Dead Famous

DAY THIRTY-ONE. 3.00 p.m.

Coleridge and his team were becoming increasingly frustrated with Woggle. The problem was that he kept getting in the way of the other housemates. The people at Peeping Tom had thought him such good telly that large chunks of what footage remained from the early days of the show concerned his exploits and the other housemates’ ever more frustrated reactions to them.

“If it had been Woggle that was murdered we could have made a circumstantial case against any of them,” Coleridge complained. “I’m sick of the sight of him myself and I didn’t have to live with the man.”

“You can’t blame the producers for pushing him,” Hooper said. “I mean, for a while there the country was obsessed. ‘Wogglemania’, they called it.”

Coleridge remembered. Even he had been aware of the name popping up on the front pages of the tabloids and on page three or four of the broadsheets. At the time he had not had the faintest idea who they were talking about. He had thought it was probably a footballer or perhaps a celebrity violinist.

Hooper ejected the video tape that they had just finished and put it on the small “watched” pile, then took another tape from the colossal “have not yet watched” pile and put it into the VCR.

“You do know that the ‘have not yet watched’ pile is just a satellite of a much bigger one, don’t you, sir? Which we have in the cells.”

“Yes, I did know that, sergeant.”

Hooper pressed play and once more the sombre Scottish brogue of Andy the narrator drifted across the incident room.

“It’s day four in the house and Layla and Dervla have suggested that a rota be organized in order to more fairly allocate the domestic chores.”

Coleridge sank a little further into his chair. He knew that he couldn’t allow himself another mug of tea for almost fifty minutes. One an hour, fourteen pint mugs a working day, that was his limit.