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Being too close to power had eaten a chunk out of him. At any rate he wasn’t going to headbang anyone on this gig, although he did have a big knobbly nose that was made for aggression or at least cunnilingus. It was going to get bigger as he got older. But the old Blair thug was no longer there. Not even a whisper. Thank God. Hopefully the camera was not reading my thoughts because my shark looked briefly from his eyepiece and winked. He seemed exhausted too.
    We finally arrived at some West End hotel in a suite that reminded me of Tutankhamen’s tomb. The bedrooms had been stripped of furniture and crammed with all the apparatus of reality. Behind their closed doors, directors and assistants huddled over banks of screens, whispering instructions on walkie-talkies, while in the large sitting room Piers and Ross were warming up, lobbing chit-chat back and forth. Thank God for the painkillers I had stolenfrom my mother’s bathroom. A couple of Tramadol and a large vodka in the bar on the way up, and the flooding panic began to subside. Sort of. I sat down. A little round make-up lady scuttled from a cupboard to powder me down and then ran back in, slamming the door behind her. Cables coiled across the floors, dragged by unseen forces round the furniture and under doors. Piers paced the room talking at length to Philip Green, another bright light on the charity scene, while Alastair Campbell called Tony Blair’s office. Maybe I should phone the escort called Joe and liven things up a bit. I began to feel sick.
    ‘Tony’s going to try and come down,’ said Alastair. Cameras U-turned and screeched to a halt at our various faces to catch the ecstatic reaction.
    ‘Wicked,’ said Ross, making a thumbs-up sign. (Big hands, incidentally.)
    I have never been a very ‘interior’ actor, but I learnt fast. Vomit was about to explode from my mouth (Tramadol OD, vodka and Tony) but I managed to make it look as though I were simply blowing my cheeks out in orgasmic disbelief. Meanwhile I swallowed hard and raised my eyebrows. Luckily I could that month. When I got the puke back down to my stomach, I added a little knowing giggle. I must have been purple under the powder because the make-up lady elbowed aside the camera that was three inches from my nose and shoved hers right up close.
    ‘Look at you,’ she whispered, placing a Kleenex over my face.
    ‘Just leave it there,’ I said.
    ‘What, dear?’
    ‘Nothing.’
    This make-up lady was a giant lazy bee, buzzing around the table with her little bag of tricks, bumping into a camera, bouncing back, and hovering over her blooms as she patted and primped and sprayed us down before zooming at a sedate pace back to her hive.
    We were each given a writing pad and a pencil, and sat around the table to start our first meeting.
    ‘When you want. In your own time,’ shouted a voice through a door, which then slammed, and we were off.
    ‘OK,’ ordered Piers. ‘Let’s get organised.’
    How much longer could I look constantly intrigued without having a stroke, I wondered. My camera looked at me accusingly. ‘Do something!’ it seemed to be saying, so I scribbled frantic doodles on the pad.
    ‘Philip Green is providing
all
the champagne!’ bellowed Piers. I wrote that down, just in case I forgot. I’m sure they’ll all be thrilled to pieces down at the sweatshop in Bangladesh. Maybe Lucifer could bring the nibbles.
    ‘Now. What about the hamburger stand?’ asked Alastair.
    ‘Ah yes. We need to make ten thousand quid on it if we’re going to beat the girls,’ replied Piers.
    ‘That’s not going to be easy,’ said Ross. ‘Ten thousand pounds’ worth of hamburgers! That’s a thousand hamburgers.’
    ‘And stars don’t eat, remember,’ I ventured.
    Suddenly I saw a chink of light.
    ‘What about if I leave the show, and come back and buy one hamburger for ten thousand pounds?’
    Everybody and their lenses turned to me.
    ‘What?’ said Alastair, thrusting slightly.