"These people aren't just people, they're your rivals." "Behold, it's a street full of rivals." "Look, there's one growing a rival in her belly." "Double threat!" "And this one's sprouted wheels, devious bastard!" "We're living in a world in which everyone expects the best of everything, with the unhinged sense of entitlement that used to be the sole reserve of insane Roman emperors or members of the Bullingdon Club." "The more we want, the less satisfied we feel." "Happiness seems perpetually out of reach." "Why?" "Maybe, somewhere along the way, we started actually believing what this little electronic bullshitter was feeding us." "This week, how TV ruined your life by guffing dreams into your living room." "Don't say it didn't." "It did." "DANCE MUSIC PLAYS" "Oh, isn't life brilliant?" "I mean, just check out this place!" "The barman's a bloody great hunk." "These two are flipping gorgeous." "He has got a haircut so cool, it's like he downloaded it from Mars." "And you, my friend, are part of all of this too, because you are living the dream." "Ha-ha-ha-ha!" "Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!" "Hee-hee-hee-hee!" "'Ha-ha-ha-ha!" "Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!" "'." "Except you're not, are you?" "Cos the dream's just that, it's a dream." "Real life doesn't work like that." "Real life's an often fruitless quest for intermittent patches of happiness, interspersed with toil, ennui, divorce, bad haircuts, overpriced box-sets, stomach bugs, repetition, stomach bugs, gas bills, sexual dysfunction," "Justin Bieber and wasps." "This is real life." "Waste ground, tramps, bloke eating a rat on a stick, Cameron's Britain." "How's your rat?" "Too chewy?" "Yeah, see, even his lunch is disappointing, cos this is real life." "That's why it's such a crushing mystery that half the time, your TV's eager to stick happy-go-lucky BLEEP-wits like that in your eye." "WHY?" "!" "Why?" "!" "Why?" "!" "Why?" "This is the world of aspirational television, aspirational being a wildly popular term in TV land." "It's a world in which the majority of people are thin, attractive, witty, sassy, cool, fun-loving, thoughtful and happy, and enjoy a life of cocktails, dick and shoes." "The basic theory behind aspirational programming is that if you watch beautiful, fun-loving people on TV, you'll somehow feel like they're your friends, whereas, in reality, of course, you're essentially just a tramp," "staring at them from the other side of the room." "It seems every other show on TV these days has some sort of aspirational bent, but where did it all begin?" "Like everything evil in the universe, it came from the world of advertising." "Many early adverts were functional things, little more than animated, flickering billboards, extolling the practical virtues of the products they were pushing." "Before his toast and tea, give him a good big plate of cornflakes." "No cooking, no messy washing up, eaten and digested like lightning." "But as consumers began to realise that most products were basically the same - cos it's all just stuff, isn't it?" "... advertisers began attaching fantasies to the products they were hawking." "And often, this fantasy was an opulent vision that could be all yours for the price of something that tasted like a refrigerated human organ inside chocolate." "As the 60s swung into view, cool was the primary dream." "The lucky, cool adver-sods lived in a world of glamour, travel, foxy burka babes, and nice hair." "Of course, instead of hair goo, they were actually flogging you a membership card." ""Buy this McGuffin, and you too could be one of the fortunate," ""happy ones, complete with an enviably cool lifestyle."" "Then the '70s arrived and everything outdoors was shit awful, but luckily the two or three members of the population who weren't outside rioting, or being bombed or gobbed on, were indoors, being distracted by eerie images" "of upmarket, aspirational living." "♪ The lovely taste of Nescafe Gold blend. ♪." "For that very special taste." "As the 80s approached, the advertisers' desirable vision of the high life stuck." "Conspicuous consumption was being celebrated for its own sake." "Perhaps you could get your hand on luxury every day?" "But somewhere along the way, the glitz and aspirational values of commercials leaked out and started infecting popular dramas." "I first became aware of it in the 80s as shows like Dallas brought the billionaire lifestyle to the plebeian masses." "Dallas was a sumptuous, conspicuously decadent soap, detailing the existence of a family of impossibly