions League" they said.

There's a woman opposite me who looks a dead ringer for The Queen. No, really. An absolute dead ringer. I saw her in the paper this morning shaking hands with David Beckham and... and this woman opposite is a dead ringer. It seems unlikely I know, but do you think she's put herself into this Celebrity Train Journey malarkey as a way of getting back on the public's side after all that butler stuff? Hah. We've just stopped at Oxford and a woman - not The Queen - has just got off the train. Another competitior falls by the wayside.
We've just passed Banbury and this bloke who looks just like Neil Morrissey has just got in and is sitting next to The Queen. They're talking. He's been on the train no time and they're talking. Do you think there's something going on? Is there maybe a Lookalikes Convention in Birmingham tonight?

Just as I was leaving the production office, I overheard the phone go. I was Caprice blowing out. I thought about it for a minute but... no. If it had been Les Dennis maybe I would have had a go, would have said something. But Caprice? Let's be honest. I don't suppose there was one of her boxes I could have ticked.

Which one of us will get off the train first? Which one of us will manage to stay on until Birmingham and win tonight's star prize - a night with Moby at the NEC? Ah yes, Moby. I wonder whether there was a Celebrity Big Brother archetype for Diminutive Christian vegan technohead? I could go for that next time. So, OK. The diminutive bit would be a bit hard to pull off and the Christian bit is historically iffy and vegan...

Now then. This might have been said before, but it's grim up north. I don't now why but whenever I take these train journeys up to somewhere in the north - t'north - it always seems to get darker and greyer the further I get from Brighton and the nearer I get to my destination. It seems like someone is turning the lights out, slowly. I don't know, It could be that this is just because I always travel in the late afternoon/early evening and that's what it does, get dark, but I don't know. Not convinced.

I've just been listening to Nick Cave's O'Malley's Bar and it's tempting, this idea of standing up and, one-by-one, taking out these people, just shooting them. Heroically taking their lives and putting the energy back in the pot. Sometimes I wish I'd been born an aristocrat. I think I'd have been a fantastic aristiocrat. All inate superiority and contempt for the masses. I'm like that anyway and I am one of the masses. How much more contemptuous could I be? One other thing, if I was an aristo, the first things to would get it would be bloody foxes. Dish out death and contempt in one go. One thing I wouldn't do is sit on the train like The Queenie over there. I don't care what they say about my family, nothing would get me out of that gilt-embossed carriage. Yeah, I'd like to see them try and pull that off: Celebrity Gilt-Embossed Carriage Journey.

The train is sitting outside Birmingham. Not doing anything much, just sitting. Fair enough, I suppose. This is a Brighton to Birmingham train that started at Gatwick Airport. (The announcer at Brighton Station had said, straight, "The 13.18 service to Manchester Picaddilly will be starting from Gatwick Airport. We apologise for any inconvenience".) No reason. Don't know why. Just fancied starting at Gatwick. Still, we're moving again. The good news is that I'm last man standing. It looks like - and where's Davina when you need her? - that I'm going to be the one to go and see Moby in Birmingham at the NEC. But first, and this is where the real-lie bonus comes in, it's to The Malmaison Hotel. No schmutter with this Reality TV lark.