Chapter 20: A week later...
La Roue de la Fortune

The media. What a bunch of sods!

'Well, it is part of a series, hopefully, and this is the first one.'

It was not over yet. What we had to do next was to go to London and face a casino environment. It turned out it was all based on an American idea and so there would be a larger-than-life roulette wheel to choose our life-swap partners. Never mind the fact that we had already done it, and the programme was finished. The show was called Life Roulette, and so there had to be roulette. The whole life swap concept, like most British programmes, was a copy of an American original. That one had a roulette wheel, so we had to have one as well, even though the American version was never shown.

'But this one is going to be shown Craig,' Luke assured me. Of course, now that no-one has seen it and even I have no footage, it is all starting to resemble the old 1960s thriller, The Prisoner and I feel a little like Patrick MacGoohan's confused inmate, Number 6. I may have been taken to the Village, but am I the only one who witnessed it? Do I have any proof? Was it all an illusion? "Be seeing you!" Or rather, you won't!

I am a fan of that show, anyway, and on the back of our car, in which we drove to this roulette event, we had a sticker for The Prisoner with "I Have Escaped" written on it. There were two penny-farthing bicycles with the number six on each of the big wheels, the symbols of The Prisoner. We have always had it on the back of our car and I pointed it out to the film crew. Obviously, I feel I have escaped to West Wales from Babylon Central (also known as London) but, ironically, I am just down the road from Portmerion, where the cult TV series The Prisoner was filmed. I had escaped but now I had to go back. There was no chauffeur-driven people carrier to collect us this time. We had to make our own way back to the smoke. Apparently we were going to have to drive around a lot, but they do not like to tell you what is going to happen to you because they get a real schoolboy thrill out of exciting you: "Wow, I didn't realise we were going here!" Instead I was going, 'Tell us, you bastards. I am fed up with this. Is it a game or is it reality?'

In the American model which we were following, the contestants had to walk into a casino and take their turns at the roulette table. So we had shot the whole show, and at the end of it all we then had to shoot the beginning of the show. No wonder they are all on sedatives, and Luke did admit that well over seventy percent of everybody in the media are on psychiatric drugs. Anti-hallucinogens most likely I would say, for the lack of sleep, and to help them to come down off the cocaine. There was none of that here, though. This film crew were clean as a whistle. We did get Jonty partially stoned but he panicked so much that he had accepted to do it, that he ran away. These were not the twenty-five year olds that I hung with, even the ones that did not take drugs were not scared of them. That was just something their daft mates did. I had assumed that most twenty-five year olds in that line of business would have done some kind of illegal drug, but not these. They get a clean bill of health from Dr. Benway's arbitration.

We got a call to meet Noël, the cameraman, in Wandsworth. That was near the studio where we would be filming this casino-roulette section. This studio was also the place where I would be meeting Gerard Braughn for the first time.

It turned out that Noël wanted to meet us in a coffee house, one of those plastic, overpriced, drug-peddling corporate stagnant chrome and plastic environments from hell, pushing caffeine on the public.

'Noël,' I said, 'we wanted a pub, mate. We've just been to a caff. Fantastic food, too. You should go there. Now we want a beer, because you're paying.'

We were not that different to Gerard really.

'We have spent a lot of our own money on this and we are not getting a wage. You ain't spent any of your own money on this and you are getting a wage. There are limits to what I can tolerate in terms of wealth here.'

'Would it help then Craig if you had two pints before you met Gerard?'

'I would rather have seven but then that might sacrifice the programme a little bit, or even make it better.'

'Oh no, you can't have too many, Craig...'

'I'm only joking. I'll have one.'

This was the point where their efficiency really hit rock bottom. I spotted the woman I had handed my door keys over to right at the beginning. We were meeting Noël outside the coffee shop with no intention of going in because we wanted to go to the pub up the road, but without Noël knowing it, she had arranged to meet Gerard in this very same coffee shop. Then I saw him. I saw him.

'There he is,' I said to Kiran, 'with the woman who took our keys. He's on the phone, there he is standing there, looking like a businessman, which he is, I suppose. I can recognise him from the photos they gave us.'

'Oh yeah,' she said, 'it's him.'

'He hasn't recognised us.'

We were standing about a metre and a half away from him.

