on Trevor’s career, and it was the beginning of the end of our relationship really, because it’s hard to recover from that kind of thing. So the scandal claimed Trevor, a brilliant and innocent nitwit who was loved by the radio show listeners. The first negative consequences of fame had emerged. I learned then that it is a dangerous game and like all games there will be losers – in this case, I lost a friend and the tabloids found a controversial anti-hero and quietly awaited further opportunities for annihilation.
†
Chapter 7
Take Me to Your Leader
Of course though, a career in show business isn’t all tabloid scandals and seeking shelter from the clumsy fist of Scottish law; no, at some point you have to actually make some television programmes, and with the success of Big Brother’s Big Mouth, E4 were double keen to give me enough rope. Is there some grit at my essence, some mark that I bear that prevents me escaping my tawdry origins? This I consider even as I ascend spectacularly like a spaceship above the screams and the applause and the roar, for distinctly I can hear the hum-drum tick-tock terror of fate tapping his watch and reminding me that everything NASA ever flung at the moon is now a bedraggled shelter for crabs and gulls, littering the ocean like David Bowie’s crashed caravan. After fifteen seconds of fame Trevor Lock, the world’s least sexually threatening man, had been dragged off to Belmarsh. “This can’t be the work of man,” I thought. “The Furies have been sent to claim me, the gutter’s henchmen. What’s next – will my dear old mum be banged up for the Birmingham pub bombings?” Mind you, she’s as guilty as them what did the stir for it.
I’d been scuttling around the foothills of fame for years. I’d done more pilots than a Virgin hostess, but this one had to be different – for a start it had to progress beyond the pilot stage and actually become a TV show, because now I was a face, a commodity, I had fans, a haircut, catchphrases – I’d bought my mum a car. There could be no more cock-ups. May I take this opportunity to say that although a lot of talented folk work on telly there’s an awful lot of rhubarb goes on. I’d sit in glass-walled meetings in Shepherd’s Bush (Auntie Beeb) and Horseferry Rd (C4) nodding along to doctrine from a commissioner – (no Bat-phone though), and think, “Well this all sounds very sensible – all these tips and rules and requirements – but how come whenever I turn on my TV set there’s naught but winkey-water to occupy my eye-hole?”
I had two ideas to launch me from the adrenalised-spaz-grip of reality TV and into my own stratosphere. One was a Louis Theroux-style immersive documentary and the other was a studio-based audience participation show. I like to be absorbed in the subject of my work regardless of how loopy it may be. Months before, working with Damon Beesley and Iain Morris (who have now blessedly found their rightful place in the firmament with the excellent Inbetweeners), I’d made a film with the members of a cult known as the Jesus Christians. Now if ever there was a tautologous adjective to emphasise a noun it is this one. “Ah, but we’re the Jesus Christians.” Fucking hell! How bloody Christian do you want to be? I’d say that once you announce yourself as Christians the involvement of Jesus is pretty explicit. “It’s to distinguish us from the marzipan Christians and the Terry Christians and the ‘One Up the Bum No Harm Done’ Christians.” Oh good. You might as well call yourself the Christian Christians.
Well, the problems with this bunch of doe-eyed do-gooders alas did not end with their inefficient naming strategy. There were only five of them and they travelled the world in a van like the KLF or Scooby Doo’s idiot mates, trying to dole out kidneys to an unsuspecting world. Yep. They would whip out a kidney as soon as look at you and give it to someone more deserving. Now organ
†
Chapter 7
Take Me to Your Leader
Of course though, a career in show business isn’t all tabloid scandals and seeking shelter from the clumsy fist of Scottish law; no, at some point you have to actually make some television programmes, and with the success of Big Brother’s Big Mouth, E4 were double keen to give me enough rope. Is there some grit at my essence, some mark that I bear that prevents me escaping my tawdry origins? This I consider even as I ascend spectacularly like a spaceship above the screams and the applause and the roar, for distinctly I can hear the hum-drum tick-tock terror of fate tapping his watch and reminding me that everything NASA ever flung at the moon is now a bedraggled shelter for crabs and gulls, littering the ocean like David Bowie’s crashed caravan. After fifteen seconds of fame Trevor Lock, the world’s least sexually threatening man, had been dragged off to Belmarsh. “This can’t be the work of man,” I thought. “The Furies have been sent to claim me, the gutter’s henchmen. What’s next – will my dear old mum be banged up for the Birmingham pub bombings?” Mind you, she’s as guilty as them what did the stir for it.
I’d been scuttling around the foothills of fame for years. I’d done more pilots than a Virgin hostess, but this one had to be different – for a start it had to progress beyond the pilot stage and actually become a TV show, because now I was a face, a commodity, I had fans, a haircut, catchphrases – I’d bought my mum a car. There could be no more cock-ups. May I take this opportunity to say that although a lot of talented folk work on telly there’s an awful lot of rhubarb goes on. I’d sit in glass-walled meetings in Shepherd’s Bush (Auntie Beeb) and Horseferry Rd (C4) nodding along to doctrine from a commissioner – (no Bat-phone though), and think, “Well this all sounds very sensible – all these tips and rules and requirements – but how come whenever I turn on my TV set there’s naught but winkey-water to occupy my eye-hole?”
I had two ideas to launch me from the adrenalised-spaz-grip of reality TV and into my own stratosphere. One was a Louis Theroux-style immersive documentary and the other was a studio-based audience participation show. I like to be absorbed in the subject of my work regardless of how loopy it may be. Months before, working with Damon Beesley and Iain Morris (who have now blessedly found their rightful place in the firmament with the excellent Inbetweeners), I’d made a film with the members of a cult known as the Jesus Christians. Now if ever there was a tautologous adjective to emphasise a noun it is this one. “Ah, but we’re the Jesus Christians.” Fucking hell! How bloody Christian do you want to be? I’d say that once you announce yourself as Christians the involvement of Jesus is pretty explicit. “It’s to distinguish us from the marzipan Christians and the Terry Christians and the ‘One Up the Bum No Harm Done’ Christians.” Oh good. You might as well call yourself the Christian Christians.
Well, the problems with this bunch of doe-eyed do-gooders alas did not end with their inefficient naming strategy. There were only five of them and they travelled the world in a van like the KLF or Scooby Doo’s idiot mates, trying to dole out kidneys to an unsuspecting world. Yep. They would whip out a kidney as soon as look at you and give it to someone more deserving. Now organ
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