June. The month of Wimbledon. A nation of tennis-lovers shifting their gaze left then right then left then right as men and women in shiny white shorts and skirts smash merry hell out of a little yellow ball. In Debt Monkey terms I was that ball, slammed all over the court as impossible highs gave way to new lows before I was swung back up to another short-lived high. June 2009 was the penultimate month of this reality show smackdown and boy did the producers crank up the ante.
I'd lost the plot for the best part of a month, but by the time June arrived the mind mist had finally started to clear. There were still gaps in my memory but one of the few advantages of having your life published on the internet is that you can at least go back and watch old episodes.
No doubt pleased that I was back in the world of the sane, but clearly worried I might lose my marbles all over again, the Debt Monkey producers gave me a nice, fun challenge to tempt me back into the reality show hamster wheel, and, like a hostage victim inexplicably hugging his kidnapper at the end of a long, violent siege, I welcomed it with open arms.
My challenge was to make a short film inspired by the week's news and I was unsurprisingly drawn to the meteoric rise of honey-tonsilled bruiser Susan Boyle. I chose to tell the cautionary tale of Freddie Bumstead, the first reality star to truly go 'viral':
After this suspiciously cosy reintroduction to life as the Debt Monkey, the producers decided the honeymoon period was over and engineered possibly the most offensive challenge of the entire series. Perhaps suspecting I might try to sabotage events if I knew the full horror of what was planned, they remained very cryptic in the lead-up to the day itself.
So here it is. This one is definitely Not Suitable For Work. In fact, it's not really suitable for any situation. If this were an episode of Friends, it would be called: "The One Where A Vulnerable Homeless Person Is Dumped In Ben's Flat And Given An Endless Supply of White Lightning"...
In my mind, this was the one that confirmed my worst suspicions of reality television and set me on a path of determined non-cooperation. For Rob it was the one where he got bitten by a possibly-rabid homeless person and had to have lots of painful injections (including one up his jacksy).
So Rob was given a week off to recuperate and was temporarily replaced by documentary filmmaker and professional bell-end Crispin Brown, who was in serious danger of disappearing up his own arse. Rather ironic, seeing as he was to preside over a dirty public protest featuring something which had recently appeared out of mine:
My aim was to shock the audience into realising just how low reality television had forced them to stoop for their entertainment. It was a naive gesture but strangely liberating. If I could do this in front of a room full of people, then I could do anything.
Perhaps disconcerted by my new-found rebellion, Debt Monkey 'invited' me to have a nice, cosy chat with their lawyers about the perils of non-cooperation. Bring it on, I thought, all fired up and ready for battle. Sadly things were a little more complicated than I'd imagined. I may have finally found my balls, but sadly it turned out that they were both the property of Debt Monkey. The message was clear — play nice until the end of the series or all my debts would be reinstated.
Having been put firmly back in my place, and with just one week to go, Debt Monkey set up a meeting for me with top London publicist Cliff Baxter who, amongst other things, promised to make me "the next Michael Winner":
But even the depressing prospect of becoming what I had previously despised — a D-list pseudo celebrity sucking on the withering teat of short-lived fame — couldn't dampen my spirits in the final week. I could see the light at the end of the Debt Monkey tunnel, and somewhere in the back of my mind a fiendish plan had started to hatch. A plan that could make my six months of reality hell somehow worthwhile.
But that's a story for July...
