Dervla blushed again. “All right, I did, you swine!” Dervla laughed, perhaps a little too loudly.

“All right then, Jason.” David still insisted on referring to Jazz by his full name. “Which one’s mine?”

“Easy, man, piece of piss. You’re the blue one, the one without nothing on it at all, no spring-loaded bit in the middle, no go-faster stripe, just a plain basic brush.”

“Well, as it happens, you’re right,” said David, slightly resentfully. “I must say that I’m rather flattered that you understood that I was the sort of person who was unlikely to fall for all that marketing rubbish. I want a brush that gets the job done and shuts up about it. A toothbrush is a toothbrush, not a pair of trainers or a sports car.”

“But you’re wrong, guy,” said Jazz. “I didn’t pick you for being no down-to-earth geezer, no way. I got you right because you’re a bigger wanker than any of us.” Jazz was laughing, but David wasn’t.

“Oh, and how is that, then?” he asked, attempting to maintain his rapidly evaporating air of superiority.

“Because you chose the classic, man! That’s what they call that sort of brush these days. You ain’t got no bog-standard brush in your toothmug, David, no way, guy, what you got’s a Wisdom classic. And they’re not easy to find these days either, not every chemist stocks them, and you got to search your way through all the pink spongy ones and the transparent bendy ones to find them. Because you see, David, it’s the flash gimmicky brushes that are the norm these days. They’re the bog-standard brushes, the ones ordinary people buy. What you got is the designer item, the retro classic, which you have to seek out, like you obviously did. Just like you must have looked high and low to get that retro-looking pair of old-style trainers you got on, and they’re called ‘classics’ too. Made just for that bit of the market that reckons it’s got style and class and would never be a part of a trend, oh no, not them, they favour classic styles, or to put it another way, David, they’re wankers.”

It was a good performance and everybody laughed loudly. David obviously felt he had better laugh along too, but he did not do a very convincing job of it. In fact he looked furious. Livid. And also astonished. Jazz had caught him out. David had obviously never expected any intellectual threat from Jazz’s direction and yet this loudmouthed, conceited trainee chef had made him look a fool. What was more, it would probably be broadcast on national television.

In the back of his mind David kept a little book into which he would put the names of people with whom he intended to get even. Jazz had just reserved himself an entire page.

DAY EIGHTEEN. 10.00 p.m.

Kelly announced that it was time to go to bed. She had had a terrific night, she said, but now the room was really beginning to spin. As she got up she fell back down again, straight into Hamish’s lap.

“Sorry,” said Kelly.

“Fine by me,” Hamish replied. “You should do it more often.”

Kelly giggled and put her arms round Hamish’s neck. “I think I fell on something hard,” she said, laughing drunkenly. “Give us a kiss.”

Hamish did not require any further encouragement and so they kissed. Kelly started with puckered lips but Hamish went in mouth open and for a moment or two Kelly responded, her jaw working against his.

In the monitoring bunker they cheered. This was the first proper kiss of House Arrest Three. They knew Geraldine would be thrilled.

“If he puts his hand up her top we win the magnum,” said Pru, Bob Fogarty’s assistant, who was the duty editor that night.

Peeping Tom Productions had indeed promised a magnum of vintage Dom Perignon to the crew who were lucky enough to record the first grope.

Back in the house, sitting on the green couch, Moon was not impressed. “Fookin’ hell, Kelly, if you’re not careful you’ll suck his fookin’ head off. What do his tonsils taste like?”

But Kelly was enjoying herself. She was drunk and feeling naughty, and Hamish was a lovely-looking boy.

“Very nice,” she said, getting up unsteadily, “and now I’m going to bed.”

“I’ll help you,” said Hamish, leaping up to great cheers from the rest of the group.

“Thank you, kind sir,” Kelly replied, giggling.

“Don’t forget, Peeping Tom is peeping,” Dervla warned.

“I don’t care,” Kelly replied, and she didn’t. Quite suddenly she had decided that she was not ready for bed yet. Why not sneak off with Hamish for a little while? Who knows, she might even kiss him again. Why not, it was a party, wasn’t it? And so together they staggered off towards the girls’ bedroom, leaving the other six housemates to further boozing.

“Don’t hurry back!” shouted Jazz.

“Yeah, not until we’ve drunk the rest of the booze, anyway,” Garry added.

In the monitoring bunker they were keeping their fingers crossed. This was certainly the most sexually promising development so far. Breathlessly, the editors, assistant editors and PAs watched as the drunken couple staggered from camera to camera, spinning across through each screen in turn.

Halfway to the bedroom they altered course. It was Kelly’s idea. She grabbed Hamish’s shirt and steered him out through the big sliding doors and out into the warm night. Together they staggered towards the pool and for a moment the watchers wondered whether they might luck out with a bit of skinny dipping.

“Camera four, under the pool, double quick!” Pru barked into her intercom, and down in the camera runs around the house a black draped dalek-like shape began to glide along the corridor, down the ramp and into the spying position under the pool’s glass bottom.

But although the drunken couple teetered on the edge, kissing deep and laughing loud, they did not fall in.

“Oh my God! I think they’re making for Copulation Cabin!” Pru could scarcely contain her excitement. “Somebody ring Geraldine.”

Copulation Cabin was a wooden hut that had been placed beyond the swimming pool and filled with cushions and draped lamps. It looked like somebody had attempted to create an Arabian love tent in a garden shed, which was exactly what had happened. Peeping Tom had put it there in the transparent hope that if they supplied a place where people could get away from the prying eyes of the other housemates they might have sex. It was hoped that the existence of no fewer than five cameras covering this tiny space would not dampen the ardour.

Kelly led Hamish into the cabin and they collapsed together in a laughing boozy heap on the cushions.

Hamish had fancied Kelly from the start, and for him the cameras were a turn-on. Quite apart from the terrific thrill of the idea of bedding Kelly while millions of jealous men looked on, he felt that it would be a wonderful starting point towards presenting his own quasi-medical sex show on the television, which in his fantasies was called Dr Nookie Talks.

The kissing was becoming more intense, long, passionate, drunken kisses. Showy, chewy, gurgling kisses. Kisses that were in fact more about exhibitionism than passion, because if there was one thing that both Kelly and Hamish knew for sure, even in their drunken state, it was that this moment would make the cut of the following night’s show and also that it would be in the papers the following morning.

What a wildly exciting thought that was! That simply by clamping their mouths together they were making themselves into stars!

Hamish boldly chanced a hand, spurred on by genuine lust and pure vainglorious exhibitionism. Gently he slipped it under the hem of the baggy vest that Kelly was wearing. It had been clear to him all evening and to the four million viewers who would later be watching on television that Kelly was not wearing a bra.