'He is not aware of his environment,' I said. 'He should be able to see us. Here we are. You can't mistake us. I have got a bowler hat on, I'm wearing glasses and a leather jacket. You're an Asian punk, and there are none too many of them in society. And we are standing right next to him.'

I could have head-butted him, kicked him in the bollocks, mugged him, shot him... I could have roasted him on a spit before he realised who I was. How vulnerable is that? I guessed he could only get reception on the street, so he was on the phone about some business arrangement in the middle of a very, very, shall we say 'eclectic' part of Wandsworth. Do not speak too loudly here, Gerard, I felt like saying. Your phone alone is worth more than most of the cars going by.

He was in his shirt and slacks, with his thick neck and bald head. He was a big man. I imagine you would really have to fight him to get his phone off him. He would probably get through two or three people in the defence of it, but a good Yardie gang would have his trousers around his head in an instant.

I used to play snooker in Wandsworth through the night as a sixteen-year-old with a mate who was a strict Mod and we used to gamble for money with the cab drivers and so I know Wandsworth can be a little scary, even though it has been gentrified. I need go no further, but I do know Wandsworth and when I am in Wandsworth I am on the alert. Were I a millionaire who had his fingers so tightly around the throat of the British purse, I would at least be aware of Wandsworth and places like it. Moss Side. South Shields. Kirby. We are a lot less vulnerable than him, probably on a global level, because if I went to Delhi or Kathmandu, I know the same rules apply. People are people the world over. Anyway, I was watching him.

This is gorgeous, I thought to myself. I have seen you before you have seen me and if this is an indication of who we are then I am far more of a threat to you than you are to me. You are not looking.

'I'm going to put him out of his misery,' I said.

'We are not supposed to have met him yet,' Kiran reminded me.

'But that's exactly why I am going to put him out of his misery,' I said. 'The one thing I have in common with him is that he is equally aware of what a bunch of tossers and fuck-ups the media are. We were lucky. We had the ones who were quite organised, but even they were winging it and making it up as they went along. I mean, he looks very frustrated and flustered at the moment, so something is going down.'

I went up to him.

'All right, mate?'

He spun round and the look on his face was a picture. Some of the best stuff did happen off camera.

'You know who I am, don't you?'

'Oh, God,' he said. 'Yes!'

'I've been watching you from over there,' I said.

'What? There?'

'Just there,' I said, 'for about fifteen minutes man. Of course I am going to analyse you. We have spoken on the phone once, haven't we.'

And we had, halfway through the week at Ingols Hall. We had had the one phone call that they then cut off after the specified length of time.

That had been an astonishing affair. We'd hardly spoken & in true “Big Brother” style we had been cut off & he had panicked & thought I'd think he'd done it. I figured this, went ballistic at Luke who had been standing in front of me. I told him to fucking well ring the other end & reassure Gerard that I knew it was the media that had disconnected us & not him. I'd been in mid-flow when it had happened. I'd been asking if his partner & kid were enjoying themselves.

Anyway back to Wandsworth, 'You've got some bollocks, haven't you?' I said, simply. His expression at this point was saying: "Oh no! It's the Cockney, he's going to eat me!" Anyway, I think he was concerned I would be a bit heavier than I am, so to spin around and see a weasily punk rather than a pub bruiser took him by surprise. He had seen a photo & the introductory video footage of me, but photos & film are very deceptive. They sometimes don't give you any impression of size. He was at least a foot taller than me. He was wide. He had gone completely bald, very quickly, so lots of testosterone there, I think. I am an emaciated, emasculated male but he is not. It must be the rugger. Anyway, his voice did not fit his face, his form, or his frame. He looked particularly worried about Kiran, who was, of course, staring him out.

I know all about you, she was thinking. I know all about you, you fox-hunting, racist, war-mongering piece of scum.

'A bit silly of the media, isn't it Gerard?' I said.

'Well, I'm a bit shocked.'

'I bet you fucking are. Did you like our flat?'

'Well, what can I say? We were not supposed to meet. The first time we were supposed to meet was on camera, that was the big, glorious moment...'

'It's great, isn't it!'

'Yes, it is.'

'We've fucked them.' I turned to the woman. 'You,' I said, 'are stupid. You are not supposed to have met... Noël's outside... Noël is this...? This isn't supposed to be happening? Is it?'

