My name is Ben Foster and I’m a recovering reality show star.
2009 was, without a doubt, the strangest year of my entire life. It was also the year I agreed to be the star of a tawdry little low-budget reality show called Debt Monkey. These two things are not unrelated.
Why did I do it? Well, I’m still trying to work that one out. Perhaps a detailed review of the facts will yield some insight. That's why I've decided to write this blog to be honest.
Oh yes, and to plug a book I haven’t actually written yet – “My Life As A Monkey – The True Confessions of a Reality Show Star”. I’m modeling it after one of those “true crime” books where the victim of some terrible, sustained ordeal tells “their story”. Well I was kidnapped by reality television for six months and now it’s time to tell my story. Debt Monkey was my Joseph Fritzl.
But to start at the beginning, let’s rewind to the closing months of 2008...
I had spent most of that year doing rubbish temp jobs trying to keep afloat while I decided what to do about the mountain of personal debt I had somehow managed to accumulate over the previous 15 years. I'd just been sacked from one particularly mind-numbing job (for posting something “grossly inappropriate” on the company's intranet) and decided to keep myself busy by taking my first steps into the world of video blogging.
I reached out and touched a Sachs Offender in my first blog on YouYube. This was of course in the wake of the infamous “Sachsgate” incident when Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross made some rather fruity phone calls from a Radio 2 studio to Manuel off ‘Fawlty Towers’. Who would have guessed that my gentle ribbing of the whole affair would eventually send me tumbling into a whole new world of pain and darkness?
As 2008 wheezed its last, I used my “Blogbox” to blow off steam about various annoyances such as Christmas starting way too early or the growing trend towards violent video games, but it was usually my gnawing sense of anger at reality television that drew me back to the camera.
It started with a gentle(ish) dig at Strictly Come Dancing and then I found I couldn't help myself but comment on John Sergeant's untimely exit.
Vast sections of the country were displaying astonishing levels of stupidity in lapping all this reality rubbish up and I felt needed to up my game in highlighting how these shows kicked about in nothing more than a moral scrap yard.
And then, as if to confirm my worse suspicions of the direction reality television was taking, I found this video announcing a new reality show called “Debt Monkey”:
Looking back, my Blogbox on the subject was probably a little too restrained. On paper, Debt Monkey encapsulated everything I had been ranting about – exploiting the weak and vulnerable for the purpose of entertainment – and yet, looking back, I remained relatively understated in my outrage.
And then, with 2009 barely just born, I received a direct approach from the show's producers more or less inviting me to be their Debt Monkey. They'd seen my videos and they thought basing their series around someone who was very anti-reality television was “format gold”. The job was mine if I wanted it!
I laughed off their offer and simply waxed ever more lyrical online about how modern life was rubbish and how reality television was the biggest festering pustule on the arse of contemporary culture. And I did so with relative satisfaction, from the safety of my modest flat, ignoring my own debts as they fizzed in ever-increasing sparkles in the background of my life.
But the Debt Monkey producers wouldn't take no for an answer and, ashamed though I am to admit it, I started to waver. My principles started to crumble in the face of my own not inconsiderable debt coupled with an ongoing allergy to proper work.
At the time I genuinely thought I could take Debt Monkey on and remain untainted. I thought I could beat them at their own reality game. That’s still my defence, even one year later, knowing what I know now about how badly things were to turn out.
But that's all to come. Here's the first ever episode, featuring a whole collection of lucky individuals, who unlike me, didn't get chosen to be the Debt Monkey:
