I also worked at a couple of clothes shops, mainly for the discounts, but I left because the managers kept making me clean the loos.
I was a shot girl in a club for a while selling tequila but it wasn’t me at all. I had to walk around in a leotard flirting with lads. I used to say, ‘Are you not going to buy me a shot?’ and then I’d pretend to down it and keep the money. I got so many tips there it was ridiculous.
When I was twenty, I worked as a beauty therapist for six months. I’m literally a beauty school dropout. It turns out it’s really hard to wash other people’s hair. I started and I was like, well, I’ve been washing my own hair since I was seven, so I should be pretty good at this. It turns out it’s really difficult to wash someone else’s hair. And then you have to do the head massage. I love getting my hair cut because I get the head massage. I reckon the world separates into people that shut their eyes at the hairdresser’s when they’re getting the massage and people that keep them open. I’ve got a friend who worries that if they shut their eyes they’ll look really weird, like they’re too into it, but I reckon it’s even weirder to just stare at the stylist while they’re doing it. It’s like people who kiss with their eyes properly open, it’s not right.
I even once worked in a call centre and I could never do it again because I haven’t got the patience for it. I got shouted at and got death threats and all sorts. The public are crazy.
There are loads of call centres in the north-east because I think we’ve got quite friendly accents, and I know at least five people who work in them.
I realize that means I should be more sympathetic but it does drive me up the wall when I get calls about PPI claims. I don’t even know what PPI is? Whenever me dad gets a call he knows is a sales call he answers it by saying, ‘Whitley Bay lighthouse. How can I help you?’ to try and put them off.
I also don’t understand why people call and ask you if you need new windows. I feel like saying, ‘If I needed new windows, I would have gone and got them, mate, I wouldn’t have waited until you called me.’ Who are these people sat at home freezing cold with no windows but a working phone and when it rings they’re like, ‘Thank goodness you called, I had no idea how to fix this situation’?
Current job
If there was ever any danger of getting carried away with being on the TV, my current job always brings me right back down to earth. I work as a disability advisor helping students at university. I access the medical evidence and we work out what help and equipment they need, and try to make them feel like they’re on a level playing field with everyone who is able-bodied. I didn’t realize all the different conditions people can have and how they affect people until I worked there.
I’ve been doing it for just over a year now and it’s really rewarding. It’s hard work sometimes because the medical evidence can go really deep and it can be difficult when you know people are having such a hard time. You can live in a little TV bubble sometimes so it’s nice to be able to do something that really makes a difference.15
The Office
My job is like being in The Office at times. It’s hilarious. My friend Charlotte is always buying Flash wipes and cleaning everyone’s desks, and she cleans everyone’s keyboards once a week. It’s shocking what comes out. Some people are hiding a full meal in theirs. In fact, the longer I’ve worked in an office, the more I appreciate the Ricky Gervais show. I’m more like Tim, though. Someone says something and I’m making a face, or making a joke and the person doesn’t realize. Me mam watched The Office and loved it straight away. But me nanny thought it was real. I can remember her saying, ‘That main boss man is a dickhead, isn’t he?’ No, Nanny, it’s not real, it’s not a documentary. And everyone doing that David Brent dance with the hands. Everyone’s had a boss like that and now that I’m older I can appreciate how accurate it is. There’s always a bit of a dickhead who wants to be loved and laughed at.
We have a quiz during the team meeting every Wednesday so we can do a bit of bonding and they’re such nice people. I’ve learnt loads since I’ve been there. I was asking the others whether the sperm or the egg makes a baby and we had a really long conversation about it and it was really enlightening. I’m still not sure of the right answer but it was a great chat, like.
We have some very funny work nights out. I always thought a couple of my team were quite quiet, and then suddenly one evening they were lining up the Jägerbombs and doing the worm and all sorts. You can really get to know people on a night out.
All of us in the office like our food and sometimes we have buffet days where we each bring in a different dish. We had an around-the-world buffet recently when we had to pick a country out of a hat and then bring in food from that country. And we have Friday pie day where we go to Taylors nearby and order loads of pies. We have baking days as well. I don’t know how we get any work done around all the eating.
There’s none of that rubbish that some women do when you’re like, ‘Do you want to get some lunch?’ and they’re like, ‘Nah, I’m OK, I had half an orange yesterday.’ I can’t be doing with that nonsense.
Gogglebox
I guess my other job now is being on Gogglebox.
I got involved with Gogglebox because I used to go to college with one of the researchers. He phoned me and said they were looking for families in the north and asked if I knew anyone who would be good for it. That was just before the third series and me mam and I were already watching it so knew it was a good show. I asked some of my friends but they weren’t keen so my mate asked me if my family would try out for it, and we thought, Why not?
A producer came to do some trial filming and they held up some cards with various people on for us to talk about. I thought Nelson Mandela was Uncle Ben the rice man, so I was chatting away about how nice his savoury rice was. Then they showed us a picture of a really young David Cameron and I thought he was Piers Morgan, so I went off on one about him.