Noël had just turned up. He came running.

'You are not supposed to be together!'

'Don't come the Davina McCall with me,' I said. 'Screw your silly little game. We've met, too late. There's no cameras around, no-one's going to see this...'

'You will pretend you've only just met for the first time?'

'Everything else has been pretend, pretend, pretend,' I said. 'Of course we will. But we are going to have already met and it will be too late.'

I turned back to Gerard.

'It's fantastic, isn't it? You know, Gerard, I used to think the media was this super efficient machine.'

'So did I.'

'What do you reckon now?'

'It's not, is it?'

'No,' I said, 'It's not.'

I did not say at that point that I was surprised to find that his empire was just as fucked but let us save that for in a minute or two, for when we met, officially, for the 'first' time...

So, Gerard was whisked away, and we dived into the pub, had a beer, and then went down to the studio with Noël.

There in Wandsworth was a huge shed behind some municipal buildings that Armada TV had hired. They had a huge long boom-stand that went up into the sky, like on a film set. I had not seen anything like this. It had a huge camera on it, and it can go to any point in that square, however high, low, whatever. Then they had a big mixing desk, just like you might see in a recording studio, with loads of dials and editing devices.

This was one of the studios used to create false environments for the film industry. In the middle of this studio that looked very like a laboratory, there was a massive roulette wheel and lighting that simulated the kind of gambling mythos that you would have in a James Bond film. We are back to this. Casino Royale.

One of the first people I met there was an international gambler, who was, like Gerard, very rich, but unlike Gerard he was a Cheeky, Chirpy, Cockney Character, about the same age as me. I never got told his name. He owned the company that hired out those various expensive stretch limousines. Some of the ones you have seen on telly, like the stretch-mini, where the front and the back is a mini, but you've got the whole stretch thing in the middle. That was there. He had a sound system in that vehicle outside in the courtyard and he thought I was rich too. He thought I was a rich rock star type. No-one had told him who I was.

'Here mate, you'll like this.'

"Boom! Boom! Bvvvv, bvvvv, boom, boom. Boom!"

It was like being at a rave.

'You've got a sound system like that in there?' I said.

'Yeah!' he said. 'You like that, doncha?'

'I do!' I said, not telling him I was a penny-less anarchist from West Wales.

'I thought you'd like that,' he said. 'It's all about presentation. You'd like to turn up somewhere with that, wouldn't you?'

Already the bloody vultures are coming down from the trees, I thought, and I ain't even famous yet! Then he brought out a calendar of nudes.

'You like them, then?' he said. I looked through them and it was exactly as you imagine.

'Well,' I said, 'personally I do prefer anybody I sleep with to have a bit more up top.' I pointed at my head as I said this but he was looking down at the calender. To this day he probably thought I meant tits when really I had meant brains.

'Oh,' he said, and there was me not knowing at the time that one of them was his daughter. Kiran told me later that he had told her. If he had realised I had meant brains I'd have probably got a slap. He obviously didn't think a tits remark was out of order. Interestingly I do. What a mixed up world.

Now, this bloke was a serious gambler, and, I rather feared, quite possibly a gangster too. This was just like you imagine it. I bet he could have had me "done in" real quick, but he took a shine to me.

'Where were you brought up?' he asked me. I told him. Strangely, I had not grown up too far away from where he had.

'Isn't that weird,' he said. 'All I've done is make money, and immense amounts, internationally. That is how I escaped the ghetto. You've escaped it by reading haven't you? The same system, though, isn't it?'

'In a way,' I said. He was right. I knew kids like him at school. I do not know any who made loads of money, but I have been in bands with blokes who were like him. He came from a slightly more shall we say traditionally working class family than I did because I think to some extent mine did aspire to middle class academe and it has influenced a lot of their semantics and their accents. I was usually encouraged to ignore the more middle-class side of the family and that family's progress and get back to my Cockney roots... But we were the same. You have made lots of money through treating women like objects, prostitution, gambling and god knows that else, I thought, and I have become an anarchist. He was merely being employed to provide the stretch limousine so that Gerard could appear to turn up to the building where the roulette wheel was supposed to be in style, because he was a millionaire after all. Everything was hired. Even the suits were hired. I was made to wear a suit. I initially refused.

