Vanished Years Read Online Free Page B

camera spied something more interesting across the room and shot away. The lights snapped off. The scene was over. Piers swam off.
    I went over to talk to the girls.
    ‘God, I wish I was on your team,’ I said.
    ‘I know. Poor you,’ said Jo.
    ‘Are we all meant to stay the night together?’
    ‘Yes. In some hotel.’
    ‘I didn’t bring any things,’ I whined. I was turning into clingy desperate me. Ugh.
    The hospitality girls arranged us in a line and gave us each a cue to go into the next room where apparently Alan Sugar was waiting for us like the Wizard of Oz. One by one our names were called out and we mounted the scaffold.
    ‘Have a fabulous time,’ said Emma, blowing a kiss, as my name was called out.
    Imagine my surprise when I saw Sid James sitting on one side of a large table.
    ‘Isn’t that …?’ I whispered to Piers.
    ‘That’s Alan Sugar,’ Piers replied in a worshipful murmur.
    Our two teams sat opposite him. Sid was flanked by Hattie Jacques and some other
Carry On
character. Both flunkeys regarded us severely.
    Alan introduced himself to each of us, with that blunt insolence peculiar to all barrow-boy billionaires. I suppose this was all part of the fun. He laid into poor Jo Brand for being too fat. She couldn’t have cared less, rummaged in her bag and extracted a giant bar of Fruit and Nut and threw it at him. It was water off a duck’s back to Jo, but Ross Kemp was slightly more sensitive. Sid made some unpleasant remarks about Ross’s recent divorce. They dripped with innuendo. It was all way above my head.
    ‘What’s this all about?’ I whispered to Piers.
    ‘Apparently Rebekah his wife found him in bed with someone. The police had to be called in to pull them apart.’
    ‘What? Ross and the someone? Had they got stuck?’
    ‘No. Ross and Rebekah, you idiot.’
    Rebekah, incidentally, was the editor-in-chief of the
Sun
newspaper. It was a juicy scandal. After a few minutes of Sid’s grilling Ross went purple.
    This rough-diamond aggression was Alan Sugar’s trademark, and he worked it to the hilt. It was a strangely Vaudeville performance, and weird too, because in contrast to the blunt insults that came from his mouth, he had the sad hangdog eyes of a St Bernard under a troubled brow. He was quite vain, and a little girl popped up from under the table to adjust the hair that was like beige haircord and powder down the klaxon nose. He was a postmodern clown, tragic and angry, and
The Apprentice
was this year’s Big Top. His delivery was sheer Sid James. They could have been twins.
    In fact, I am not at all sure, to this day, that the whole Lord Sugar phenomenon is not one great big heist. Maybe the whole
Carry On
team have been made Labour peers without us knowing it. Barbara, Duchess of Windsor. Anyway, whether he was Alan or Sid, he was pretty unpleasant to everyone, and if that wasn’t enough for one day,he then explained the task. We were to organise a giant funfair for one thousand celebrities that was to take place in three days. We had to raise a certain amount of money, and each group had to set up sideshows, bars and hot-dog stands, parking, security, publicity, everything.
    My heart sank. It was the week before Christmas! The one week in the whole year when everybody has plans for every minute of every day.
Nobody
is sitting around during the week before Christmas doing nothing, and
if
they are, then the last thing they want to do is go to yet another Red Nose Day event in the freezing cold where they have to lay out a whole lot more cash than they have already spent, satiating their starving chicks on the Christmas orgy. It seemed ludicrous.
    I looked for signs of fatigue among the other contestants but their smiles were glued on, except for Ross Kemp who was fuming.
    ‘Any questions?’ growled Sid James. No one answered. ‘Then good luck. Enjoy yourselves.’
    We were dismissed and taken to a bar to get to know each other. I sat on a couch in the corner with a