wealthy American oil shits, living empty lives." "But even though it was clear money wasn't bringing the Ewings happiness, it was impossible not to envy them." "Dallas was a massive hit, which triumphed in the money-worshipping 80s, which is why the BBC tried making its own version, Howards' Way, in which the sun-kissed oil barons were replaced by the rain-battered yacht set." "It starred a regatta of barnacled curmudgeons, racing to acquire swank wagons and drink problems, the winner being the one who hoarded the biggest treasure trove of red things." "Getting ahead involved endlessly barking business-flavoured claptrap at one another." "The entire design department is going in the amalgamation." "Oh, God." "Shows like this helped shift our perception of tycoons and the importance of money itself." "Game shows are a sure fire indicator of how our relationship with money has changed." "Not so long ago, everyone on game shows was chummy and nice." "Like this bunch." "Let's meet the Blue team." "Hi, I'm Debbie Kay." "Hello, Debbie." "Max Weatherstone." "Welcome, Max." "Felix Prow." "Hello, Felix." "Welcome." "And I'm Penny Lowe." "Hello, Penny, nice to see you." "And the shows themselves largely revolved round the simple pleasure of participating in a glorified parlour game on a ropey set." "Who." "Had." "Lots." "Of." "Money." "Once the game was done, the contestants were delighted to accept mere products as prizes." "Teasmade, please." "Oh, you want the Teasmade, do you?" "Fine, you can have that." "And the whole shebang ended on an upbeat note, as the fun gang of beaming neighbours waved goodbye to the cadavers back home." "See ya!" "But now, cold steel menace and raw money is the order of the day, and the game is a dog-eat-dog accumulation festival, culminating in a bitter dispute." "You're pathetic." "Don't get personal." "No, you are, you're pathetic." "You're a selfish cow." "It's like watching people knife each other to death in a skip, but less sexually arousing." "Another harbinger of change is the shifting portrayal of wealthy people on screen." "Back in 1985, while their lifestyles looked glamorous, fictional billionaires like JR were clearly the bad guys." "20 years later, actual, living, breathing tycoons were being celebrated, and the more explicitly ruthless they were, the brighter their stars shone." "You're sacked." "You're sacked." "You're sacked." "Now get out." "So, your big idea was a ginger beer stall." "Craig, this was your handiwork, was it?" "If I had the head of Kawasaki over, and he asked to see an example of British marketing strategy, and I showed him this, what do you think he'd say?" "Since you're too dim to speak when prompted, I'll tell you - he'd say nothing." "He's Japanese." "They're a polite species." "He'd look at it and simply stand there, letting the shame hang silently in the air, like a hot fart in a cold waiting room." "Do you understand me?" "No, said the little boy from Thickington." "Do you know where Thickington is?" "It's in Backwardshire." "Twinned with Mucklehead-on-Dunce." "What I'm saying is you're stupid." "If you were beaming right now, I'd tell you to wipe it off your fat face, cos even though he shat that out on his own volition, you're more to blame, if anything, for failing to intervene." "Regular Johnny Hands-In-Pockets, aren't you?" "I suppose if your mum was drowning you'd stand and watch, would you, eating peanuts and blowing off each time she choked down another neck full of pond?" "Well, the rap was a load of toot." "What's the toffee like?" "Tastes like something left in a kettle after the Dresden firebombing." "You brew this or find it in a jar outside a Welsh clinic?" "Let the customer keep the cup, did you?" "Do you know how much those cups cost me?" "Didn't factor that in!" "No, let benevolent King Muggins pay the piper!" "Well, this ain't cloud bloody cuck-bloody-oo land." "You stunted jokes." "You appalling, hairless little men." "HE MOANS Shut it!" "Glue it shut, fold it over, roll it into a cone and work it up your dirt box!" "You're sacked." "And you're sacked." "You're both sacked." "Now get out." "Send your parents in so I can have them both strangled." "Only two things separate us from the beasts." "One, the beasts are terrible at changing duvet covers." "They tend to pull them over their heads and then panic because the sun's disappeared." "And two, the beasts don't use money." "They've got no idea what it is, or what it's for." "Have you ever seen a dog confronted by a credit card?" "He just looks like a four-legged idiot." "Money is terrible." "It's