'You have to be anonymous, Craig,' Luke said. 'You can't look different from everybody else in the roulette situation. You have to wear a suit so that no-one knows who you are. That's the programme, Craig. There are no deals.'

As I said, by this time, we had already filmed the whole of it, all apart from this. They were doing the beginning at the end, as they always do. So that gave me a bit of leverage.

'You've fitted me up,' I said. 'Not only that, I think this roulette thing is crap and this should be treated as a documentary, it's fake, it's false. You are fitting up the viewer. You are making the viewer think it was a chance thing, that me and Gerard got picked.'

'Oh, it's merely a device, Craig, but Armada TV want it and they are going to get it and without it we have not got a chance.'

Well, it seems that even with it we still did not have a chance, so they had disgraced themselves for nothing. They should have been honest and presented it as a documentary.

Luke appeared to be really upset at having to put me through this, and I believe he was.

'You didn't tell me I would have to do this at the beginning did you?' I said. 'You have fucking let me down again.'

This was one of the moments when he said I was really scary. I did not shout at him, though.

'You ignorant, ignorant, little fucker,' I thought. 'How the hell can I trust you now? You are completely and utterly playing me up. You did not tell me I would have to wear a bloody suit with a dickie-bow and look like a tosser, when my whole anarchist stance is to do with the way I look and the way I dress, as much as the way things come out of my fucking mouth. You know how central clothing is to my identity.'

'There's no deal,' he said.

'Then I'm walking,' I said.

'You can't walk,' he said.

'I'm walking,' I said. 'What do you mean, I can't walk?'

I walked. I went outside and he came out.

'Well,' he said. 'What are we going to do then?'

'We are going to make a deal!' I said.

'Oh good,' he said.

'Ah ha! That had you going, didn't it? "Walk" - my arse! If I have to wear a suit and I can keep my ear-ring in, it is going to be obvious that I am going to be known to be "the anarchist" because it is going to be billed as "The Anarchist/Monarchist Life-Swap." You have already taken down a lot of my ideas on how to sell it and you have still bloody got them, because that really touched you, didn't it? An anarchist/monarchist life-swap? A bloody revolutionary against a defender of the Royal Family? This is fantastic, this is exactly what we want. So why the hell do we have to go through the facade of pretending that we are all not known and then suddenly two people win and who are they? Oh, one's an anarchist and one's a millionaire businessman capitalist!'

'We have to do what the Americans do,' he said.

'Oh, right,' I said. I am not being nationalistic here, but who the goddamned hell is an American corporation telling British television and film companies how to treat their bloody public?

I was sitting on some metal stairs with Kiran who was not allowed to be on film at this point. It was another of those manus et fucking manus situations. That is what this is all about.

'I don't give a shit what you do,' she said.

She was probably a bit disgusted I was willing to make a deal, but by this time she was severely tired of the whole exercise and I do not blame her.

Luke came back out.

'I am willing to make a deal,' I said.

'Let's hear it.'

'As of yet,' I said, 'you have not paid the musicians who tutored Gerard, have you?'

'Well,' he said, 'no. They're not to get a wage.'

'They're going to get a wage, right now, right here, or I walk.'

'Oh man,' he said, 'you can't do this to me. I'm already way over budget.'

'Well,' I said, 'take it out of your own bloody wages. You are bound to have enough, or I'm fucking off with my missus.'

We did not have Lily with us at that point. She was being baby-sat back home.

'You pay them. You should pay them. You pay Alice. You pay Bertie. You pay Jungle, the African on percussion. You pay the drummer and the guitarist and the bloody bass player.'

'How much?'

'The same amount the other bands on that bill were paid by you, or my name is going to be shit when I get back to West Wales.'

'I'm over budget.'

'You pay them off, but if you pay them I will wear the goddamned suit.'

'Put the suit on!'

It did get a bit like that. I was expecting him to wrestle me to the ground and say: "You're wearing the fucking suit!" "Well, you've messed it up now." It was like that scene in the film They Live when one fella is trying to force the 'Hoffman's Lens' sunglasses on his mate so he can see the aliens.

'All right then,' he said. 'The same amount...'

It was something ridiculously small. The bands were paid a hundred pounds each and this was an eight piece band. This is nothing to Armada TV. These wages have not got any better since 1984. Whereas, I imagine, for a director on Armada, wages have increased dramatically since 1984. Plus it costs eighty to a hundred thousand pounds per hour to produce stuff for TV. Every hour.

