'Can Lavender Bunny come to the Diary Room?'
'He says no.'
'Michael, Big Brother is ordering Lavender Bunny to come to the Diary Room.'
'He says he doesn't like it there. He says it smells of despair.'
'Michael, if Lavender Bunny does not come to the Diary Room immediately, he will be severely punished.'
'You better go, mate,' said one of the others; there were five of us sunbathing out on the lawn.
'LB says what are you going to do, put him up for eviction? He says that didn't work last time, did it? Or the time before.'
'Michael, if Lavender Bunny does not come to the Diary Room, Big Brother will have no choice but to take him into custody.'
'He says you'll have to prise him from my cold, dead hand.'
~
So what had driven us in there, me and LB? That was a question we'd keep coming back to.
Well, it was something to do with my debut novel. Finishing it up, I'd been thinking of ways to try and up my profile, before my agent sent it out. It was no use trusting to talent it seemed, or not to my talent anyway, at a time when Britain's most feted authors included Jordan, Wayne Rooney and Jeremy Clarkson.
But I hadn't come up with much of a strategy, until over a lager one wet afternoon, in a strategy meeting with myself, I suppose - motivation's important - I'd picked up a copy of Heat magazine, which someone had left on a chair by the bar. There was a story, plus photo, about an incident outside Stringfellows, involving Jade Goody falling out of her top. Jade Goody, the published writer ... It was then that I realised, in the manner of Kevin from The Wonder Years, that if I could somehow contrive to get onto Big Brother, that if I could do that myself, and also, crucially, not go mad in the process, then I might have some leverage with Penguin and so on when I came off the show. Well, it had to be worth a shot. At least, I'd rung up my agent and he'd seemed to think so.
'Why not?' he'd said, if not, admittedly, sounding all that confident about my chances of success. On a number of levels. Which made two of us actually, but I had nothing to lose.
And so it was, just a few months later, that I'd found myself entering the Big Brother house.
'Mike's from London, he's twenty eight, and he's a writer!' announced Davina as I stumbled out of the limo and into the crowd 'He says he wants to bring some culture into the house!'
The booing, it's true, was pretty much deafening, There were more than a few cries of 'wanker' thrown in. But you have to say something during the interviews. And, after all, it had worked out. I'm not too sure how I got through the process - always be close to a couple of drinks, but not ten, is the only advice
I can usefully offer - but there it was anyway, a brief window of fame was within my grasp, just as long as I managed to keep things together.
I should explain about my gameplan. Which was fairly straightforward; just to bring up the novel whenever possible, and otherwise try to stay under the radar until about week four, when I'd be thrown out the house in a dignified manner, as the sort of boffin the Big Brother voters never quite understand. And then talk about my book in the interview afterwards, as if in discussion with Melvyn Bragg. It was brilliant, I thought. Why had no one tried a stunt like this before?
The flaw here, of course, was how to make sure that I went out early, without just quitting, thus missing my slot on eviction night. But that was the clever bit. That was where Lavender Bunny came in.
If you saw the series then you'll know all about him. You might even be wearing one of the t-shirts, but before he became who he is today, LB was officially in there as a keepsake from my girlfriend, doused as he was in her favourite perfume. I didn't have a girlfriend, of course, and LB, who had a zip in his back, was actually stuffed with emergency Valium, in case of tense situations, which were bound to crop up. But that was the story as we made our way in there, heavy swells down the staircase, through the luminous door. Into our time behind the shattered eyes.
Thirteen weeks later, we were still in the house, part of the last four on the final night. We couldn't possibly win, could we? On the one side sat Roy, Max and Juanita, packed tight and hugging on the sofas opposite, eyeing LB as if he was a cobra. And LB was giving them a hard stare back.
So it's fair to say the gameplan didn't work out. After a decade on prime-time TV, the show couldn't hope to command the attention it once had. But, on the internet message boards where these things are discussed, series ten's still considered a fairly good year. Certainly there was drama from day one on. There was sex, there was violence, there were all kinds of arguments, and really no shortage of big personalities.
And that was what turned out to be the problem, in the end. Because how to get nominated, never mind evicted, if almost everyone else is a borderline lunatic? You prepare yourself for eccentric behaviour, that's how to make sure you get maximum airtime, after all, but that year felt like a final roll of the dice on Channel Four's part. At times it seemed as if someone could have put up a burning cross on the lawn, and it would have been forgotten a day or so later, overtaken by events. In fact, I wouldn't be willing to swear that nobody tried that.
The first month went by easily enough, though. Each time there was a fight, and God knows there were many, Islam-gate, lager-gate, dirty-underwear-gate (not to ask about any of them, but especially not that) LB and I would repair to the bedroom, and pop another sleeper.
He used to say to me: 'Mike, if we run out of this stuff we're in serious trouble.'
'Don't worry LB' I'd reply 'We'll be long gone before that happens.'
But of course, I was wrong. I'd packed enough pills for six weeks, worst-case scenario. But by the end of week four, I was looking at having to cut back drastically.
