Lavender Bunny and Celebrity Come Dine With Me by Quintin Forrest

LB and CCDWM

Read by Will Goodhand

Fame, fatal fame.

To be fair, everyone said that it wouldn't last. In fact for the last few weeks, nobody seemed to talk about anything else. It got so that by the end, Lavender Bunny and I could hardly face Stringfellows, it was as if Death himself was following us around, or sitting at our table in the VIP area, meaningfully eyeing the other celebs. It was a worry.

Because chopping out lines with the day's glitterati can spoil you a bit for the local pub. So it's a difficult moment when your time runs out, when the bouncers inform you that from now on, mate, you'll have to pay on the door, like the regular punters. As an aspiring writer I'm used to disappointment, but Lavender Bunny, who'd perhaps had his head turned more than even I knew, by his time in the back-rooms of London's hot spots, was inconsolable.

'Mike,' he used to say to me, 'Mike, why do we never see Jodie Marsh no more?'

And;

'She said she loved me, Mike.'

And, perhaps inevitably;

'This is all your fault Mike!'

He took to drinking, he took to cocaine. He took to pacing the flat at all hours of the night, ranting about his agent. Well, I knew the feeling, but what could I tell him? He was only a small bunny, after all. I could have explained that we were just mayflies, he and I. That there was a kind of terrible symmetry between the thirteen weeks we'd spent on television, and our thirteen weeks as Z-list celebs. That Peaches Geldof, Duncan from Blue and the rest of our set were just going to be people we saw in the papers, from now on. But I didn't have the heart. I didn't want to put out the hopeful light in his button-black eyes.

So, I suppose the last time we talked, LB and I had just won Big Brother, and were tabloid darlings. Or at least, LB was. I was trying to promote my book, Beer, Football And Shagging, which had come out to mixed reviews. There seemed to be a feeling (and I'm really not saying this to try and sound interesting) that the world of letters had been waiting around for someone like me. That because we'd been on Big Brother, LB and I, trying to give the old novel a shot in the arm, I had no right to consider myself a serious artist. A lot of resentment came flooding out then, about Jordan, Jade Goody and other untouchable, best-selling writers. Perhaps I should have been flattered by some of the big beasts that got involved, but equally, there is such a thing as bad publicity; for example, Will Self said, and I quote, that it was 'an extremely accomplished debut, if, as one imagines, it was in fact penned by the author's rabbit', Jeanette Winterson called me 'a bloody idiot' and John Prescott, moonligting as a critic for the Independent On Sunday, accused me of being 'untalented'.

'Mike,' said LB, when I read him the reviews 'be Prescott the reason we never go out no more?'

'Well, he is the voice of the man on the street.'

'Oh. And what about Janet Waterstones? Who be she?'

I explained, briefly.

'But Mike, wouldn't she like me if she met me?'

'I'm sure she would, LB. But she isn't like Candy and Bambi from Spearmint Rhino.'

'But Mike ...'

'No LB, she isn't … I'm pretty sure she isn't.'

So there we were, cast out of Stringfellows, shunned by the literary world, and effectively washed up by Christmas of the year of our Big Brother victory. Fame was sweet, but it did have an after-taste, sometimes, I'd catch LB in front of Hollyoaks or The X Factor, eyeing the screen like a man in torment. He wasn't going to be his old self again until we were back in the high life, that much was clear.

So what were our options? Well, they weren't that extensive. I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here was literally out, because, as I explained to LB, I'd be the one who was force-fed the testicles by the great British public, and not him.

'But Mike …'

'LB, we're not going on that during a recession. It wouldn't be good.'

'What's a recession Mike?'

'It's something, LB, that makes a lot of people very angry.  And liable to take out their feelings of rage on such gilded creatures as you and I. So me, effectively.'

'But Mike, don't you love me no more?'

'Of course I do, LB. But you have to trust me on this.'

'But Mike,' he said, giving me a hard stare, 'what if I don't?'

So phew, then, I thought, when we were offered a slot on Celebrity Come Dine With Me. If you haven't seen it, the format's simple. Four famous-ish faces take turns to host a dinner party, and score each other's performance out of ten. The winner earns a thousand pounds for charity, and … that's it, pretty much.

The advantage of this was that, unlike Big Brother, it's repeated a lot, so in a sense we'd be immortalised, at least for a while, in the more obscure backwaters of Channel 4's schedule. Plus, Peter Stringfellow had been on the show, so could he deny us access to his VIP area after we'd done the same, without being forced to question his own celebrity? I was hoping not.

Jason Donovan, Jodie Marsh, John Prescott and us, then, was the line-up.

'I'm looking forward to seeing Jodie again, Mike! And I want to meet Prescott.'

'Me too, LB.' I said, glad to see him happy again, if reflecting on the time, now long past, when I could just about keep him under control.

So night one, which took place at Jason Donovan's lovely home in Ladbroke Grove.

On the celebrity circuit, you can generally assume that everyone knows everyone, at least at one stage removed. And it turned out we'd all met Jodie, who, while she can come across as a touch … brittle on camera, is a different proposition when you meet her in person, in, say, the private back rooms of Chinawhite. Okay, she blanked me as usual, but she rushed up to hug a blushing LB, now back in his element. Donovan, meanwhile, busied himself in the kitchen, and Prescott just stared.

Dinner was served in the garden, the menu consisting of shrimps on the barbie, steaks on the barbie and … in what was to be something of a theme that week, I can't remember what the dessert was.

Anyway, from the off it was clear that Prescott saw himself as a cut above the rest of us. Two G&T's in, and he was already starting.

'You see, when I was your age, I was a union man. Jobs, real life, that's what I was about. But you  lot … you'd turn up for the opening of a bloody gas bill.'