So, I was asking for a oner in order to sell out some of my convictions and wear a dickie-bow. I am cheap, am I not?

They insisted on paying Gerard a percentage of that hundred too. My mates in Wales went up the wall.

'No, no, no, no. It has to be done by the book,' they explained to me. 'And it will give him an indication of how little the people you know earn.'

'You have just given a multi-millionaire an eighth of a hundred pounds,' I said. 'In order to make a point?'

That did not go down well in Wales, I can tell you. I have had a few rows out there since this happened. There are some people suspicious that I have sold out and until they see the final edit they will not know for sure, so I have got a reputation among revolutionaries to keep up here.

Have I done a bloody daft thing like George Galloway did on Celebrity Big Brother? I do not know and I will not know until I have seen it. One thing, Davina McCall would not normally let Galloway within touching distance if her life depended on it, but she seemed to enjoy touching him on the show, I noticed. They do have that weird kind of "you're my possession for a period of time" kind of attitude, and so did this production crew. They were all over me and it was a bit like a scene from Zardoz again, where the killer meets the Lethargics and they are getting off on his sweat, stroking him and absorbing his energy so they can get up and do something, because they are so tired. It was a bit like that, on a psychic level with the vampirical Priesthood of the Cathode Ray.

'All, right, we'll pay them a oner.'

'Done,' I said, 'deal!'

It took us a further three months to get it out of them, though.

So, I went into a changing room to put my bloody suit on. There was an Alpha, public school-type actor. He was about twenty-five and he assumed I was a fellow actor.

'Oh,' he said. 'You've managed to get a job on this show have you?

'Somewhat,' I said.

'The goddamned swine haven't given me my cuff-links!'

'Do you want mine?' I said. 'I don't give a shit. I mean, personally I don't want to wear a suit.'

He raised an eyebrow.

'I don't care, man,' I said. 'Have my cuff-links if it bothers you.'

He went in search of cuff-links. I started changing. It was like the showers in a public school, I thought. He is going to walk in while I am in my underwear and it will be love and first sight. But no. He had bigger fish to fry.

'The bastards!' he stormed as he came back in 'They have given me paper-clips!'

'Oh no, man,' I said, 'that's shabby. How much is this show costing?'

'I suppose it's too late now,' he said. 'I'll have to wear paper-clips, but I'm not bloody happy about it.'

There was a mirror with bloody light bulbs around it. This is great, I thought. I could live in this world. Yes!

'It is an amazing thing,' I said, 'We are doing an Anarchist/Monarchist Life-Swap.'

'Oh, is that what it is?'

They did not tell anybody what they were doing, it seemed! He, I later found out, was playing the role of the croupier and he was quite desperate to get work with Luke again, but then people like him are desperate to get work no matter what it is.

'You have to be careful,' he told me. 'This will be sold in bits and pieces. You could end up on an anti-drug commercial. You could end up as a comedic blip on a foreign channel. They'll sell it to anybody, I tell you. The cables lap up sound- and visual-bites from things like this. They will sell it all over the world, but it won't be in the way you expect it. That very thing has happened to me.'

'What happened to you?' I asked.

'Well,' he said, 'for a programme about disproving falsehoods, I had to urinate on an electric fence while it was turned on. I was prepared to do it.'

This sort of man is prepared to do anything for cash, I thought. That is what they essentially teach you at the top of the ladder.

'Well, the interesting thing is the whole thing was a lie. Most things we do in the media are a lie, as you know,' he said, not yet knowing who I was. 'Appalling business, I had to pretend it was electrocuting me to maintain the belief that it was dangerous. Well, that was bad enough, but I did it, I acted it, and it did not electrocute me at all, it is an urban myth.'

Maybe you were lucky, mate, I thought.

'That's interesting,' I said. 'I had always assumed that pissing up an electric fence was unwise.'

'No, it's perfectly harmless, but I writhed around on the floor, I gave a fantastic performance and then I was outraged at what Murdoch did to me!'

'What did he do to you?'

'He had me on some clip show about stupid people! It was shown in seventeen countries in front of millions of people, thinking that I am stupid and that I piss on electric fences and, yes, it does electrocute you. You've got to be careful in this game, mate.'