Which meant I had to get involved in what was happening in the house, rather than just watching it, as if it was some kind of strange, catastrophic, scientific experiment.
What became clear, pretty quickly, was that people felt I'd been sitting on the fence. And that I had a gameplan. Plus an unhealthy relationship with - well, over to Roy, who was from Liverpool, I think about twenty, and possessed of an almost heroic sense of personal entitlement:
'Hey mate, is it part of being a writer's job to take a rabbit with you, like, everywhere, or what?'
'What.' I figured.
'I mean, does Salman Rushdie have a bunny, or what?'
This went on for a while. Waking up to a drug-free reality live on Channel Four ... I just wouldn't advise it.
I had a heart to heart with LB in the bathroom, shortly after Roy's outburst.
LB,' I said, 'What are we going to do about this?'
'Well Mike, I think it's time for what we discussed.'
'Yeah. Is it going to work, do you think?'
'I don't know. I'll try my best though. And then after this, can we go back home?'
'That's the idea ... Of course we can, LB.'
'I just want to sit on the desk like I used to, Mike, and not see any of these people ever again.'
'I understand.'
'All right then. Let's go.'
The housemates were completing that week's shopping list, when LB first spoke up. The shopping list was always a bit of a low-point, especially if we were on a basic budget. Seeing as the producers couldn't just feed us booze the whole time, what they'd do instead was engineer situations whereby everyone was on a short fuse, and behaving erratically, due to a lack of food. So compiling the shopping list would as a task, take on this almost hallucinatory sense of gravitas. We'd been at it for nearly a hour by this point.
'Right then, we need to make sure we have enough frozen vegetables,' said Graham, who'd been involved in local government back in the real world, as was fairly clear from his manner, if not the lycra shorts he was currently sporting. At twenty-eight, I was a bit long in the tooth for all this, so what Graham, who was pushing forty, was doing on the show was anyone's guess. Working his way through some personal issues? So it seemed. Anyway, we couldn't let this pass.
'No we don't.'
'I'm sorry?'
'Lavender Bunny says that he doesn't like vegetables. He says they're for wankers.'
'I see.' said Graham 'But given the, I think, incontrovertible fact that as an inanimate object, that rabbit doesn't eat food, his opinions are irrelevant. Now if we could get on ...'
'He also says that those shorts are a disgrace.'
'Oh does he?
'I'm afraid so.'
'Well I'm entitled to make my own decisions.'
'No, you aren't. LB says the only thing you're entitled to is a smack in the mouth.'
'Right. Are you going to carry on like this, Michael?'
'LB says he thinks so, yes. He also thinks that all this food is a waste of time, and that we should get beer instead. He also says that now Tiffany's gone, we should exchange one of our tokens for a stripper.'
And so we went on, By the start of week six, I'd just stopped saying anything, trusting LB to do the necessary, and get us thrown off the show. And certainly, he stepped up to the plate in grand style. By the time we arrived at the final night, he'd threatened to kill or at least seriously injure pretty much everyone in there. But I suppose, in a way, that's what we want from our housemates.
But his cuteness was our downfall. It didn't seem to matter what he said, or how many times we were up for eviction (eight I think, which must be some kind of record) nothing was enough to get us voted out. Which brings us back to the final night. There we were on the sofas, me, LB, Roy, Max and Juanita, waiting to hear who'd won the series. The tension was palpable.
'This is Davina!' boomed the voice. 'Housemates, you are live on Channel Four, please do not swear.'
'Bollocks,' said LB.
First out was Max, and then Juanita. Which left Roy, who any other year might have cruised to victory, handsome chap as he was, and LB, and me. Seeing as LB had described him as a mindless love muscle on a couple of occasions, this time was characterised by an uncomfortable silence.
'If you win this, mate,' hissed Roy, eventually, 'it'll be a friggin' disgrace ...'
'And the winner this year is Lavender Bunny!!!'
'Shouldn't that have been “Mike”, mate?'
I'm not going to pretend that it wasn't quite gratifying, at least for a while. Until it turned it out that in LB, I'd inadvertently created something of a monster. Because, 'So Mike, you've written a novel! I'm fascinated!' Davina didn't ask, in our exit interview. Instead, as might have been predicted, she was full of questions for a blushing LB, who rose to the occasion with great aplomb. And now he's a celebrity. Well, I don't begrudge him - after all, I go where he goes, to all the hot clubs. And the book is coming out, and I'm a hundred grand richer. But even so, I am, for the foreseeable future, basically going to be LB's plus one, as opposed to a serious literary figure. We're doing all the magazines.
Perhaps unexpectedly, he's been a big hit in both Nuts and Zoo, posing in photos with the cream of Page Three. I suppose Hello beckons next, and the society pages of Heat magazine. Some days, my mind turns back to the great literary creations of the past, in particular to Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, and the albatross hanging around his neck, as he repeats his story to the guests at the party, over, and over, and over again.
Oh well.
© Quintin Forrest, 2008
Lavender Bunny and the Big Brother House by Quintin Forrest was read by Will Goodhand at the Liars' League Winners & Losers event on Tuesday 12 August 2008
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