The Night my Bum Dropped

by Gretel Killeen

  Looking back, the closest I’ve ever actually come to being a real celebrity occurred during the years of working on the TV show Loopy Cupid when a man at an airport ironically didn’t recognise me at all and thought that I was Jodie Foster.

  ‘Yes, you are her,’ he insisted.

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘Yes, you are.’

  ‘No, I’m sorry. I’m not.’

  ‘You look exactly like her.’

  ‘No, I don’t. I’m tall and dark and she’s petite and blonde.’

  ‘You’re in disguise, or maybe dressed as a new character. And you sound like her.’

  ‘No, I don’t. She has an American accent, and mine is Australian.’

  ‘So? You’re an actor. You have to put on accents all the time …’

  ‘But I’m not her.’

  ‘Yes, you are. Can I take a picture?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You can’t stop me,’ he said as he took the photo, checked the image on his digital camera and printed it right then and there on his laptop. ‘There we are. I got it,’ he said very proudly. ‘Will you autograph it for me?’ And I did, and I signed it Jodie Foster.

  How the Hell Did I Get Here?

  So how did I get a job on television, being old, not very attractive and clearly quite stupid? Well, I guess it all started when I dropped out of my university neurosurgery studies after just six dull weeks, because we had mid-term tests and I couldn’t find the exam room. I read this as a sign from the gods, left the uni, worked in a Greek cafe, ate too much bread, got fat thighs and then unsuccessfully chased boys through Uzbekistan until I commenced another uni course which I thoroughly enjoyed, particularly after I accidentally handed in an empty manila folder for a writing assignment and received full marks for ‘creative thinking’.

  It was during these studies that I also decided to perform at a university poetry night. I’ve always hated poetry but I needed the credit points so I spent some time writing a piece called ‘Splades’, which drew parallels between familial relationships and different pieces of cutlery. It was intended as a particularly profound, analytical and serious poem, but in response the audience laughed and I was then hurtled briefly into the male bastion of stand-up comedy. Here I performed ‘tragedy’, as I was not particularly funny, was often introduced with the line, ‘Now, please welcome someone with tits’, and on the one occasion my relatives came to watch, their only comment after the show was, ‘Gee the others were good.’

  Comedy performing then led to work as a voice artist for the advertising industry where I recall, on my very first job, I was told to ‘read the ad like you’re sitting on some guy’s face’. During this time I was also invited to appear on a TV panel show to talk about what it was like to be forty … which was a little upsetting because I was actually only thirty at the time.

  And then one day I received a phone call asking me to host a television show called Loopy Cupid and I said no. I wasn’t playing hard to get, I was just being honest. It wasn’t that I thought I was incapable of hosting – it’s just that I thought I was incapable of looking like a host. My bosoms are too small, I seem too tired, my skin is freckled, my hair is not blonde and I look like I’m the exhausted single mother of two who, let’s just say, is over thirty-five, and the only people who get to be that old, dysfunctional and unattractive on television are male game-show hosts and newsreaders.

  I understand now that I got a call to audition as host for the show because the program was about pathetic relationships and I sort of had qualifications in that area because I’d written a book about relationships and the book was pathetic. But I think I was really just at the audition to boost the numbers and wasn’t considered seriously until one by one the eight possible hosts before me all pulled out of the race. The first was caught having an affair with the second (both were blokes), the third one had a nervous breakdown on being told that he was the host, the fourth one got pregnant, the fifth one was bought by a rival TV program, the sixth had an unfortunate self-inflicted collagen-injecting accident while hosting a hut renovation show in the highlands of New Guinea, the seventh one got fat, and the eighth one was busted having sex in a cupboard with one of the television executives (which, yes, would normally lead to a promotion, but it was an executive from a rival network).

  So then that just left me.

  And I had the job for years and years, as I said. And that’s how I know a little bit about what it’s like to have been known as either ‘famous’ or ‘the Human Nostril’.

  Being a Has-Been

  Of course I’m not famous now. I’m unemployed and, as my son so eloquently put things to me yesterday, ‘This is not America, Mum. You can’t make a living out of being a has-been.’

  After almost a decade on television, it’s been more than a week since my job finished and now I assume I’m considered a has-been. It’s understandable. I wasn’t even good at being a bad host. A rival television station once did a poll on the ‘the nation’s most annoying host’ and I only came second!

  Anyway, the point is that I took the job and I became recognisable, famous, a ‘celebrity’. But unlike other celebrities’ alleged experience of the ‘famous experience’, I was not out getting stoned, having crazy sex with tattooed band members, hanging with the jet set or forgetting to put my underpants on before I climbed out of a car. No, I was having gossip columns report on things like me being seen ‘buying a jumbo pack of toilet paper at a local petrol station’.

  I don’t want to diminish my celebrity experience because I met a lot of great people as a result and I had fun, but now I know that Fame is a town I’m glad I visited … and I really don’t want to live there.