'Especially since I'm new to it,' I said. I was expecting him to tear my trousers off in an instant when he heard that. "A virgin! My God! Debag him!"

'Anarchist/Monarchist Swap,' I said, 'I mean, as if anybody is surprised that anybody is anti-monarchist in this day and age.'

'Are they?'

'Yeah! I am!'

'You're not!'

'Yes. I think someone should shoot the Royal Family!'

At that, he was out of the room like a shot. Are you not aware we exist, I wondered? But then I was as equally shocked that he was not only a monarchist, but when he met Gerard he tried to get his sister an interview with him in Horse and Hounds magazine who she worked for as a journalist.

He was playing the croupier and he was very good, and I did amuse him, and he did amuse me, he was a very comedic chap. He was as camp as you can possibly believe, whilst being extremely muscular. He was very professional, he did his job well, but he was almost begging Luke for more work.

'If this show goes out,' he said, 'I gather there may be a place for me in it every week.'

'I'll consider it,' Luke said. Luke was quite an difficult bloke to approach over work. People almost have to beg, but he always looks pained by them asking him for work or a favour. I do not like that.

So, Gerard was there and I was there, and this, of course, was the second time I had met him, and I was looking forward to my confrontation with him on camera, but we had to deal with the roulette wheel first.

I was standing next to the gambler who owned the stretch limo. He was supposed to be a contestant. Gerard Braughn was supposed to be a contestant. I was supposed to be a contestant. An insurance salesman of about twenty-six or twenty-seven years of age, although he looked a lot older, he was supposed to be a contestant and he was hoping that he would get picked for a future programme. A chef from an island off the coast of Scotland who seems to mainly sell expensive food to rich people, he was hoping to get onto the programme and he was another contestant. He and Gerard were very well connected on the culinary front, by the way, because he obviously cooked for people like Gerard, and half the food they were talking about I did not have a clue about, whether it was even meat or not. After my experience at Château Gestapo, I was not keen to find out.

Then they faked the roulette thing going round, but instead of a ball, you had wallets. Well, I don't carry a wallet so this level of fabrication was beginning to irritate me.

This is how it worked. There was a wallet in front of each person and then the croupier was standing to the left of me. All the people stood at the different points around the table and there would be a wallet in front of each one. Then they would spin the table and all the wallets would turn around. The whole table was a giant roulette wheel and each pocket where the ball would normally come to rest in was big enough to have a wallet inside. This prop had come over from the States. It was a wallet-roulette wheel, not for a ball to run around and then stop. In some ways, it was more like a chuck-a-luck or a wheel-of-fortune from a carnival side-show than a roulette wheel in a casino. The wallets were not going to fly around the wheel and land where they would. They were already snugly in their compartments before the table even started moving. It was the people who were spun round, effectively. And ain't that the truth!

So, spin the roulette round, because that is what the show is going to be called, Life Roulette. Then you pick up the wallet that appears in front of you, and whomsoever's wallet you pick up, you are going to live their life for a week.

Well, we were all given wallets. One of these wallets had a thousand pounds in it, one of the wallets had a hundred and fifty pounds in it, and the other wallets would have had incomes that were equivalent to the lifestyles of the other two blokes who were wanting to go on the show. There was also a fabricated wallet for an extra who was asked at the last minute to supply a place someone else had dropped out from. That was the gambler, supplying the stretch limo and he was used to gaming, of course. I actually had a lot of fun with him, because we were making each other laugh as this took all goddamned afternoon to shoot, something that would only take up three minutes at the beginning of the show.

All of us, in effect, were going to be mutually swapped at the same time, but they only filmed me and Gerard picking up the wallets, because we were the only ones who had really done it. Now, by this time Luke had admitted to me that he did not think that they could follow our show with a second one. It was just too big to follow.

'That could be a problem down the line,' he said.

'Well,' I said, 'then don't have the fucking roulette wheel in it.'

'I have to,' he said.

