Who Wants To Be?

Hello Mother? I am going to have to be very quiet. Very quiet indeed. And I may have to ring off at any moment, so don’t be alarmed should the line seem to go dead mid-sentence.

Hold on…. I think I hear someone now…no it’s OK. False alarm.

No Mother…. no…. I understand Mother, but this is the only way. I told you – I have been hoodwinked, and you know full well that I will not stand to be hoodwinked. I mean to take what is rightfully mine, and if that means lowering myself to the level of the common bandits who duped me, then so be it. I am doing this for us, remember?

I arrived at the studio at 9:45 am – plenty of time. While the other contestants were probably still gorging themselves on the free continental or cooked breakfast available at our hotel, I was sitting in the reception area at Carlton Television, answering questions at random from my ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire?’ quiz book, and sipping my glucose drink at regular 10-minute intervals.

Despite the fact that I had informed the heavy-set, coloured gentleman at the desk that I was here to participate as a contestant on ‘Millionaire’, and that he duly checked my name against a list, he continued to eye me suspiciously as I sat there, bothering no-one. Why the nerve! That he should be suspicious of me! I am not a racialist, but the way he strutted about in his uniform gave me the impression that he enjoyed the spurious sense of power afforded by his walkie-talkie, and his ridiculous epilates, and that he wished to rub my nose in it. On any other day, I would have given him a thorough dressing down. However, I wanted to retain my focus, so made my way to the refectory, where I might prepare myself without being gawped at.

After purchasing a limp ham sandwich, I sat down at the least filthy table, and noticed that there was a copy of ‘The Sun’ newspaper on the seat opposite me. Although I loathed myself for doing so, I proceeded to flick through it in the hope of picking up some tidbits of information about soap operas, football, pop music and so on. And while it proved a useful exercise (I now know more than I might ever have wished about the sex life of pop singer Justin Timberdrake), I insist that you promise me you will never even so much as pick up a copy of this ‘newspaper’ so long as you live. I wish I had the words to express how unspeakably vile it is. Suffice to say that, even were your heart not already severely weakened from years being confined to bed, and subsisting only on venison, port and cigars, you would be unlikely to survive the shock.

I’d not long finished my sandwich when I looked up to find a large woman in a powder blue tabard glowering at me from beneath tall, stiff hair.

“This is a canteen, not a library, mate”, she informed me.

I praised her for her powers of observation, but added that I was quite sure that, having never been inside a library, this was surely no more than a lucky guess on her part. She stood before me for a good 20 seconds, worrying the angry red patches of psoriasis on her sausage arms, her face as devoid of comprehension as the ham sandwich was of nutritional value.

“Just put your tray back and fuck off.”

Not wishing to make a scene, I did so, but not before making a mental note to have her fired should I win the million.

I spent the next hour or so standing perfectly still outside the entrance to the building, so as to unnerve my fellow contestants with my poise and self-control as they arrived. I remained quite static even when a Portuguese couple, mistaking me for a ‘performance artiste’ disrupted my concentration by tossing some vile Euros at my feet.

At 12:00 midday I reported once more to the reception area, from whence my fellow contestants and I were escorted to the ‘green room’. A very young-looking producer, dressed in bizarre, billowing, ethnic clothing and with a stud in her lip, explained that we would be rehearsing the ‘Fastest Finger First’ portion of the show on-set at 13:00, before filming begins at 14:30. Before that though, she told us in tones of hushed reverence, we would be meeting…Chris Tarrant. An audible murmur of excitement passed through the room, as if we were to be afforded an audience with the Pope, and one woman actually raised her eyes skywards and hugged her large bosoms. I tutted imperiously and rolled my eyes.

We were directed toward a table of refreshments, which included some delightful fondant-style cakes, and some excellent pork pies. Though I kept chit-chat with my rivals to a minimum, the other contestants seemed to be a reasonably alert, well-groomed bunch, save for a rather vacant looking gentleman who teetered on blockish orthopaedic shoes, and seemed to be secreting fig rolls inside the pockets of his fleece.