'What's a gas bill?' said LB

'I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that … Let's take you as an example, Jason. I mean, the West End, it's all very fancy, but it's hardly work for a grown man, is it? Tell me, what do you think you've achieved?'

'Mate,' said Donovan 'I don't mean to be rude, but what have you achieved? At least Andrew Lloyd Webber never invaded Iraq.'

'That's right,' said Jodie, who'd had a few Martinis 'that war was illegal.'

'No it bloody wasn't. Everyone's a bloody critic these days, but tell me this; is the world, or is the world not, a better place without Saddam Hussein?'

'Who's Sodom Hussein?' said LB.

'And as for you,' snapped Prescott 'I've no bloody clue what your claim to fame is.'

'That's Lavender Bunny' said Jodie. 'He's a spokesman for his generation.'

'God help it then. A grown lad with a bloody teddy, it's pathetic.'

'I don't know if you can tell, Mr Prescott,' I said 'but Lavender Bunny is giving you a hard stare.'

'Is he? Well, he can bugger off then. You tell him a few years in a factory would sort his ideas out.'

'He also wants to know if you bummed your sex-cetary.'             

'Right. Stop filming.'

We were referred to a clause in our contract. Certain subjects, it transpired, were off limits. 

Next up was Jodie. In her charming Essex home, she cooked spring rolls, duck and ... something or other. As with Jason, we scored her a seven. Jodie keeps an excellent cellar, but the atmosphere was a bit strained, LB and Prescott now visibly jostling for Alpha Male status.

Day three. Prescott, in a grace-and-favour flat he'd borrowed for the evening, he said, served up what he described as 'good, old-fashioned home cooking', like his mother used to make, when his family had barely a pot to piss in. So leek soup or whatever, followed, contentiously, by rabbit stew.

'Prescott,' said LB 'can I go to the toilet?'

'What?'

'He says he gets a bit nervous, using other people's bathrooms. He prefers to go al fresco.'

'And what's that supposed to mean?'

'Well Prescott,' said LB 'if you've no outside loo, don't that make you a Tory?'

At this point, Prescott, never the least volatile of public figures, grabbed LB and whipped him over to the casserole.

'Mock my roots will you? You bloody little snob!'

'John mate,' said Jason 'steady on there. You were pretty rude to Lavender Bunny.'

'Yeah' said Jodie 'mellow out, guy.'

'I am not here to be insulted!'

'LB says …'

'What? What does he say? And how the bloody hell are you communicating with him anyway? Telepathy?'

'He says' I said, retrieving a bedraggled LB from the jus, 'that whatever the dessert's like, he's giving you one this evening.'

'What?'

'Just like you used to do to your research assistants, he says.'

Day Four. In our somewhat ill-appointed Whitechapel flat, LB and I were serving up oysters, filet mignon and the most expensive booze we could find in Costcutter, just to get on Prescott's nerves. The old campaigner, however, had a trick up his sleeve.

'Michael,' he began, before he'd even accepted a glass of Clicquot, 'I've been perplexed by your friend's behaviour this week. So I Googled you. This isn't about that review I wrote, is it? For that novel of yours? Because if it is, can I repeat, here on national television, that it was a bloody disgrace?'

'You slagged off Mike's book, mate?' said Jason.

'Yes, he did,' said LB. 'Him, Will Self and Janet Waterstones got me and Mike banned from Stringfellows.'

'I thought I hadn't seen you around,' said Jodie. 'So what happened? What'd you do?'

'Shat on the carpets, I shouldn't wonder.' said Prescott.

'Prescott' said LB 'is that why you left politics?'

'Don't attack him again, mate,' said Jason. 'It's not a good look.'

'So come on Mike,' said Jodie 'I'm dying to hear …'

So I explained about the VIP area.

'Christ,' said Jodie 'that was quick.'

'Yes. Yes it was.'

'Hey, maybe LB could come along with me sometime? In fact, why not tonight? Would you like that, LB?'

LB nodded so vigorously that I feared his little heart might burst. Since he'd begun talking, I'd always at least tacitly accepted the possibility that my relationship with LB was something, by rights, that could have had me sectioned, but was I wrong about that? Had he now attained independent consciousness?

'I'll make it worth your while,' said Jodie, seductively twirling her golden extensions, 'when it comes to the scoring, Mike.'

'Interesting,' said Prescott. 'Presumably, the rabbit's plus one will not be attending?'

'Well, no. No offence Mike, but it might spoil the photo-op.'

And that was three days ago. Apart from an appearance in the Daily Star's gossip pages, I haven't seen him since. Nor is Jodie returning my phone calls. I fear that fame, once again, with its intoxicating sweetness, may rather have gone to my young friend's head. Which leaves me here, pretty much, with the cold, sour dregs. Damn it.

Lavender Bunny and Celebrity Come Dine With Me by Quintin Forrest was read by Will Goodhand at the Liars’ League Sweet & Sour event at The Phoenix, Cavendish Sq., London on Tuesday 9 March 2010

 

Lavender Bunny and Celebrity Come Dine With Me is a sequel of sorts to the rapturously-received Lavender Bunny and the Big Brother House, which was featured in the Best of Liars’ League at Proud Gallery, Camden, in April 2009. Quintin Forrest is the earthly vessel through whom Lavender Bunny makes his thoughts and desires known. Fear him.

Will Goodhand is the only man to make multiple-adventurer of kids’ cartoon fame Mr Benn jealous: Internet entrepreneur, radio DJ, Beauty & the Geek star and etiquette coach to Britain's Next Top Models, Will regularly performs stand-up and story-readings on the London circuit: for details of upcoming gigs, email [email protected]