'But this could unstick you,' I said. 'It could give them an excuse not to air it. They can't follow it, it cannot therefore be a series and therefore it's a safety valve for them, without having to say they are banning it, they could legitimately explain the fact that they are not showing it by saying they can't have it as a one off because it looks like a series and if they really can't find anything to compete with this without going round the same route again, in which case it would become a week-by-week subversive piece of television on Britain, but who are you going to swap next? Well, two people who think the same, because that is how most people are. What are you going to say? "Today, Gilbert is going to swap with George"? Is that what they want? What we did was not that. Why is this American all of a sudden? This was specific to the British class system. You could possibly find an equivalent anarchist and capitalist in America but I bet that didn't happen and I bet the reason it was taken off American television was that differentiation between wages is something Americans don't like to admit. Everyone's a millionaire in the good old US of A. You put a Puerto Rican lavatory cleaner next to a bloody Hollywood superstar, and you have got problems.'

'And that's why it is going to air in Britain,' Luke said. 'In Britain everybody likes to bash the upper classes.'

He was right about that, and I think that was why he took it on. Nevertheless, the wallets still had to spin around. Round and round the wallet goes and where it stops everybody already knows. The spotlight fell on me and Gerard. There was a blast of scatter-beam lighting, like it was Millionaire or bloody The Weakest Link. Oh God, I thought. What have I let myself in for? My mates are never going to talk to me again. The table went round and it went round and it went round... each time for another camera angle. Then the gambler decided to stir the shit. He thought he would shake things up a bit. He knew I was a radical, he knew I was the poorest person there and he just wanted to mix it up because they like a punch-up, these guys.

'Here!' he said. 'Do you know how much the director of this studio's watch cost him?'

There was a hushed silence.

'No,' I said. 'How much?'

'Eight thousand pound!'

'You what?' I said.

'I knew that would excite you! Come here,' he said to the director. 'Come and show him your watch.'

They had a separate director for this section. Luke was there, with his instructions for this man, but he was a separate operator, the resident director of this studio. His were the men filming this not Luke's. Luke was sitting there, but as an observer. I was now in the hands of a very different kettle of fish. He was I would say, about thirty, torn jeans, tee-shirt, very animated, very public school, trying to be a "come-on-we're-all-lovely-off-we-go-Jamie-Oliver" street Mockney, but, of course, right in front of him was a real Cockney, the gambler, and a quasi-Cockney anarchist, me. Well, the gambler was not letting them get away with this, even if he was richer than any of them.

'Here, show him your watch!'

'Excuse me? We're trying to do a take.'

'Show him your watch!'

'We haven't got a lot of time...'

'You've got enough time. Fucking show him your watch!'

So he did.

'Is that it?' I said. 'Eight thousand pounds?'

'I didn't buy it,' he said, 'I didn't buy it.'

'Who bought it then?'

'My wife.'

'You should be ashamed of yourself, you greedy bastard! And I'm standing here, with all of you sad fuckers, doing this and I am that much poorer than you? Do you really mean that I'm into some kind of twisted minority of poor people in this country and that I am walking past people every day who are wearing eight thousand pound watches, driving fucking hundred thousand pound cars, flying hundred and ten thousand pound helicopters...? Or could it be that you're the minority? Because I'm not really sure, but I'm feeling a little bit like I've had some shit luck compared to you people? Who's to blame for that.'

'Um, erm, um, I don't know,' said the director.

'Do you know how much that watch should have cost his wife?' the gambler asked me.

'No,' I said.

'Twenty-five grand. She got it in a deal!'

The man wanted to cry by now.

'It's all right,' I said. 'I'm not going to hit you. But I am disgusted. Do we remember the starving children on the planet often, gentlemen?'

They all had their heads bowed, including Gerard.

Luke came running over.

'Do you want to look at my watch? 'Cos it cost me fifty quid. Is that all right?'

I did not realise I was this scary. The gambler was in fits.

'You've put the fucking wild hare up their arses,' he said. 'Look at 'em! They're all in panic. I reckon you could crack any one of them in the mouth now and they wouldn't even fight you back.'

'You're all right, mate,' I said. 'I don't think any of those methods are necessary here. Luke,' I said, 'fifty quid? You're all right, you are.' Then I scowled at the one with the eight thousand pound watch who felt like shit.

'Er, um, can we press on now then?'

'All right,' I said, 'let's carry on. This is an education.'

It was like James Bond. I was the evil super villain who had walked in. Poor old Gerard Braughn thinks he is James Bond but he was as timid as a fluffy white cat sitting on my lap at that moment.