  Denilgog

  In my first year of being famous I was very excited to visit Denilgog, five hours’ flight from the city, to launch the rural town’s brand-new pride and joy which they hoped would put them on the state tourism map. At the time of accepting the invitation I thought that such an eagerly anticipated attraction must be something of the ilk of the discovery of a skeleton from palaeolithic times. But on arriving at the airport I realised otherwise.

  The airport was also the local school oval and was sadly being mowed by the mayor’s wife, Kendra, at the time that our six-seater plane landed … on her head. Actually, I exaggerate. Of course it didn’t land on her head. It landed on her hair. Well, actually it didn’t even land. She had a very high beehive style, which as it turned out was a wig, and we kind of clipped it with a wheel and the wig came off, revealing to all those present (which was really only myself and the pilot, who had his eyes closed anyway) that the mayor’s wife was in fact a man (whom I’ve since found out used to answer to the name Ken). Anyway, my point is simply that the airport had a brand-new welcome sign, just near the bubblers, that revealed all about the town’s new pride and joy.

  Welcome to Denilgog

  Home of the Wind-Powered Automatic Flushing Toilet

  But that was okay. Toilet, schmoilet. I was determined to enjoy the experience and was even flattered when I was introduced as ‘the biggest celebrity in town since Micko Dickson’s cow gave birth to a three-headed calf’. And I was enthusiastic when I was interviewed by the local primary school teacher who was dressed as a kookaburra. And I wasn’t offended when the mayor, who was filming the entire proceedings, told me not to stand side on to the camera because ‘with a nose like that it’s hard to tell which of you is the kookaburra’. I even tried not to be hurt when the local photographer, a nine-year-old child called Smitty, took a photo of me, looked at it and then said, ‘Oh, that’s a surprise. You look okay.’

  In fact, I think I even managed to look thrilled when the mayor whisked the bed sheet from the thing that we were all standing around and revealed what looked like a portaloo with a windmill in place of a roof, and announced that the Denilgog inaugural Wind-Powered Automatic Flushing Toilet would be named in my honour and would from now on be known as Gretel.*

  At this point the crow
d of seven or so cheered wildly, and in an extraordinary act of fate, destiny or godly affirmation, the town mascot, a black crow with a bung eye and only one leg, landed on the windmill! Hoorah!

  But the celebrations came to an abrupt stop when I was asked to make the toilet flush.

  ‘No problem,’ I said. ‘Where’s the flush button?’

  ‘Well, there isn’t one,’ the mayor whispered. ‘That’s why it’s called an automatic flushing toilet.’

  ‘Oh. How do I make it flush, then?

  ‘You have to use the toilet.’

  ‘What! I have to urinate in there?’

  ‘Oh, good heavens, no. You have to do number twos.’

  ‘What? With everyone here?’

  ‘Yes. What’s the problem? Are you constipated?’

  ‘No … I’m just shy.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know why. The toilet’s got a door.’

  ‘But you’ll still hear me.’

  ‘Then we promise to cover our ears.’

  ‘Couldn’t someone else use the toilet?’

  ‘I think that’s a bit rude, isn’t it. I mean, we flew you all the way out here to do it.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said.

  So I entered the toilet cubicle, spent a polite period of time just sitting on the closed toilet-seat lid and then standing up again, hoping that the weight shift would trigger the flush. But after some five minutes there was still no flushing action. I tried standing on the seat and then hopping off. I tried jumping up and down on the seat but still no flush. And then after fifteen minutes there was a knock on the door. ‘Hello, I’m just wondering whether you need my assistance. I’m the local vet.’

  I suddenly panicked. I removed my right shoe and with great force threw it into the toilet, and voila! The flushing mechanism began to slip into gear. I quickly retrieved my shoe as it chug-a-lugged towards the S-bend and exited the cubicle just in time to see the windmill start to turn rapidly … and the town mascot crow fall into the toilet, clog the cistern and cause the septic system to explode.

  I comforted myself with the thought that without a monument to the event, at least my performance would be quickly forgotten. But later that day I caught a glimpse of the front page of the local afternoon paper, where the traditional banner headline had been replaced by a public announcement placed urgently by the local council.

  The Mayor of Denilgog wishes to advise that the device formerly referred to as the inaugural Wind-Powered Automatic Flushing Toilet Named Gretel will no longer be a flushing toilet and will no longer be called Gretel.

  ‘Yay,’ I silently whooped, until I read on to the bottom of the page.

  From this day forward it shall now be known as an artistic installation and referred to simply as The Structure in Memory of the Town Crow That Died. (N.B. Tourist guides and maps will be permitted to call the site the shortened name of simply Gretel Killed the Town Mascot.)

  In retrospect the entire event was actually very disappointing. I have always tried as hard as I can to do everything in life to the best of my ability, but like all of us it appears I have some in built limitations. Just as one of my feet is irreconcilably longer than the other, just as I can’t bake a cake that rises, just as I can’t whistle in tune or fake an orgasm without resembling a mammoth that’s being electrocuted, so it appears that I am somehow predetermined to fail as a celebrity.

