LITMIR.BIZ

       Preface

      Even though he was wearing sunglasses, you could see Kanye West was staring at us thinking ‘What the hell?’ The camp one was wearing a gold lamé tracksuit, and the beardy one was wearing MC Hammer pantaloons made of tin foil. We looked like two oven-cooked turkeys that had just run a marathon. I think he thought we were simple.

      It was whilst standing there in The Friday Night Project studio, explaining to Kanye West what ‘dogging’ was, that I had a flashback to when my life wasn’t so surreal, wasn’t so out there, wasn’t so wig-based. Look at me now, for Christ’s sake, standing in front of a mirror, my eyes following the line of my stockings up from my black stilettos to the silver-sequinned négligé. It’s not a dream because I can actually hear myself saying ‘… but would Tina Turner wear this?’ How did this happen? My life was becoming about as real as the plastic tits that had been rammed down the front of my top.

      No one told me it would be like this – not that I’m complaining, I just didn’t even know what ‘it’ was. I knew it would be a lot of smiling, waving, good press, bad press, people gossiping about me, but I didn’t realise it would happen at this pace. My life had been pelting along at breakneck speed and, like the costume changes on The Friday Night Project, sequins, feather boas and leather had been whizzing before my eyes, and I hadn’t had time to absorb it.

      It was only when the show finished and I sat in my dressing room and had made time for gentle reflection that I realised I’d been in front of millions of viewers dressed as a gimp. It’s telling when you can recognise your outfits from other television programmes. There’s something tragic sitting there of an evening watching Heartbeat and then suddenly blurting out, ‘Hold on, I wore that wig when I was Rula Lenska!’ The Friday Night Project has been a wonderful experience for me, albeit a wonderful experience with a learning curve reminiscent of a cliff face.

      I walked into the studio on that cold January Thursday morning, not taking it particularly seriously. It was only when I saw the huge eight-foot portrait of my face next to Justin’s, staring back at me, that it finally dawned on me what I had let myself in for. This was serious. It was like a punch in the stomach. I felt sick. The studio we were filming in didn’t help, either. It was huge and imposing and bathed in harsh lighting. Looking out at row after row of empty seats, which in eight hours’ time would be filled with excited and expectant faces, made the agony even worse. I’d only ever appeared in makeshift studios at the back of production offices, performing in shows that were destined for obscure satellite channels, where often the people in the studio would outnumber the viewing figures two to one. This vast space was all worryingly new to me. Even the rehearsals for The Friday Night Project were done in a room above a shopping centre in West London.

      Admittedly, my acting didn’t do the rehearsals justice. A lot of the time the rehearsals would consist of me stumbling over the words on the autocue wearing an ill-fitting wig – mind you, it hasn’t done Brucie’s career any harm, I suppose. The sketches are done one after the other, which is no hardship. But when you’re whipping off clothes at a moment’s notice, donning wigs, and having your breasts adjusted by a saveloy-fingered costumier, on a hot day, you could fool your body into thinking it’s going through the change. If you have someone fabulous at presenting like the lovely Davina or Cilla, the rehearsal can fly by. But if we are saddled with, shall we say, some of our less literate showbiz friends, the show will be begging to be put out of its misery.

      Thankfully, those shows are few and far between. But there I go again with my mocking, totally forgetting my first appearance on the first show of the first series at the beginning of January 2006. I wasn’t so hot myself. As you can imagine, the nerves had gone full throttle, not helped by the three energy drinks I’d downed in quick succession in a vain attempt to salvage some vim from some part of my body which wasn’t quivering with fear. The amount of energy drinks I consume before I go onto the studio floor is a bit of a joke with The Friday Night Project team. I love the buzz I get, plus it gives me the added bonus of coming up just as my ‘Topical Barometer’ does. Perfect timing.

      So

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