Slow News

As the days ground on towards Christmas, it became apparent that Jeremy Vine was once again running out of material. Among the hot topics on his Radio 2 show was the story of a man in his forties who had died at an office party while trying to dance 'Gangnam-style'. I can't quite recall what the 'issue' was here - men's health, or the latest threat from Korea - but I can't imagine that this is what the poor man would have wanted to be remembered for. I blame the song - in my day, novelty dance crazes were more sedate. Say what you like about Agadoo, it never killed anyone. That I am aware of.

Increasingly desperate, JV was soon turning to his colleagues for stories. Robert Peston's burglary came up, and the story of some BBC producer who, despite feeling fine, had turned out to have one seriously furred-up artery, and might have died if a friend who happened to be a cardiologist hadn't intervened. Not feeling especially healthy myself at this point (I'd gone viral, as I believe they say), I was deeply reassured to be told that even if I'd been feeling OK I might still have been on the verge of dropping dead - even without making a wild leap onto the dancefloor.

Then we were being told that 'Fred the weatherman' had been revealed as another possible child pervert. This wasn't on JV but it was discussed in the office. I didn't know who 'Fred the weatherman' was but I was informed that he was that man who used to jump around on a floating rubber map of the UK. 'You could tell', I said. The question of who would be the next celebrity nonce arose, and the name of Noel Edmonds came up. I was shocked - somehow, I could imagine Noel slaughtering children in their tens of thousands, like Herod, but sleeping with them? Never.

My money's on Rolf Harris, but not with kids - with animals. I can't believe they let this man have his own animal clinic - if you ask me, the signs were all there from Tie Me Kangaroo Down onwards.

so this is Christmas... and WHAT HAVE YOU DONE???!!

We went to a meeting in London, and were each of us asked to name something we'd done in the last year that we were proud of. Proud! This was a tough one. It wasn't like I'd masterminded any campaigns lately, but I could hardly talk about a particularly gruelling bout of invoice-photocopying, could I? In the end I said: 'Becoming Head of Media and PR.' If you're going to tell a lie, make it a big one. At least it might get a laugh. And it did. So that's alright then - isn't it?

Then we were called upon to split up into groups and come up with words and phrases which might be used to represent the department and what it does in a positive promotional light. This was quite fun. Our group came up with things like 'flexible and responsive', which made us sound like something you could pick up in Ann Summers. And if that's not a positive promotional light, then I don't know what is.

The real focus of the meeting, however, was the Christmas meal in Cafe Rouge afterwards. Other Christmas meals have arisen, as and when, including an Italian masquerade ball in Billericay, organised by Nicky, who then couldn't attend because of illness. Walking in, I wondered if I didn't feel slightly ill as well. The marquee was heaving - it seemed literally, since the light-dotted walls were rippling like a stomach in the throes of peristalsis. It did seem to me the kind of place that was likely to host some soon-to-be-legendary disaster, possibly tonight (THE ONES WHO STAYED IN WITH THE NOROVIRUS WERE THE LUCKY ONES, it would say in tomorrow's papers). We had been promised 'authentic bursts of song', which also worried me: it sounded like being trapped in the Go Compare advert (before it turned ironic). It wasn't like that at all, because at least the Go Compare man can sing - however, the fact that the singing was on occasion quite bad didn't make it any the less authentic; perhaps it even made it more so.

There were also 'aerial performers', who thrillingly evoked the possibility that maybe they hadn't been doing it very long, and possibly had only moments before been recruited from the bar staff. They certainly provided a memorable display of 'camel toe', as Mat eagerly pointed out. Shaun said that there is a new name for that now on 'the street', only I can't remember what it is. I was more thrilled by the display provided by the waiting staff, who long after they had offloaded our plates were carrying identical plates past our table over and over again, so that it was like watching a film on a loop.

