Me Life Story

by Scarlett Moffatt

  ‘I don’t even know how to say it because it doesn’t feel real but I have been offered a place to present the Best Seats in the House competition for Saturday Night Takeaway!’

  ‘Ahhhhhh!’ my dad screamed and picked me up.

  ‘This is amazing! Wow, dreams do come true, Scarlett, you’re right,’ my little sister yelled.

  Now was the time to tell them what I’d been thinking about all over Christmas. ‘You know, I have always wanted to see what it’s like living in London and now seems a perfect time. If I rent somewhere for a year then I can see if it’s the place for me. I’ve got to take a chance.’

  ‘I agree completely, kid. We will help you look for a flat.’

  Just three weeks later, I was at Darlington station listening to an announcement.

  ‘The next train arriving onto platform one will be the 12.29 Virgin service from Edinburgh Waverley to London King’s Cross, calling at York and London King’s Cross,’ the tannoy announced. Holding back the tears with a lump in my throat, standing next to everything I owned – two suitcases and a backpack – it was really happening, just three weeks after the discussion of moving to London. I waved my mam goodbye. Yes, I had lived away from my family before but never this far away. I was off to live in the capital city, London. I was like a real-life Dick Whittington. I should have been super excited but I just felt distraught at the fact I couldn’t pop round my mam and dad’s for a cup of tea, or to give my little sister a cuddle or to go and have a natter and a kebab with my best friend Sarah.

  It was a huge step for me, suddenly moving hundreds of miles away, especially after everything had been such a whirlwind recently. I had only been down to London a handful of times in my whole life so I bought a map of London and the Underground (such a tourist) just so I could get my head around it all. I could walk from one end of my town to the other in half an hour, whereas London seemed like this giant country. As soon as I arrived into King’s Cross station, well, let’s put it this way, ‘I knew I wasn’t in Kansas any more.’

  I knew straight away things were going to be different living down south to up north when I got into the taxi to take me to my new flat. After I got over the fact there was a card machine in the taxi (which I’d never seen before), I realised the taxi driver hadn’t done the normal three things all northern taxi drivers do.

  1. Tell me what time he had been working since.

  2. Tell me what time he is working till.

  3. Moan about Ubers.

  Normally you couldn’t get taxi drivers to stop talking but no, not a mutter of a word. I mean the driver was pleasant enough and he got us there safely but it just wasn’t the same. I have so many stories that involve taxis back at home. Like the time I had no money on me so I gave the driver some garlic and chips as payment. Or the time I thought I had money in my room at uni so I ran up to get the £4 and realised I had spent it on four VKs the other afternoon. I had a brainwave and remembered I once read somewhere that stamps were legal tender. Knowing I had three packs of first-class stamps (as I’m a traditionalist and still like to send letters to my family), I ran down the stairs clenching the Queen’s lovely face.

  ‘Here you go, mate, it’s legal tender,’ I explained.

  ‘You’ve got to be taking the piss.’

  ‘You’ve got to accept it, pal, it’s the law.’ He reluctantly took them off me, not wanting to argue with a nineteen-year-old girl who was by some standards ‘slightly pissed’. I knew I was never ever going to get away with this sort of stuff with southern taxi drivers.

  Down in London, anything that could go tits up with a flat in the first week of moving in happened. There was no heating, the water didn’t work properly, me and Luke had no duvet as it hadn’t been delivered yet, nor had the TV arrived – oh, and the fridge didn’t work. So to sum it up, we were sat the day after New Year’s Day with ten layers on, wrapped in an itchy blanket, watching Netflix on an iPhone screen and drinking tepid tap water. I couldn’t even have a cup of tea because I couldn’t keep the milk fresh.

  Treating ourselves to breakfast the next day (as we didn’t want to sit and catch hypothermia in the flat) we made our way into Camden. I could not believe the choice that you guys down here get. I love the north and I’m not meaning to make it sound like we only have the simple things in life but in all my twenty-six years of living up north I was never asked the following questions.

  ‘What kind of tea would you like?’ the waiter asked.

  Thinking they meant Yorkshire Tea, PG Tips, etc, I shrugged. I didn’t want to sound too fussy. ‘Oh anything, honestly,’ I said.