just a depressing way of boiling our wonderful world down to a set of grey, eyeless, dickless little numbers and then using them to screw each other over." ""Oh, one for me and one for you"," ""Ooh you've got one more than me, I'm going to stab you in the ribs."" "That's what money is." "I mean, look at the sort of twerp who understands money." "Just listen to this bellming twink!" "..And their outlook for 2012 has just been raised from 64..." "Once you've accumulated plenty of money, TV encourages you to invest it all in a box made of bricks." "Rich people used to stop us noticing how privileged they were by tinting their car windows or hiding behind high walls, where you couldn't kill them." "But now, TV allows you a peek behind the gates and frankly it's harrowing." "Cribs is a successful variant of Through The Keyhole, in which a very rich person shows you the rewards society has granted them for being important and successful and loved, and you have to guess who in God's tit they are." "What up, MTV?" "It's your boy, Mims, and welcome to my crib." "Come inside." "Oh, yeah, right, it's your boy, Mims." "We're going round your boy Mime's house, everyone." "I don't know why he's famous." "Maybe he invented Super Noodles." "It's effectively a shopping channel of stuff that could have been yours if you'd been born in America and learnt to rap rather than sitting on your arse in Taunton, watching Cribs." "Cribs dangles the aspirational carrot so impractically out of reach, they might as well put it on a million-mile long stick, tied to a rocket that's been fired into a black hole." "People have always wanted nice houses, obviously." "They're not mad." "But back in the day, your options were limited." "If you were poor, you had to live in a cramped tin full of relatives and cholera." "If you were middle-class, you had a bigger home, and if you were a member of the aristocracy, you lived in Downton flipping Abbey." "People largely accepted whichever kind of hovel they'd been allotted." "Then in the '80s, Thatcher legalised council houses or whatever, and suddenly everyone wanted one." "And glamorous TV ads made the dream look attainably easy." "Oh, washing machine, fridge, oven and hob." "And we CAN afford it with Wimpey's financial help, can't we?" "Yeah, ask the man for approval, you stupid, downtrodden cow." "But having purchased the roofs over their heads, people didn't know what to do with themselves." "What are you actually meant to do in a house?" "Raise a family?" "Start a bottle-top collection?" "Sit there and die?" "No wonder people went mad and started desperately trying to spruce their flipping death boxes up in a bid to kill time." "TV soon noticed this and began knocking up cheapo home-improvement guff castles like Changing Rooms, which took the concept of interior design and married it to the concept of people slinging any old crap together and generated several hundred hours of television in the process." "I thought we'd put it on there, like that." "That's it?" "Yeah, just screw it in." "Yeah, wall moustache." "You've doubled the value of that house, you genius." "The ultimate in homemade pornography has to be pornography made from homes, televised aspirational showrooms such as Channel 4's Grand Designs, which offers a tantalising glimpse of the kind of dream house you too could be dwelling in," "if only you had several hundred thousand pounds and/or six months of leisure time to spare." "The presenter, Kevin McCloud, whose name even makes him sound like a man who's stepped out of a dream, fronts the show in the manner of an enthusiastic curator leading you on a personal tour around a museum of cosy, middle-class satisfaction." "Because it's a listed building, the exterior will have to remain unchanged." "I like these bits because they're like a video game, albeit a painfully middle-class one." "In fact, I'd put Grand Designs' CGI walk-through at number one in my list of the four most middle-class video games of all time, just ahead of School Run Turismo," "Super Artisan Bread Maker and Nigel Slater's Coriander Panic." "Largely, though, it's an envy generator, as we shit-sofaed shlubs look on, moving from mild interest to outright fury." "That's a nice fireplace." "What a wonderfully huge kitchen!" "I love the way the windows let the light into their LOVELY HOUSE!" "Oh, they've got a pool." "Oh, you've got a fucking pool!" "Thanks to shows like this, it feels like it's not enough to own a reasonably OK house any more." "Instead, you can feel a lingering sense of failure for dwelling inside anything other