have famous faces.’
Shit, shit, shit. They were all thinking Most Haunted and it’s so much worse. It’s like the walls of the big room are contracting, closing in on her like some medieval mechanism for the disposal of prisoners. Get me out of here.
12
All the reasons to be afraid
GRAYLE SHUTS HER eyes on an anguish it makes no sense to conceal. Opens them on Defford smiling, comfortably wedged in the corner by the door.
‘Go on, then, Grayle. Say it.’
‘ Big Brother? ’
‘No.’
‘What?’
‘It isn’t. Big Brother , as you might recall, started on Channel 4 and ran for several years, making celebrities out of ordinary people and real celebrities look ordinary – periodically, they’d run a series where all the Big Brother housemates were already famous, from the world of TV, pop music, sports, whatever.’
‘ Celebrity Big Brother .’
‘Indeed. It all got dumped when it lost its cutting edge, and was picked up by the more, er, populist, Channel 5.’
‘Leo, please call me precious, but I like to think I’ve become… well, a serious journalist, you know? And what—’
‘Bear with me.’
Defford puts up his hands, tells her it’s no secret that C4 have been looking for something new which would generate that same sense of mounting excitement – the tension, the unpredictability – that you got in the early days of Big Brother . But something deeper, more intelligent. More issue-led. If Big Brother was a hothouse atmosphere, imagine a coldhouse.
‘I don’t…’ Grayle hugs herself with sweatered arms, ‘… really need to imagine that.’
‘We’ll be getting the heating reconnected, but only as background. It’s no accident that the Big Brother House is always some modern module – cheap-looking, garish. Like a nursery school?’
‘Because the housemates have effectively become children again. No control over their own lives.’
‘It’s also full of two-way mirrors and false walls hiding the cameramen. So they can walk all around the action. We’re going to have to be much cleverer and subtler here, but we’ll do it, somehow. And we won’t be calling them housemates. Maybe settle for residents.’
Grayle thinks of the few times she’s seen the Big Brother show on TV, all those fame-hungry exhibitionists. Bad enough in an environment that looks like a kindergarten.
‘In Big Brother ,’ Defford says, ‘they don’t have much in common. Here, they will. They’ll just have radically different attitudes to it.’
He strolls over to the window, three panes of leaded lights separated by the stone mullions. A smear of winter foliage through old glass.
‘We started off with the idea of two extremes. Uri Geller, who bends spoons by stroking them and talks about cosmic forces. And Richard Dawkins, geneticist and aggressive atheist who I believed wanted to have signs on the sides of buses saying, There’s no God – live with it. Or words to that effect. Obviously we were unlikely to get either Dawkins or Geller but you see where I’m coming from.’
‘You’re looking for people who’re gonna totally abhor one another’s entire world view?’
‘Radical differences of opinion are and always will be at the very heart of unmissable TV.’
‘People who, like, resent and despise one another?’
‘I’m looking for healthy argument.’
‘Living together here? Seven days, seven nights? Night after night?’
‘During which one or two of them,’ Defford says, ‘might appear to have had… interesting experiences. Which some of the others will mercilessly scorn.’
‘How do you know that? About the experiences they might… appear to have had?’
Defford smiles.
‘Because we’ve picked the right people.’
‘You already know who they are?’
‘We’re down to a shortlist. I’ll give you a copy. Confidential. When you’re sworn in.’
She looks at him. He doesn’t smile.
‘More binding than the Official Secrets Act. More sinister than the
Shit, shit, shit. They were all thinking Most Haunted and it’s so much worse. It’s like the walls of the big room are contracting, closing in on her like some medieval mechanism for the disposal of prisoners. Get me out of here.
12
All the reasons to be afraid
GRAYLE SHUTS HER eyes on an anguish it makes no sense to conceal. Opens them on Defford smiling, comfortably wedged in the corner by the door.
‘Go on, then, Grayle. Say it.’
‘ Big Brother? ’
‘No.’
‘What?’
‘It isn’t. Big Brother , as you might recall, started on Channel 4 and ran for several years, making celebrities out of ordinary people and real celebrities look ordinary – periodically, they’d run a series where all the Big Brother housemates were already famous, from the world of TV, pop music, sports, whatever.’
‘ Celebrity Big Brother .’
‘Indeed. It all got dumped when it lost its cutting edge, and was picked up by the more, er, populist, Channel 5.’
‘Leo, please call me precious, but I like to think I’ve become… well, a serious journalist, you know? And what—’
‘Bear with me.’
Defford puts up his hands, tells her it’s no secret that C4 have been looking for something new which would generate that same sense of mounting excitement – the tension, the unpredictability – that you got in the early days of Big Brother . But something deeper, more intelligent. More issue-led. If Big Brother was a hothouse atmosphere, imagine a coldhouse.
‘I don’t…’ Grayle hugs herself with sweatered arms, ‘… really need to imagine that.’
‘We’ll be getting the heating reconnected, but only as background. It’s no accident that the Big Brother House is always some modern module – cheap-looking, garish. Like a nursery school?’
‘Because the housemates have effectively become children again. No control over their own lives.’
‘It’s also full of two-way mirrors and false walls hiding the cameramen. So they can walk all around the action. We’re going to have to be much cleverer and subtler here, but we’ll do it, somehow. And we won’t be calling them housemates. Maybe settle for residents.’
Grayle thinks of the few times she’s seen the Big Brother show on TV, all those fame-hungry exhibitionists. Bad enough in an environment that looks like a kindergarten.
‘In Big Brother ,’ Defford says, ‘they don’t have much in common. Here, they will. They’ll just have radically different attitudes to it.’
He strolls over to the window, three panes of leaded lights separated by the stone mullions. A smear of winter foliage through old glass.
‘We started off with the idea of two extremes. Uri Geller, who bends spoons by stroking them and talks about cosmic forces. And Richard Dawkins, geneticist and aggressive atheist who I believed wanted to have signs on the sides of buses saying, There’s no God – live with it. Or words to that effect. Obviously we were unlikely to get either Dawkins or Geller but you see where I’m coming from.’
‘You’re looking for people who’re gonna totally abhor one another’s entire world view?’
‘Radical differences of opinion are and always will be at the very heart of unmissable TV.’
‘People who, like, resent and despise one another?’
‘I’m looking for healthy argument.’
‘Living together here? Seven days, seven nights? Night after night?’
‘During which one or two of them,’ Defford says, ‘might appear to have had… interesting experiences. Which some of the others will mercilessly scorn.’
‘How do you know that? About the experiences they might… appear to have had?’
Defford smiles.
‘Because we’ve picked the right people.’
‘You already know who they are?’
‘We’re down to a shortlist. I’ll give you a copy. Confidential. When you’re sworn in.’
She looks at him. He doesn’t smile.
‘More binding than the Official Secrets Act. More sinister than the
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