Nonetheless, they swiftly morphed into pitiable, forelock-tugging simpletons when, with no little fanfare, and preceded by two enormous, burly minders, Chris Tarrant entered the room. Don’t get me wrong; Chris seemed very pleasant, if a little over-familiar. The other contestants seemed to freeze in the face of his rather aggressive bonhomie. I, on the other hand, fear that I may have upset him by struggling and lashing out when he attempted to put me in a ‘friendly’ headlock.

After wishing us all good luck, in that strange voice that makes it sound like every word is being squeezed manually from his lungs, Chris departed, and we were escorted onto the set for rehearsal.

We were shown to our respective ‘Fastest Finger First’ seats and, as soon as I sat down, I was struck by the full horror of what was to unfold. Before me was the computer screen which displays the ‘Fastest Finger’ question, and beneath this the buttons ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’, and ‘D’ that we must push to register our answers. However I found, to my horror, that the buttons were arranged in a row of four, as opposed to two rows of two – the constellation in which the answers are displayed when we watch on our televisions at home!

All my weeks of meticulous preparation were destroyed. The hours spent honing my reflexes by practicing pressing every possible sequence of letters on the makeshift ‘FFF’ keypad that I had crafted from a shoebox and four empty pots of Muller Lite – four pots arranged with buttons ‘A’ and ‘B’ directly above buttons ‘C’ and ‘D’. I had reached the stage where I could simply close my eyes, listen to a question, deduce the answer, and tap out the correct sequence in an average of less that one and a half seconds. I would have been guaranteed a place in the chair!

It was an outrage. A bloody, fucking outrage! Excuse me Mother, but I am still rather angry. I stood up and gestured to the young producer in the yashmak.

“What is it, sir?” she asked.

“What is it? What is it?! Let me tell you Miss”, I said to her “Let me tell you – I didn’t travel nearly 40 miles to be taken for a fool! I won’t have it! Ask anyone! Go on!! Ask them!! They will tell you that I. WILL. NOT. HAVE. IT!!!”

Another producer rushed over to try to appease me – a boy in a vulgar T-shirt, with unpredictable, chaotic hair and enormous glasses – and told me to calm down. To calm down! I left them in no doubt whatsoever that it was THEM who should calm down!

“The buttons” I told them, “are unacceptable. Quite unacceptable!! I find their constellation utterly baffling, and I am not alone.”

I looked around for support, but the spineless toads remained silent.

“I won’t forget this, Shoe Man!” I yelled at the cripple in the cripple shoes.

By this point, a number of other members of staff, including several large men with earpieces, had begun to gather. They clearly wished to intimidate me into silence, so they could continue to play their pathetic games with us – to hoodwink us Mother, because THAT is what they were doing, mark my words.

Anyway, things became rather heated. I can remember little of what followed. I recall my hands around the vulgar T-shirt boy’s neck. I recall stamping on his stupid glasses. I recall being held in a very painful crucifix position, my face against the studio floor, which was quite filthy. I seem to remember a sharp, very loud crack. In hindsight, it may have been my pelvis.

The point is Mother that I have been duped – we both have been. That money is ours, rightfully ours. Unless they make it quite explicit, among the hundreds of pages of literature attendant to appearing on this tin-pot show (including the undertaking not to disclose details of Tarrant’s prosthetic cheeks to the press), that the Fastest Finger First buttons are arranged in a bizarre left-to-right formation, then they cannot expect people like myself to play by the rules.

Believe me, I wouldn’t be hiding in the back seat of Chris Tarrant’s car like some deranged criminal were it not absolutely necessary. For one thing it is a foul tip. Given that he is purportedly the highest-paid man on television, you’d think that he could spare £20 for a car vacuum cleaner. I have already had to delicately remove a half-sucked boiled sweet from one of my eyebrows, and I’m afraid it may have left a bald patch. And the overwhelming smell of dogs is making my stomach turn.

But I won’t be put off by these small indignities, or by the discomfort of my apparently shattered pelvis. Sooner or later, these bullies will have to l…. Mother I have to go, I’ll call you back when we get to Chris’ house.