than an architecturally fascinating 4,000 ft translucent diagram with a gigantic mauve egg in the middle for you and your revolting kids to shit into." "Eugh, depressing." "Still, at least you can comfort eat." "Food is another aspirational touchstone." "It's not good enough to heat up a pie any more." "No, today you're supposed to be some kind of gastronomic show pony with a signature dish of your own." "This rat's coming along nicely." "Once upon a time, cookery programmes used to concentrate on the business of cookery." "Today, we're going to take a look at some recipes using offal, or spare parts, as I like to call it, because I never did like the word offal." "Whatever you call it, offal or spare parts, liver and kidneys are certainly very good for us and most nutritionists suggest that we should eat them at least once a week to be healthy and get all the correct vitamins we need." "Whereas today's cookery shows are less about food and more about lifestyle." "Take The Delicious Miss Dahl, in which a blonde supermodel floats around a lovely kitchen, bibbling on about foody-wood." "Good bit of lemon zest." "I think to have a dish named after you, you have to be a bit of a diva." "I do, however, I think, have a bra named after me." "Much rather have a dish, but I have a bra." "Certainly makes my mouth water, which is handy, cos it also makes me feel like spitting at the screen." "Still, if the way you feed your family has become an aspirational lifestyle choice, so has having a family, full stop." "Hey, parent, remember when you biologically converted a spoonful of recently expelled gunk into one of these screaming attention seekers?" "Little did you realise that what you were doing was creating a living, breathing status symbol, although that is precisely what you were doing." "Despite being short and stupid and contributing nothing of value to society whatsoever, children are inexplicably held up as not just a good thing, but a miraculous thing, like enchanted forest deities whose every squeak, dribble and fart should be applauded like it's a Mozart concerto." "There are sickening playgroup franchises devoted to keeping them entertained." "There's even a 24-hour channel consisting of nothing but the live coronations of toddlers." "..The whole world is subject to the power and empire..." "And advertisers know how much parents adore their kids, so they shit out aspirational ads that prey on their paternal instincts and heighten the sense that these magical imps need protection." "One problem with treating kids like delicate Faberge eggs is you become so dementedly paranoid about any misfortune befalling them that you end up sealing them indoors around the clock, effectively locking them in a prison that serves organic food," "in which every surface has been sprayed 86 times with anti-bacterial disinfectant before those fingers can touch it." "So they sit there indoors, growing up in the flickering glare of aspirational imagery, soaking it all up - brightly-coloured kids' shows which make stardom seen both obtainable and desirable, swanky, seductive adverts where a celebrity tells you you're special..." "Because we're worth it." "And glossily-packaged celebrity piddle like The Saturday's 24/7, which largely consists of banal footage of singing five-knuckle shuffle The Saturdays punting about like children, dressing up, drawing, playing with soft toys, dressing up, tickling each other," "making and doing, dressing up, playing Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush, dressing up as their mums, dressing up, climbing the trees, face-painting and dressing up." "One natural consequence of long-term exposure to this kind of piffle is the kids who watch it grow up wanting to be treated like celebrities themselves, becoming self-obsessed little emperors in the process." "For evidence, tune in to MTV's My Super Sweet 16, not so much a show, more an orchestrated smear campaign against humankind in general." "Some of it is punishingly depressing." "For instance, here, a brat's mum buys her a 67,000 Lexus for her birthday." "Happy birthday!" "What the hell?" "I don't want my car now." "Happy birthday..." "No, I don't want my car now!" "Mom!" "But she's unhappy, cos she didn't want it until the night of her birthday party." "She's such an idiot." "I just wanted a normal party." "She just ruined everything." "You've ruined my life!" "I BLEEP hate you!" "The party's off!" "I think this might actually be an Al-Qaeda recruitment film." "Far from being just an American thing, this kind of ostentatious kiddie spoiling has