They said they’d be in touch, although I wasn’t expecting good news after my performance, but they called a few weeks later and asked us if we wanted to join the show. When we first filmed it did feel weird having cameras in our living room but now I genuinely don’t even notice them. We all feel really settled-in now and it’s all very natural.
Before we joined, the show was already very popular. When it first aired it was on a Wednesday at 10 p.m. Before me and my mam and dad joined, because it had so many viewers, Channel 4 had decided to move it to 9 p.m. on a Friday, and now everyone in the country watches it!
I get a lot of people coming up to me and saying they should be on Gogglebox and I always tell them it’s harder than it looks. When we’re filming obviously we make more of a conscious effort to talk about things and be animated. We don’t say anything we wouldn’t usually say but you do have to put in a bit of effort, like!
I get told off by some people who watch the show because they think I swear too much and I shouldn’t do it in front of me mam and dad, but I think people forget I’m twenty-five.
What I love about the show is how easily people can relate to it. People often say to me, ‘My granddad’s just like Leon,’ or, ‘Your mam reminds me of my mam.’ It’s nice that people have an affinity with us and feel like they’re a part of it in a way.
It’s definitely the best job I’ve ever had.
Five jobs I would hate to do
Chef
If I was a chef, the special of the day would either be crackers with beans and cheese, tinned soup or frozen pizza, because that’s where my cooking skills begin and end.
Tour guide
My family and friends always take the mickey out of the fact I’m crap with directions. I can visit a place a hundred times and I still won’t know how to get there. I once rang my friend Sarah because I got lost on my way home from work because I’d left work by a different door. I ended up getting a taxi home. It was a five-minute walk.
Builder
Even as a child my Lego constructions didn’t cut the
mustard. I once tried to assemble a flat-pack set of drawers and ended up putting them together upside down and back to front.
Librarian
I genuinely don’t think I could be quiet or whisper for that amount of time. My friends always shout at me because my whisper is just a slightly quieter version of my normal, everyday voice.
Traffic warden
For two reasons: I couldn’t put up with all the hate and I’m a sucker for a sob story. I wouldn’t give out any tickets so I’d lose my job.
Five jobs I would love to do
Chocolate taster
Someone somewhere actually gets paid for trying chocolate from around the world and rating it. God must have loved them.
Professional wine taster
See above. Again, what an amazing job, and one I think I’d be really good at. ‘This cheeky little red would go perfectly with a doner kebab.’
Ant and Dec’s sidekick
Just to spice things up a bit, the Geordie duo could become a trio. Imagine hanging out with those boys all day and having a laugh. I’d love it.
Stephen Hawking’s assistant
Every day would be like a school day. All of the amazing things that used to confuse you would suddenly make sense because Stephen would explain everything to you. I love that dude.
Radio presenter
Chat shit all day. Finish work by lunchtime. It’d be mint.16
4
. . . time to get ready
Scarlett’s Favourite Random Facts
‘Rhythm’ is the longest English word that doesn’t contain a vowel.
Humans can live without food for about a month, but would only last for a week without water.
Most lipstick contains fish scales.
So we’ve checked all the messages, we know where we’re going and when. Now comes the really fun bit. I should warn you that it takes me AGES to get ready.
When I’m home from work, I can waste hours when I should be getting ready to go out. I’m always late and it drives my friends mad. Sometimes I’ll just be in the bath watching YouTube videos for hours. I’ll have to top up the bath like four times to keep it hot.17
YouTube
I can spend hours watching top-ten compilations about things like coincidences or conspiracy theories. I love anything titled ‘Things you’ll never believe are true’.
There are few things I enjoy more than a good conspiracy theory, and YouTube allows me to watch shit I would never have known about before. I love anything from space conspiracies to the ones that claim famous dead people aren’t really dead. I like to think the glamorous blonde lady behind the bar at my local Wetherpoons is actually Marilyn Monroe after some really extensive surgery.
Moon Landing
I really don’t know if I believe that America actually put people on the moon. I think it’s just something America wanted to do before the UK did and that one day it will come out that it’s total crap and it was filmed in a warehouse somewhere, or on a film set in LA. I don’t understand why they don’t just do it again to prove that they can. You could sell advertising around the edge of the moon and make a fortune to pay for it. Everyone in the world would watch it. They could charge pay per view. If they can get all that money a year for the football, surely going to the moon would get more than that. They could do it like a reality thing too, pick one person who’s not an astronaut to go along with them, and you’d get people ringing in and voting who they wanted, so they’d make money that way as well. What I’m saying is, it must be possible to do it again now, so that people believe it.
I’m also really into time-travel conspiracy theories, where people claim they’ve gone back or forward in time. Seriously, if they had genuinely travelled to the future, wouldn’t they bring some really good shit back with them as proof? Like an iPhone that has a decent battery life? Although my experience is that battery life is getting worse, so maybe in the future it’d be even more crap.
My big theory is that when controversial stuff happens, like when Miley Cyrus did her foam hand pointing thing when she was bent over, or when Britney shaved her head, it’s when there’s stuff going down in the US and they need to distract people. Quick, look over here, everyone, here’s some mad shit, don’t look in this direction where the real stuff is. It’s like when they dump bad news on the day of a disaster. I wouldn’t be surprised if one day they trace the idea of putting funny photos of animals on the internet back to the FBI or something.