  To which the response was: ‘Breakfast tea, decaf, green tea, peppermint tea, chamomile?’ The list was endless.

  ‘Just normal tea please,’ I replied.

  ‘Great, would you like milk with that? We have soya, almond and unsweetened,’ he added.

  ‘Just like cow udder milk please,’ I requested. Other people eating in the café were in hysterics, as they could see how anxious I was getting with all the choice.

  ‘Would you like any sugar lumps, brown sugar, sweeteners?’ This was slowly turning into a breakfast interrogation. In my mind I was screaming, ‘I just want a fucking cup of tea, mate, with milk that comes from a cow’s tit and a teaspoon of sugar – the kind that looks like white sand please.’

  Even the choice of toast was borderline ridiculous. Not just the usual white or brown, oh no. ‘We have rye, wholemeal, gluten-free or sourdough, madam,’ the waiter listed. I don’t get why anyone would want to eat toast with sourdough in it. I knew I needed to embrace living down south so I decided to try something I had never heard of that is on every menu in London.

  Avocado. The vegetable that is actually a fruit that is the ‘good’ kind of fat (again something that I’d only just realised was a thing). I don’t know what it has got in it but it is addictive. I have it nearly every day now, smashed, sliced, mushed. For my breakfast, dinner and tea, it goes with everything. I tried to introduce it to one of my best friends, Billie, when she came down to watch me do an episode of Saturday Night Takeaway. I took her for breakfast down here and she giggled.

  ‘What you laughing at?’

  ‘Mate, why are you eating nacho sauce with toast?’

  ‘Nacho sauce? It’s not guacamole, Billie, it’s avocado.’ I don’t think I’ve quite managed to convert her to the avacoolo gang just yet.

  I really love London, it is so diverse and vibrant; it has so much culture. It is virtually impossible to be bored here. Also, despite the rumours and what people say, everyone is just as friendly down south as they are up north. Everyone I have met has been so helpful and kind – but there is less chat. I think the difference is it’s so fast-paced in London and everyone has somewhere to be, people literally just do not have the time to stop and chat in the middle of the street. Also because everyone is busy and career-orientated, when I’m not filming it’s very rare I have anyone to do any fun stuff with. There’s no one I can just ask to come round my flat to have a cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit. It is so hard to make friends as an adult, especially when you’re in a new city.

  Regardless, it is an amazing place but I’ll be honest I just cannot see myself settling down here. Not just because it’s not socially acceptable down here to walk along Oxford Street eating a sausage roll at 10 a.m. (which it is walking down Newcastle Northumbria Street) but the house prices are actually ridiculous. My dream – and I know that it’s years away yet and it probably will never happen but aim for the stars and all of that – is to have a house with an annex, so my mam, dad and little sister can live with me. I would love it, because I think it would be a bit much if they lived in the same house with me 24/7, but if they lived just a stone’s throw away, ahhh, I would be in my element.

  Anyway because of that dream I will definitely have to move back up north as unless I want to rent all my life I could only afford a garage or a shed in London.

  I’ll be honest with you, before I came
down to London I thought everything was more expensive, not just the houses. I thought I was going to have to take a bank loan out when I came down to London because my dad was like, ‘Oooh, cans of pop cost £8 there.’

  But they don’t! They’re literally exactly the same price as at Asda back home. He’s like, ‘Aww, a big shop will cost you a bloody fortune, pheeeew!’

  ‘Dad, it won’t!’

  ‘Have you seen the price of a loaf of bread down there?’

  ‘It’s exactly the same, Dad!’

  When I went home last, he’d bought me loads of PG Tips and Yorkshire tea. He was like, ‘Put this in your case.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Save your money.’

  ‘But it’s exactly the same price in London. I’m not abroad, do you know what I mean?’ If I go to my local Sainsbury’s in London and I buy PG Tips it’s exactly the same cost as if I go to the local Sainsbury’s at home. But he just can’t get his head round it, he really can’t.

  He will call me and ask what I’m doing. ‘Just eating a peanut butter sandwich, Dad,’ I’ll say.

  ‘Bloody hell, how much did that cost ya once you bought everything to make it with? Bet it was twenty bar or at least fifteen quid.’