now leapt across the Atlantic and onto our shores, and has its own British spin-off, My Super Sweet 16 UK." "Here, in a characteristically unedifying episode, we meet a young lad called Freddy, who's more spoiled than the average ancient Babylonian prince." "He lives in a massive house, has a racehorse named after him, is driven everywhere in a huge limousine and thinks nothing of blowing a fortune on gaudy bling bullshit." "Freddy's birthday is fast approaching, but rather than setting up a Facebook page or sending out invites, like a normal, Earth-dwelling citizen, he holds an X Factor-style audition to decide who can attend." "Are you all ready to be judged?" "Jesus Christ." "It's bad news." "You'll have to spend a lot of money on a new outfit, because you're coming to the party." "Come on!" "Come the night itself, he arrives in a choreographed simulation of a red carpet celebrity event." "We want Freddy!" "We want Freddy!" "It's a strange thing to think that within my lifetime, teenage aspirations have morphed from being able to pull off a pretty good BMX trick or having fewer spots to being showered with adulation like you're Lady Gaga and Peter Andre crossed with God." "Make no mistake, the next generation is going to be horrible." "If I was Education Secretary, which I'm not, currently," "I'd force every school in the country to run cartoons telling kids they were worthless, just to counterbalance it all." "Howie the hare was gaily hopping down Dinglebell Way one morning, when he stopped." "He looked up into the clouds, and he was struck by the notion of just how insignificant he was in the grand scheme of things, how it didn't matter if he wanted carrots for dinner or if his paw hurt, or even if he caught his cheek on some barbed wire and got an infected face and died." "None of these things mattered, he realised, because despite what Mummy kept saying, he didn't matter, which was why it didn't matter that moments later, he was killed by a meteorite." "Way back yonder in the past, folk only achieved a level of what might be termed celebrity by displaying a remarkable level of talent, whereas during the current, confused period of human history, it's apparently possible to become famous merely for inhaling and exhaling on camera." "The galaxy of fame has a complex, ever-shifting hierarchy." "Burning brightest are the proper stars, actors and musicians and the like." "Some become supergiants, like Beyonce or Brad Pitt, and they're also insanely powerful." "If George Clooney called a live, globally-televised press conference during which he plucked out two of his chest hairs and said he'd post them to the first viewer to turn round and murder a member of their own family," "thousands would perish." "There's a fun fact for you." "This bona fide constellation also includes some dwarf stars." "For example, Adam Woodyatt, who plays Ian Beale, is one of the most recognisable faces in Britain." "But because he plays a fish and chip shop owner, people consider him intrinsically low-rent and almost certainly treat him accordingly in the street." "Beale!" "Bealey-bob!" "'Ere, Beale!" "♪ Bealey is a piss drop, he runs a BLEEP chip shop" "♪ In Albert Square The filthy queer!" "♪." "Mushy peas, Bealey?" "Mushy peas!" "That's the funny thing about appearing on television... people treat you like the thing you portray." "If the late former Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell walked down the street, they'd react differently." "Gaitskell!" "Gaitskell!" "Who are ya?" "Who are ya?" "Gaitskell, Gaitskell!" "Hughie!" "Hughie!" "Probably." "Then there's the newest cluster, not really stars at all, more huge balls of antimatter like Jordan or Lindsay Lohan, who act as sanctioned hate sponges, feeding off the animosity of the general public, growing bigger and bigger until they implode." "The sheer amount of vitriol many people harbour for these anti-celebs is staggering." "They hate them and hate them with the same dogged indignance of racists." "Ha!" "Good!" "Showbiz gawk rags exploit the fact that we both hate and love celebrities, which is why their every imperfection gets looked over and circled by their vile staff." "That's definitely a weird bruise." "Let's go with "weird bruise"." "It won't be long until they start offering an interactive online service which lets their disgusting readers zoom into each photograph in infinite detail, like Google bloody Earth, tagging and logging each minuscule flaw so we can build up a comprehensive overview of how many horrid bits we can unearth" "on the surfaces of the world's