Being scared
I really like listening to scary stories on YouTube too, which I put down to being a fan of Goosebumps when I was a kid. I’ll sit at work listening to scary (apparently) true stories and shitting myself up. I love the classic ones, like the one where someone phones someone and threatens to kill them and it turns out they’re calling from inside their house, or the one everyone’s heard where a man’s head is being bounced on top of a car while his wife is sat inside not realizing (I know, I’m lovely).
I hate horror films but I still have to watch them. I have to make myself watch Crimewatch but I can’t look out the window into the garden if it’s dark, in case there’s someone out there. Sometimes I’m even too scared to go to the toilet in the middle of the night when I’ve watched something that’s freaked me out. I’ll hold it in just in case a man with an axe is waiting in the hallway to chop me head off.
Me dad knows I get scared easily and he thinks he’s really funny so he tries to frighten me. When I was about sixteen I had some friends round to watch The Ring and later that night my dad went into my room and pinned my hair extensions to one of my shelves. He added a raincoat and some boots underneath them so when I walked in my room it looked like the girl from The Ring was stood there. I’ve never been so scared in my entire life.
He also used to reach round from the bathroom window with a pole and tap on my bedroom window while I was in there. I was like, ‘Why would you do that to me? I’m your first-born daughter and you’re supposed to love me!’
Another time a bunch of my mates came round to watch a scary film and my parents tied an elephant keyring to a piece of string and put it under the table in the living room. As soon as the scary bit came on they pulled the keyring so it made a scraping noise across the floor and we absolutely shit ourselves. They thought it was the funniest thing ever. They were crying with laughter. We were just crying.
Me dad also used to pretend he was stuck down the plughole. He would hide behind the door in the bathroom. Me mam would come running in and say, ‘Scarlett, come quick, he’s done it again,’ and he’d be doing this little voice from behind the door saying, ‘Scarlett, I’ve fallen down, help me.’ He also used to get house spiders and let them walk across his tongue so we wouldn’t be scared of them. My dad leaves towels on the side of the bath so they can climb back out and he says, ‘I’d rather have a house full of spiders than a house full of flies.’ And I’ve said to him that in twenty-first-century Britain I think we’ve got other choices. It’s not like the people who don’t put towels in the bath are drowning in flies. It’s like he sees the universe as this cosmic battle between spiders and flies and he’s picked his side.
Aliens
I could talk about aliens for hours. Ever since I was little me dad and I have had a code word so that if an alien takes over our body and we’re still inside there, we can try and scream out that word so we’d both know that an alien is impersonating us.18
When I was little I fell over on a plug and I had a triangle mark on my leg for a few hours, and me dad managed to convince me that I’d been probed. He said I was ‘the chosen one’, and even though I knew I’d fallen on a plug I kind of believed him.
I do believe in aliens and I’m always googling them and trying to do research. I think it’s scarier to believe that it’s just us here in this massive universe than it is to think that there are other people out there. It freaks me out to imagine we’re all alone.
I don’t think aliens have got big heads and long gangly
fingers like ET, I think they’re just like us. I wonder if some of them are actually already on earth. I see loads of people and think, You’re definitely not from this planet. Sometimes when I see people who look like they could be from the cast of The Hills Have Eyes I do think, What are you doing here? You should be in space somewhere.
Maybe supermodels are aliens? A lot of them aren’t conventionally pretty but you’re sort of drawn to them, aren’t you? And the ones that are stunning must also be aliens cos I don’t think it’s fair for people to be that good-looking otherwise.
Area 51
Area 5119 fascinates me. Me dad and I are always watching programmes about it. You can’t look at it on Google Images at all, which is so weird. I don’t understand why people don’t talk about it more. There’s this whole place that exists that we’re not allowed to know anything about and people are like, ‘That’s fair enough.’ No, it’s not! Why doesn’t everyone want to know what goes on there? How can there be a whole place that’s off limits that we don’t know anything about? Why are they not telling us what’s happening in there?
Maybe it’s where the government people go to chill out where they know they won’t be bothered? Perhaps it’s actually full of loads of arcade games and slot machines? Maybe it’s like Disneyland for the US government? If you were able to look at it on Google Maps, there’d just be all these pale government workers on lilos.
Zombie apocalypse
Me dad also thinks there’s going to be a zombie apocalypse. He’s got loads of tins of beans in the attic. He watches too much of The Walking Dead. He hasn’t even got a tin opener up there. He said he’d bring one up. I can just imagine the zombie apocalypse and us up in the attic gnawing at tins of beans. He’s got old welding masks up there. I’m not sure what they’d be for. I think my dad sees himself as the leader in a zombie apocalypse. Me mam would probably volunteer to get bitten quite quickly just to escape the stress of it all. She’d probably like the camaraderie of being a zombie. Me and me dad and Ava would be walking across the countryside all tooled up with crossbows and axes. Dad buys apocalypse books. He’d be like Will Smith in I Am Legend, broadcasting through the Gogglebox cameras.
Scarlett Says Page 4