  God bless him, he doesn’t have a clue. It’s all because one time I took him to Camden Market to get an ice cream and he asked for a Mr Whippy ninety-niner with monkey blood sauce and a flake and it cost £2.10.

  ‘How much? I’ll have my eyeballs back ta, pal, I mean how can it be a ninety-niner if it’s £2.10, mate?’

  ‘Dad, stop it now, you’re embarrassing me.’ Although to be fair he had a point.

  When my dad isn’t phoning me up asking the prices of London stock he is normally asking how my weekend’s been and that involves me talking about either whatever I have been filming, bigging up the London sites or sometimes involving Ant and Dec (and Lisa and Ali). Whoever said you should never meet your heroes is talking crap. They’re genuinely the kindest and funniest people I have ever met, they even invited me over their house a few times for Sunday dinner – Stephen Mulhern comes too and we have such a giggle. Even if he does manage to baffle my mind with his magic tricks (I’m telling you now, Stephen is like Jesus, I bet if you asked him he could turn water into wine). We also go to their local pub and take the dogs and it is just so lovely because I feel like I’m at home again. Obviously the boys and Stephen are super busy filming lots of exciting things like Britain’s Got More Talent. So when I’m not stalking them lot I spend most of my days with Luke (when he’s not working). We love being tourists. We have done ghost-hunting trips, Madame Tussauds, the dungeons, Shrek world. We even bought a Union Jack umbrella to walk round Covent Garden with.

  But I do seem to spend most of my days alone. I’ll be honest, though, if there’s one thing I’ve done in London which I never used to do up north, it’s spend time by myself. Now obviously we are all by ourselves sometimes, but I mean I am purposefully not spending time with another human being other than myself. I’ll text people and say I’m busy with work when really I just want a day all by myself. It is great, I love it.

  This sounds proper big-headed but I have now realised I love my own company. I used to hate being left with only my own thoughts, I would get so anxious and overthink everything. But since I gained more confidence from the jungle I go for meals out by myself. It is one of my favourite things to do (as sad as that sounds) as I spend most of my time surrounded by lots of people constantly chatting so it’s nice to not have to interact with anyone and to be able to just appreciate what I’m eating (plus I don’t have to share any of my food or wait forever and a day for the other person to decide where and what they want to eat). I take long walks with my dog Bonnie and we sit on Primrose Hill and I read my books. I walk around Camden Market with a tray full of halloumi fries and I people-watch. In fact I make up scenarios about the people I’m watching. I make up a name for them, a job, how they met their partner, if they’re having an affair. Sometimes my brain makes up such a funny story about the person I actually laugh out loud.

  Having a day by myself in my flat in London is the best. One of my favourite ‘alone’ things to do in the house is pretend I’m on Strictly Come Dancing. I even do the voices of the judges: ‘seven’. I put my Adele 21 album on full blast, put loads and loads of mascara on and then go in the bath and stare at myself in the mirror as the mascara runs down my face while I sing along, pretending I am in fact in one of Adele’s sad music videos. ‘Never mind I’ll find someone like you, I wish nothing but the best for you too.’

  I sometimes order loads of food from Domino’s (I mean a large pizza, seven franks hot sauce chicken wings, four cookies, one big garlic dip and a 1.5 litre bottle of Coke Zero) and when the food comes I pretend to shout through to some make-believe person in the house so the delivery driver doesn’t think I’m greedy. ‘I think that’s our food that’s arrived. I’ll go and collect it, you get the plates out ready, thank you, sweetheart.’ Then I take great satisfaction in eating it all by myself while watching shit-your-pants scary movies on my Mac. Not caring how I’m eating with garlic sauce all down my chin (after all, calories don’t count when no one sees you eat them).

  I will stalk fit girls on Instagram to the point where I know their life story. I talk to Bonnie (my dog) in strange accents and at least once a day I say the following, ‘Come on, Bonnie, you can talk to me, I swear if you speak in human language so that I can understand you, I will not, I repeat will not tell a single soul.’ All of the above in my home is normally done in nothing but my Bridget Jones big white pants and my hair in a top-knot with toothpaste all over my face while I’m trying to dry my spots out. I just have completely fallen in love, well, with myself since moving to London.