most beautiful women." "If even the world's most inherently gorgeous people are subject to that kind of scrutiny, how can Joanne Average compete?" "She can't, obviously, so her life becomes one long, slow emotional breakdown." "And she looks like a pig when she cries." "Still, at least no one's judging ordinary people, apart from the television." "Style By Jury is a TV show as basic and cruel as an assault in a railway station toilet." "Each week, a woman is invited onto the show in the belief she's being auditioned for a makeover programme." "And she is, except the audition takes place in front of a one-way mirror with a jury behind it, eerie fellow humans preparing to judge her." "On our jury today, a lawyer, a flight attendant, a writer." "We've asked them to give us their honest first impressions." "Jury, are you ready?" "Ready." "Let's bring her in." "Then in comes the quarry." "Pigtails?" "She looks like a 50-year-old schoolgirl." "She looks like a little girl trapped in a 60-year-old body." "It's like she takes a short bus everywhere." "Look at the hair." "What a judgmental, fat, bald, bearded arsehole." "Do you live by yourself?" "I live with my mom, actually." "That explains it." "It seems almost as if she's married to her mother." "I think her mother dresses her ugly so that no one will date her and she stays at home and takes care of her." "Not that they just judge her outward appearance." "No, they judge her inner life too." "What do you do for fun?" "Um...watch a lot of TV." "I like to watch movies, but I stay inside the house a lot." "Looks as though she's hurting inside emotionally, mentally, spiritually." "She seems like a very lonely person." "She looks like she's given up on herself and on life." "Having established she's not televisual enough, said dumpling gets examined by terrifying dentists, zapped with some kind of face-nice-ifying laser and restyled until she looks like she actually belongs on TV." "There are also shows which aim to offer an internal makeover by making normal people come to terms with their own bodies, such as Naked, a BBC Three psychological boot camp horrorfest in which people who feel inadequate are encouraged to vent those feelings for their own good, and our entertainment." "Shout, "I am fat"" "so that you blow away every single statement you've ever thought you heard, every glance that you think somebody might have passed you." "I am fat!" "My God." "Actually..." "louder than that." "Let it go." "Let this go." "I AM FAT!" "That was amazing." "I AM DISTURBED by this programme." "And once those pesky feelings of inadequacy have been flushed away, they're encouraged to get their tits out for their own good." "And our entertainment, again." "Hold on to your boobs...good girl." "It's like a weird sex cult that preys on the vulnerable, minus the exciting bit at the end where the police surround the compound and the leader convinces everyone to eat a cyanide lasagne." "Still, little wonder the normal ordinary person feels worthless, because the aspirational whirlpool is, if anything, speeding up." "Every image on television is growing more glamorous and dreamlike by the moment." "The adverts are becoming more unhinged in their desperate quest for things to aspire to." "Even everyday products have lost their minds, and they don't even have minds." "Wear jewels and flowers every day." "Every day?" "I'm not Elton John." "Infuse your clothes with the elegant fragrance of white diamond and lotus flower." "Diamonds" " I've always thought they reek." "Must be a classy product, this, something really exclusive." "..Part of the new Infusions collection from Bold 2in1, a little more luxury in your laundry." "BLEEP me, we're doomed." "As for food, even dog food, which used to be flogged with a gruff, matronly friendliness..." "Looks good, it cuts well and it's meaty." "It's solid nourishment." "..Has become a gourmet signature dish for you to plop down in front of some four-legged Caesar." "Carefully-sourced ingredients, balanced with selected vegetable toppings." "Won't look so nice when he shits it out down the park!" "Actually, it probably will." "Even Cribs got more extreme with the incredible Teen Cribs." "How are you meant to aspire to be someone's child?" "!" "Enough of that, let's check out my spa." "And the worship of raw money got so bad there were rap videos which look more like satirical visions of empty excess." "It's not clear who this is demeaning the most - women, black people in general or me, the viewer." "I haven't seen that much money being mindlessly thrown at a shuddering