  But I not only can’t act like a celebrity, I have also never looked like one either. I am average of appearance. On a normal day I look like a bleached sultana, and on a special ‘celebrity day’ when I really, really make an effort, I basically look like a skinned ferret in heels trying to squeeze out of a multicoloured condom. Once, when I was trying really, really hard to stop my hair looking like a ‘dry-clean only’ lion’s mane that had been put in a sandwich maker, I put so much product on my head that when I got to the function, walked to the buffet and stood near the bain-marie my head started to send off sparks.

  Loopy Cupid

  Indeed, as I look to the past to prepare for the future, I realise that there have been very few moments of glamour in my illustrious TV career, not in fact since the very first night that I ever hosted Loopy Cupid. The premise of this show was essentially to try to force loving couples to hate one another. I remember the producers hired a ‘not-so-good-speaking-English’ person from Eastern Europe called Westinghouse to do my hair and makeup. He was mesmerisingly beautiful and as a result I spent more time concentrating on his face than on mine and didn’t look at his work until he’d finished.

  ‘Bloody goodness,’ said Westinghouse, as he admired his finished work. ‘You look very African lady warrior ready to lead her television army.’

  But the following day the press didn’t concur and wrote, with equal confidence, that ‘the host’s outfit was completely out of context and looked like she was wearing a massive poo-coloured velvet armchair on her head’.

  The press also criticised the theme music for the show, the guests on the show and the premise of the show (‘Loopy Cupid Is Just Stupid’) but despite their eagle-eyed observations and critique of the production, none of these professional critics ever seemed to notice the fact that the backdrop, which was meant to be a massive mouth, had accidentally been hung sideways, and therefore looked like a huge hovering vagina.

  I recall a production meeting was called the morning after the launch show for all those who worked on it. The meeting was called by the show’s executive producer, who answered to the name Python (self-nicknamed after his own penis). Production meetings are usually called to dissect and analyse the previous night’s program. After arriving, however, Python handed all in attendance a typed memo that requested we were not to discuss last night’s show because it had done so appallingly in the ratings that mentioning it could be bad for team morale. (In fact, when Python handed out the memos I noticed he was humming the theme song from the movie Titanic.)

  So we didn’t discuss the show but nevertheless we were all in our meeting for about three hours and the general consensus was that the meeting went ‘quite well’ because there were enough chocolate biscuits for all of us to enjoy with our pot of tea. On top of that Python and several of the men who worked on the show were also able to improve their putting during the meeting using a broom, a mothball and a cup.

  Oh, and we also emerged from the meeting with the goal to ‘get the word out there’.

  It didn’t seem to matter at the time that no one actually knew what this goal meant. But it would appear that someone took it literally because within a day it was announced that we were taking the show ‘on the road and, um, around the country for a week to, ah, give the show an international feel’.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, excusing myself for what I was about to say, rather than just not saying it. ‘Yes. Sorry to be a bother, but if we really want to have an international feel, shouldn’t we actually travel outside the country?’

  ‘Good question, mate,’ replied Python. ‘But, fucking hell, don’t be a bloody moron. We haven’t got the budget for that.’

  The Glamorous Life

  Our first, and as it turns out last, stop was a town that was chosen because Python had an aunt who owned a caravan park in the town and she offered all of the crew free hot-water tokens for the showers if I used my opening show monologue to mention that she was single. I remember it was a big day for us and the town because only minutes before we arrived a local rabbit gave birth to a goat … and there was also a mass breakout at the local jail. (But please note the three incidents were not considered to be in any way related.)

  The latter minor hindrance did, however, prevent us from staying at Python’s aunt’s caravan park, as that’s where the escapees decided to run because they were desperate for a hot shower. So all of the show’s crew and production team were billeted out with local residents and I, as the VIP host, was sent to what appeared to be a youth hostel for people who had mental problems.

  My hostel was originally called the Pink Poodle bu
t someone must have graffitied the sign because as I looked out the window I could see that it read Welcome to the Pink Doodle.

  The wallpaper in my room was designed to look like bricks. Funny, when you think about the fact that the wallpaper was probably there to cover bricks in the first place. And my room was stinking hot. I felt like my head had been placed in one of those Tupperware containers that you put a wet lettuce in and then pull a string to rotate and dry it. When I rang about the air conditioning I was told to open the fridge. Later I tried to open a window, but they were all bolted shut, probably to stop people from jumping.

  I remember also that I didn’t sleep long enough that night due to neighbours in the next room having sex and waking me predawn. Well, actually I can’t be sure that it was neighbours having sex, as I could really just hear something repeatedly banging our adjoining wall and a man saying, ‘Ooh, baby. Yeah, that’s the right spot.’ I suppose it could have been the hotel handyman just hanging a picture on the wall. But either way it was a pity that my sleep was cut so short because my big photo shoot for the show’s official publicity shots were to be taken that morning and distributed throughout the country, and my sleepless face looked like a wrinkled balloon with two postal slits.

  I remember that Westinghouse did my hair for the shoot in the not-often-seen style of a sheep. And I had to have the shots done without makeup because the makeup artist was involved in the jailbreak and she wasn’t allowed to come to me (but to be fair I was told that if I really needed her to do my face, then I could ‘pop along quickly to the jail’).