  I think it’s important that we really enjoy spending time with ourselves. To realise that being alone doesn’t mean we are lonely, it just means we get to forget about everything for a little while and just enjoy being our weird and wonderful selves. As the American politician Ann Richards once said:

  ‘Learn to enjoy your own company. You are the one person

  you can count on living with for the rest of your life.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  SATURDAY NIGHT TAKEAWAY

  (MINE’S A CHICKEN KEBAB)

  Turkey has thirty different variations of the kebab (get me on a plane right now!).

  The idea behind helicopters has existed since as far back as 400BC, when vertical flight was invented in China in the form of a flying toy made from bamboo which created lift when spun.

  In 2007, the mayor of Chicago decided to award the singer Jennifer Hudson with her own special day, calling 6 March Jennifer Hudson Day.

  I will set the scene. It is Thursday 23rd February 2017 and I am about to have my first ever script meeting. Now, I don’t actually know what a script meeting is at this point and I’m hoping it can be something that I can just wing. I walk into the cosy little room in the ITV studios holding a cup of tea. The tea is actually burning through the paper cup but I am pretending I’m not getting third-degree burns on my hands as I want to play it cool. Ant, Dec and all the lovely ITV bosses are sitting around the table.

  ‘Hello, how are you?’ Dec asks. I nod.

  ‘Looking forward to your first script meeting?’ Ant adds. I nod. For some reason, words will not come out of my mouth, and then I realise it’s because my brain’s concentrating on the heat from the tea. Put the bloody tea down, Scarlett!

  This sounds silly on reflection but I was so shocked that everyone at the meeting was so nice. When I thought of big TV bosses I thought they would be like Mr Burns from The Simpsons. I thought you had to be mean to get to the top of your game, like in The Devil Wears Prada. But they’re just genuinely lovely, passionate people who are good at their job. We started the meeting with a little introduction and a chat about what we had been up to. I couldn’t believe I had got myself so nervous, but it shows how much the whole show meant to me that I wa
nted to make a good impression. (I’d relaxed so much by the end of the first meeting I was even dipping biscuits into my tea; I felt right at home.)

  Smiles with the big boys, Ant and Dec.

  ‘So for the first episode we were thinking you could hop on a motorbike, get over to Battersea, jump on a helicopter, and bring someone who’s watching the show on the television to come back with you in the helicopter to sit on the best seats in the house to watch the show in the studio,’ said one of the producers. ‘Little Ant and Dec can serve you food prepared by Jamie Oliver and there will be a little glass of champers waiting for you all.’

  I started laughing. I mean, no way was that really going to happen. ‘Imagine, sounds like a scene from Batman!’

  ‘So you up for it?’

  ‘What, in real life you want me to do that?’

  ‘Yeah, what do you think?’

  ‘Oh my God, this is actually going to happen. Of course I’m up for it!’

  I wanted to kiss and cuddle everyone in the room but I knew that would be unprofessional. I couldn’t believe that Ant and Dec and ITV were trusting me, little me, on my first ever episode of live TV presenting in a studio. And I was getting to be a bloody Bond girl.

  ‘I have never actually been on a motorbike before,’ I admitted. ‘In fact, I’ve not been on a push bike in over fourteen years.’

  ‘That’s OK, you can have a little practice so you feel comfortable with it and if you don’t, do not panic – we will think of another plan.’

  Now if this had happened before the jungle I probably would have said no to even trying to go on a motorbike; the fear and anxiety would have been too much. But because I had gotten through things that I never thought I’d be able to manage, I thought to myself, well, you’ve been through worse, Scarlett, it’ll be fine.

  So when the day came I was ready to swerve in and out of cars on the busy roads of London whilst riding on the back of a motorbike. It was 27 February 2017. Now this date might ring a bell as it is just my luck that the day I decide to face my fear of bikes is the day that Storm Doris hits the UK. Yep, that’s right – 90mph winds was my first ever motorbike experience. The only way I can describe what it was like being on that bike is something that you may have witnessed yourself. Have you ever seen a fly or spider on the window pane in your house and you’ve blown it and it has just skidded out of control, not knowing what the hell’s going on? Yep, that was what we were like, skidding through the roads of London. I mean, if I can get through 90mph winds I can get through a bit of rain and late-night London traffic on a Saturday night. So I agreed to the adventure of a motorbike and a helicopter.