arse since CNN hired Piers Morgan." "Before long, behaving like a massive, swaggering twat wasn't just acceptable, it was openly encouraged." "Who does P Diddy think he is, king?" "I am king." "The new fragrance for men from Sean John." "You am 'king unbelievable." "Faced with all these unattainable dreams, little wonder so many people in so many places got themselves wedged so deep in debt." "People bought houses and bragged about how the value kept zooming up through the skylight." "In fact, they didn't seem to be houses at all, but enchanted coin-shitting machines." "It was all a collective delusion, and none of it was real." "And it wasn't just homeowners, the whole world had dreamed itself into a wistful financial thought bubble, which popped." "Today, stock markets across the world tumbled, imploded, continued to collapse like deflated dirigibles." "And what could you do then?" "According to this creepy ad, you could flog some of the bling you'd accumulated to Dale Winton." "How magical." "My son is desperate for a laptop, so I'm hoping for 150 quid." "David, good news?" "£195." "Cash my gold." "I haven't got any gold, Dale." "Do you accept kidneys?" "And when the money ran completely dry, so did all your dreams and you'd lose the one thing you were still clinging on to, your aspiration kennel, your home." "Still, if you lost your house, you could always apply some of those Grand Design style tips to your new abode." "Simon and Juniper's new home consists of an audacious cardboard hexahedron, situated in traditional alleyway surroundings." "A flap-style entrance leads to a cosy interior combination living room/sleeping area, insulated with reclaimed newsprint flooring." "Best of all, the entire structure is recyclable and can be used to bury their bodies, should their life together come to an abrupt end during a cold snap." "I say nuts and boo to all these prettified, insidious televisual delusions." "Best to hammer shut your dream flap, so you don't want for anything anyway and you're content to squat around in your own steaming muck." "And if it all gets too much, do what I do and glug your way to Fantasy Island on the good ship Liquid Brain Killer." "Ha-Ha!" "Hee-hee, hoo-hoo!" "Mmm!" "Mmm!" "Mmm!" "Yeah." "Or you could always switch your TV off, stop living on some kind of rubbish tip and actually just enjoy yourself, like me." "Ha-ha-ha!" "Hoo-hoo-hoo!" "HE WAILS" "Hoo-hoo-hoo!" "Ha-ha-ha!" "Hur-hur-hur!" "Hoo-hoo-hoo!" "Ha-ha-ha!" "Hur-hur-hur!" "Ha-ha-ha!" "Hee-hee-hee!" "Hur-hur-hur!" "Hoo-hoo-hoo!" "Ha-ha-ha-ha!" "Hur-hur-hur!" "Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!" "Ha-ha-ha!" "Hoo-hoo!" "Ha-ha-ha!" "Hur-hur-hur!" "Take it you don't work here, then." "I don't work anywhere." "That's why I'm here." "Got any jobs going?" "Straight for the jugular!" "What's your background?" "Property, mainly." "But I can turn my hand to most things." "We were looking for someone to help with our property pages a while back." "Fantastic." "I'll give you my card." "Just excuse me one minute." "Wow." "What happened there?" "Social annihilation by cheese." "I was just on the scent of some actual work as well." "Unemployment by cheese." "Yeah." "Do you work here too?" "No, I run an art gallery over in the Merchant City." "It's called The Space." "Sadie Anderson." "Oh, cool." "Jo Glass." "I'm Lauren's partner." "You are still here." "You all right?" "What you looking at?" "It's my mate's house." "She thinks she might have a stalker." "Where is that?" "Birchmore Street?" "You know you could get suspended for this." "I know." "I just had to check it out." "I'm nearly done now." "I never saw this." "OK?" "OK." "Course, I meet a lot of actresses in my line of work." "And most of them fall for me." "Oh, could we have another bottle, please?" "Oh, they don't say anything but I can always tell by the way they look at me." "A lot of straight girls want to work out their lesbian fantasies on a girl like me." "Oh, that's lovely." "We're a rare breed, you and me." "Pretty dykes." "I mean, it's a bit of dogs home out there, isn't it?" "Oh, well, I wouldn't necessarily say that." "I mean..." "I had this thing last season with Shelley Prince." "Er..." "You know, she plays Jessica in Cardiac Care." "Right." "And I also had a little thing with Gina Summers." "You know, she plays Jessica's sister, Shae." "Yes." "So, you could say, I've had both of the Moncrieff twins." "That's hilarious." "I guess you don't get the same calibre of star in theatre as you do in television." "You know, I could probably get you a meeting for Cardiac