Dead famous by Ben Elton

the full business, never rape, but plenty enough. A year it went on until one day I told my ma, that cow. I can say it now because she’s dead. I never thought she’d believe her brother and not me, but he was a powerful man in the local community, I suppose, a doctor. And he had friends, counsellors, other doctors and the like, and between them they managed to make it all look my fault. I was a nasty lying little slut and a dangerous fantasist to boot. Maybe it woulda’ been different if me dad had been around, but God knows where he is. God knows who he is.’
    ‘They managed to get you committed?’ Dervla asked, astonished.
    ‘Yeah, you wouldn’t have thought it could happen, would you? To a young teenage girl, in our day and age, but it did, and I got put away for trying to tell the world that I’d been touched up by my uncle.’ There was silence in the room. For the first time since they had all entered the house, nobody had anything to say. The silence was echoed in the monitoring bunker, where Bob Fogarty, Pru, his assistant editor, various production managers and all their Pas were stunned.
    ‘That is incredible,’ said Fogarty.
    ‘Yes, it is, isn’t it?’ Said the voice of Geraldine Hennessy.
    ‘An incredible load of bollocks.’ They turned round in surprise. Nobody had noticed Geraldine enter the bunker, but in fact she had been watching for some time. She had come on from dinner with her current boyfriend in tow, a beautiful nineteen-year-old dancer whom she had met backstage at the Virgin summer pop festival.
    ‘I never thought Moon would be the one to go for the lying trick, I really didn’t. I must say I’m impressed.’
    ‘She’s lying?’ The various editors and Pas asked in astonishment.
    ‘Of course she’s lying, you stupid bunch of cunts. Do you really thing I’d put an abused kid out of a loony hospital into my happy little game show? Bollocks! Woggle’s as mad as I go. That bald bitch’s mum and dad are alive and well and living in Rusholme. He’s a tobacconist, she works in a dry cleaner’s.’ There was great relief in the bunker at this and also excitement. It seemed that perhaps the game inside the house might turn out to be more interesting than they had feared.
    ‘Look at her smirking to herself ‘cos it’s dark and the others can’t see,’ Geraldine said, pointing at one of the remote camera feeds.
    ‘She knows we can see, though, oh yes! She’s having a laugh, isn’t she? She knows the public loves a stirrer. You get much more famous being naughty than nice. Get me a coffee, will you, Darren? Use the machine in my office, not the shite this lot drink.’ The impossibly beautiful nineteen-year-old boy grumpily stirred his perfect body and went off to do as he was bidden.
    ‘Lucky you did your research, Geraldine,’ Fogarty remarked.
    ‘If you didn’t know Moon was lying I imagine we’d all be pretty nervous now.’
    ‘I’d have known anyway,’ Geraldine replied pompously.
    ‘Those idiot proles in there might manage to manipulate each other, possibly even the public, but not me, mate.’
    ‘You think you would have guessed she was lying even if you didn’t know?’
    ‘Of course I would. That woman’s never been near a mental hospital in her life. She’s watched too many films, that’s all. People don’t scream and shriek in those places. If they do they get sedated pretty fucking sharpish, let me tell you, and the only grabbing and touching that goes on is by the nurses. Mental hospitals are quiet at night. All you can hear is weeping, shuffling and wanking.’ For a moment Geraldine had a faraway look in her eye. To her assembled staff she seemed almost human. The next moment she was herself again.
    ‘Right, package all that stuff up. I’m not using it now, I’m concentrating on Woggle. Besides, I’m not having some bald cunt like Moon influencing the public this early on. I influence the public, not the bloody inmates. Keep it, though. Could