Emigrate

Eight years ago, I was sat at a dinner table next to the sister of a colleague, and over a few glasses of wine, listened with incredulity to the details of a programme that she was in the process of producing for Channel Four. It had been imported from Holland, and was going to be a social experiment featuring, amongst others, a skateboarding nun. I was sure it would be dreadful, and would never find a following amongst the cynical British Public. Sadly, I was only half right.

Hailz's sister won a BAFTA, and is doubtless as rich as Croesus. I spent today rehearsing Magic Flute in a freezing church hall with an antique piano and battered tea urn bubbling noisily in the corner. Goddamn those artistic principles. And now, again, I find myself trapped in the same house as Big Brother, with a partner who is ‘only watching it to see who’s in it this year’. Wasn’t the whole point of Orwell’s Big Brother that he should be avoided at all costs? This year, the same Dutch production company are producing a programme featuring a competition to win a kidney from a terminally ill donor. As soon as I can get my leg through the metal detectors at airport security, I’m leaving the country.