Care." "Oh, that's... that's sweet but I'm pretty busy with Chekhov at the moment, so..." "Chekhov?" "Who's he?" "!" "Cardiac Care is today's Shakespeare." "I know, that was Keith White in the Partick Daily Post." "So, where did you meet Lauren, Sadie?" "Oh, I came in to pitch for work." "But she didn't have anything for me." "Oh, not leaving many stones unturned, are you?" "Here she comes." "Hey!" "Surprised to see me?" "Gavin cancelled at the last minute." "I could make it after all." "Must be a nice surprise for you, Lauren." "Yeah." "So, do you two know each other?" "No, we just met in the loo." "I hope you're introducing Sadie to some useful people." "I've got to go speak to an investor before she leaves." "Don't worry about us." "Go and charm the pants off her." "OK." "And that's when I realised I could make some extra cash foot modelling." "Ah." "I wonder what's happened to Ed and Nora?" "Yeah." "I'm going to go and find them." "Hey!" "Did you...?" "I've missed you." "Ah, that's... that's nice." "Er..." "Really quiet." "Cos my flatmate's asleep." "OK." "Ah!" "Wha...?" "Say, "Stand and deliver."" "What?" "I'm a beautiful princess." "And you're a fearless highwaywoman holding up my carriage." "OK." "Um..." "Stand and deliver." "Now rub my royal lady mound." "OK, I'm..." "What's up?" "Did you want to be princess, Tess?" "No." "No." "I'm just..." "I'm feeling really ill, suddenly." "Oh, no." "What's the matter?" "I just feel really... sick." "And I've got a real bad headache." "My leg... hurts." "Your leg?" "Yeah." "Yeah, it's like there's a sort of... tingling in my lower thigh." "Oh, shit!" "Shall I call NHS 24?" "See if we should take you to hospital?" "No, no, it's fine." "I just need to rest." "My housemate's a doctor, so..." "Why didn't you say?" "I'll go get her." "No, no, no." "You can't." "You can't wake her." "She's got work tomorrow." "I'm sure she won't mind in an emergency." "No, no." "Really." "Is this her room here?" "Is there a doctor in the house?" "Hang on." "Everything all right?" "No." "It's Tess." "She's really ill." "What's the matter, Tess?" "Are you feeling sick?" "Yeah." "Really sick." "Is it something that you ate?" "No." "Right, well, um..." "OK." "Yeah, let's have a look at this." "So, you're feeling sick." "Look up." "And anything else?" "Just a really, really bad headache." "And that tingling in your leg." "Yeah." "It's like a tingling in my upper thigh." "You said lower before." "It's moved." "A tingling in your upper thigh?" "That's quite an unusual presentation." "I don't like the sound of this." "What do you think it is?" "Could be bacterial hydritis, in which case we're going to have to take her in." "So, um, if you could maybe go home." "Oh, I don't mind staying and keeping an eye on Tess while you sleep." "Oh, no, no, really." "Go home." "Why?" "Do you think it's infectious?" "Unfortunately, very." "Right." "Well, if you're sure there's nothing I can do." "All right, but, um..." "Thanks." "Yeah." "Yeah, thanks, Meg." "OK." "Bye." "So, Sadie, I really must introduce you to some useful people." "There's no need." "I've already landed myself a plum job." "She's coming to work for me." "No!" "I mean, Sadie's in property." "I'm a saleswoman, actually, Lauren." "It doesn't matter if it's art or houses." "She's perfect for the gallery." "Means I can finally give that stroppy French cow the boot." "She's been on a warning for months now." "Well, right." "Congratulations." "Darling, I've just got to pick up a few things." "A few bits and pieces from the office." "Then we can go for dinner." "Yeah." "Perhaps you'd like to join us, Sadie?" "No, thanks." "I think I'll leave you two to your evening." "What the fuck are you doing?" "I told you." "I need a job." "With my wife?" "Are you fucking mad?" "No." "Just very practical." "You're a bit paranoid, aren't you?" "You're not going to ask me to leave, then?" "Lexy, it's Sam." "Will you let me in?" "Hey." "Hey, are you all right?" "It was true." "Cat was fucking Frankie." "What?" "They were meeting here too." "Wait a second." "Are you sure?" "I saw her on CCTV." "She was here before she died." "That's fucking..." "She could have told me." "She could have given me that at least." "Frankie, that useless bitch!" "OK." "Come here." "I haven't changed the sheets." "I've done everything else." "I've packed up her clothes." "Hey, Sam." "Come on." "Sam, come on." "Sam!" "Come on, don't!" "Don't, Sam." "Stop, Sam!" "Sam, stop, Sam." "Don't!" "I don't want it!" "Not like this, OK?" "Sorry." "I'm sorry." "No." "No, Sam." "Sam, wait." "I didn't..." "Sam, wait!"