You certainly had to marvel at the organisation of the whole thing, and if it was finally a lot less like being in Italy than it was like being in Billericay (albeit in a sort of disco balloon with a mock-up of the Rialto Bridge down the middle of it) then it was all highly entertaining and time passed so quickly that it seemed only a short time after the meal was finished that we were being presented with the 'survivor's breakfast'. Actually, it was only a couple of hours, but my point still stands. I think.

reality fatigue

Well I seem to have got the flat but we didn't appear on TOWIE. We got 'bumped', as I believe the phrase is. And there wasn't much point looking for us on the live episode – we would certainly have realised if we had been part of that. It took the series to a whole new level – a lower one. If TOWIE was reality, this was going behind the scenes of reality. We were literally viewing, to paraphrase Iggy Pop, reality's ripped backsides.

And what did it look like? Well, it was all set around Arg's charity night, and for the most part it was like some amateurish and slightly bizarre performance that might have been taking place in a church hall just down the road. Which I suppose was more or less the case. As though in acknowledgement of the fact that nobody could possibly be interested in any of the stuff taking place onstage, they kept cutting away to conversations between the principals. Shorn of their usual thin sheen of 'glamour', these left the horrified viewer wondering: 'Is this what reality's really like?'

It would be tempting to say that TOWIE was jumping the shark here, except there never was anything quite so dramatic as a shark – more like one of those fish that eats your feet. Whatever happened to them?

Perhaps I will have to find my shallow amusement elsewhere – and (courtesy of Adam Buxton, who has been talking about it on his 6 Music show) here comes Bad Kid's Jokes, a blog on Tumblr in which a guy who mediates the jokes children send in to a website publishes the rejects.

The results (all sic) may be forthrightly lavatorial:

what did the women do in bed when she heard the alarm going off?

poo her pants

Surreal:

KNOCK KNOCK! WHOS THERE. REX THE DUMPLING EGG

Or curiously profound and melancholy...

if you shot down ten birds. how many would you have left.

none.

I haven't been this excited since Pets With Tourettes. And we all know how long that lasted.

Becoming Brentwood

Then I looked at a flat in Rose Valley. It was quite acceptable, and even affordable. Surely too good to be true. So I left thinking I must have missed something.  Now that I came to think of it, had there been any windows? Could I really be sure that the walls weren't made of cardboard? I decided to look at it again with a responsible person in tow (Justin). However it turned out that it had indeed been my dream flat, since, as with a dream, it was gone in the morning, when I rang to arrange the second viewing. Even as I had been looking at it the night before some bastard (or bitch) had been claiming it for their own.

So, in a kind of panic, I returned to last week's only promising option - the King's Road flat with the man on the sofa. Now the man was gone, as was the sofa. Remaining were two decent-sized rooms, plus functional kitchen and bathroom. The fridge had no freezer compartment. I'll miss ice - but two rooms... I could choose which would be the lounge and which the bedroom. Or I could have two bedrooms. Or a drawing room and a room full of stuffed animals. There was really no end of possibilities. So I did not hesitate - almost immediately, I initiated a process which could very well result in my renting this flat, subject to certain conditions being met.

That very night, I went out to celebrate with my family in Caffe Uno. To celebrate my Mum's birthday, in fact, but what the Hell. An unpleasant stench occasionally wafted over to us from the back of the restaurant. Presumably this had nothing to do with the fact that they were filming TOWIE in there. A lot of media people in their twenties were scurrying about, more people than you'd think they'd need to create such a piece of... reality. We had to sign forms. Among other things, these gave them permission to film us 'in sexual situations'. As it turned out, none arose during this family meal in the Brentwood branch of a well-known chain of restaurants. But I didn't read the small print - it may be that the form covers the rest of my life. Well, good luck to them.

I was asked to describe myself on the form, and highlight any distinguishing features. 'No distinguishing features', I wrote. It remains to be seen whether I will feature as a blur somewhere beyond Mario, Lucy and Mick, but having made some steps to renting a flat in the heart of Brentwood, and having signed that form on the same day, I now felt that in a way I had truly become a citizen of Brentwood. God help me.