Friday 8 July 2011

Land of the Rising Gaylord

As you must have realised by now, the only thing more important to me than my (permanently estranged) children is my dignity. Over the years I’ve acted like an absolute Prince despite the almost constant torrent of sexual and scatological public catastrophe. You probably won’t be surprised to learn, however, that recent events have forced me to completely abandon these guiding principles and crash headlong into the murky depths of global humiliation.

One afternoon a couple of weeks ago, as I was taking my usual bath in the garden, the phone rang. I picked it up and stammered my name. The voice on the other end was eerily robotic, sounded very distant, and was sometimes drowned out by a noise in the background that sounded a lot like horses being murdered, but even this tenuous human contact was enough to reduce me to tears. Between gulps and blubbering I got the gist that the caller was from Japan, and that I had been selected by their leading TV network to take part in a hugely popular celebrity gameshow. All I had to do was get myself to Tokyo and I could collect 5,000 yen – a day! I figured that 5,000 of anything can only ever be good – except maybe 5,000 charges of sexual assault – so I heartily agreed to take part.

Arriving in Tokyo two days later, I was struck by how much the city resembled all the documentaries I’d watched: everywhere I looked all I could see was neon gibberish, tittering schoolgirls, and plates of rancid fish.. Before I could even buy any used panties from a vending machine, however, I was greeted by a runner from the network who kindly, if a little forcefully, led me away.

Arriving at the studio the next day, I noticed that I was in truly excellent company. The brightest lights of British TV had been handpicked to take part. Richard Bacon had already married a small woman in a kimono, and I was delighted to see my old chums Jeremy Kyle and John Leslie (John pretended not to recognise me, but I could tell by the way he slapped me hard in the mouth that he knew exactly who I was). Even Anne Widdecombe was there - to give proceedings an air of political gravitas, I assumed.

It was at this point that things began to unravel alarmingly. I’d barely had time to snatch my fee from the tiny hands of the producer when I was ushered into a locker room and forced to undress. Completely naked, I was led through a shallow trough of sheep dip and onto the dazzling, noisy studio floor.

The sight that greeted me resembled a perverted panorama of man’s most unspeakable fantasies. In the centre of what I can only describe as a masturbatory circus was Anne Widdecombe, naked as the day she was born, spinning around at an alarming speed on a demented merry-go-round of lust. A frantic Richard Madeley, his face gaunt with horror and tears, grabbed me and told me that he’d been there for weeks. Struggling to comprehend what was happening, I looked above me and the true nature of the gameshow become sickeningly apparent: there, in 10ft high lettering, were the words ‘Super Britain Onanistic Celebrity Ejaculation Fame Pageant’. The Japanese had clearly gone absolutely mad.

Despite my distinguished career in mucky films, I am a little camera shy these days and found it impossible to rise to the occasion. For what seemed like days, one hideous English celebrity monster after another was paraded in front of us: Ruth Badger, Kerry Katona, Judy Finnegan (Madeley seemed to crack under the weight of sheer humiliation at this point and had to be tasered to calm him down), Susan Boyle, even Sister Wendy. Not once could I muster the necessary performance.

In the end the whole the cast was rescued by a human rights group and the production crew was sent to prison. My 50,000 Yen compensation from the Japanese government seemed like a magnificent windfall that more than made up for what had happened, until I realised it was barely £400, which in Tokyo doesn’t cover the taxi to the airport. Another chapter in my soon-to-be-banned autobiography was complete.