Match & Mess – Round 1: Getting To Know You (The Sky Blue Team: Joanna and Pixie)

Disclaimer: Although this story mentions real persons, corporations, TV shows and places, it is purely a work of fiction for personal enjoyment. The story does NOT describe real events and should NOT be taken to accurately portray any real entity mentioned. In keeping with its fictional nature, the events and activities described in the story may not be legal, ethical or safe. This site does NOT endorse or recommend their enactment.

“Welcome back to Match & Mess, where we’re halfway through the first round”, Melanie Sykes announced. “So far the Dark Blue Team have 30 points, while the Reds, Yellows and Greens are all tied on 25. Let’s see how the next contenders fare. A big round of applause please for the Sky Blue Team: Joanna Linden and Pixie Lott!”

The audience cheered as the two young ladies appeared in their respective doorways. Caroline recognised Joanna as the West Country girl who had struck up conversation with her earlier. Joanna was a tall girl, standing a good 5 ft 9, and was large-framed, though nonetheless lean and trim. She was also decidedly large in the chest department, cutting at least an E if not an F, and the production team had struggled to find a crop top big enough to contain her womanly assets. For her lower half she had opted for the shorts. Her hair was long, straight and champagne blonde, and her eyes were an icy blue that matched her crop top. Already fair-skinned by nature, she presently bore an additional pallor, along with a worried look on her face.

Pixie, by contrast, was looked more relaxed and confident. Like Joanna, she had chosen the crop top and shorts combo, and her figure looked fabulous as she breezed down the staircase. Sensing Joanna’s unease, she gave the girl a supportive hug and some words of encouragement. The pair went through the usual greeting with Mel, and seated themselves on the light blue sofa.

“Welcome, both of you”, Mel reassumed her place in the armchair and took out her information card. “Now then Joanna, you’re aged 22, and strangely enough (given that we’ve already had Abby who was born on Christmas Eve), you were born on Christmas Day. Do you find that a good or bad thing?”

“A good thing, on the whole”, smiled Joanna. “It means I’m always off work on my birthday and can have a proper booze-up with the family.”

“And I believe you’ve brought said family along with you”, Mel noted. “Could you point them out for us?”

“Yep, they’ve all come”, Joanna pointed proudly to halfway up the lower tier. “My mum, my dad, my brother and my two sisters.”

The camera panned over to the Linden family. Mrs Linden looked just like Joanna, only fast-forwarded by a quarter-century. She had the same champagne blonde hair and Nordic blue eyes, but the porcelain skin was lined, the large frame filled out, the hefty busom ravaged by gravity. Realising the camera was on her, she waved her arms manically in the air and bellowed “go Jo go!”.

Mr Linden, by contrast, barely acknowledged Joanna’s shoutout. A bald man with a greying moustache, he sat frowning with his arms folded, smouldering with resentment that yet another precious day of his holiday allowance was being wasted in the name of “Pixie Friggin’ Lott”. He had had more than his fill of carting Joanna around to concerts and talent shows, and the only thing that had persuaded him to attend Match & Mess was the £10,000 on offer (Joanna was heavily in arrears to the Bank of Mum and Dad).

Mel continued to scan down the information card. “Joanna hails from Taunton in Somerset, she’s a waitress, and her extensive list of hobbies and interests comprises of… wait for it… clubbing.” Mel lowered the card. “Is that it?!”

“Oh, and Pixie Lott, of course!” Joanna gazed in wonderment at her partner. “I’m her biggest fan in the South West, if not the whole of England! Look!”

Joanna triumphantly raised her left hand, revealing on the underside of her wrist a tattoo, composed of the word “Pixie” and a crude illustration of a nondescript blonde woman.

“Oh Joanna, is that meant to be me?! That’s so er… lovely!”, Pixie forced herself to say. Joanna beamed with pride.

“Er yeah… great”, said Mel far less convincingly. “I have to say Pixie, Joanna is definitely a big fan of yours”, Mel pointed out. “Here’s what she wrote on her application form: I want to meet Pixie because she is my idol and I want to be like her. I think I have a lot of similarities to Pixie and I look proper like her.”

“Er yeah… you do look just like me!”, Pixie once again fibbed. “I can really see the resemblance.”

Joanna was in seventh heaven. “See, I told ya!”, she called up to her family.

“Indeed…” Mel exchanged a perturbed look with Pixie. “Of course, you and Pixie could become even harder to tell apart when the gunge starts flowing! How are you feeling about it?”

The reminder about gunge brought Joanna down from her high with a bump. “Ah… yeah… actually Mel, I wanna talk to you about that. You see, I ain’t at all keen on getting gunged…”

“Oh, what a pity…”, snarked Mel.

“…so is it ok if I skip the messy parts of the show and just do the clean bits?”

“Are you taking the…?”, Mel stopped herself just in time. “Sorry Joanna, but the show is all about getting messy, so you can’t avoid it.”

“But I only wrote in cos I wanted to meet Pixie Lott!”, protested Joanna, her voice starting to wobble. “I didn’t even know this show were gonna be messy!”

“When it’s called Match & Mess and the advert said it would be messy?” Mel was fast losing her patience.

“I only read the bit about meeting a celeb!”, protested Joanna. “Look, I don’t wanna go through with it, ok?!”

“Fine!” Mel threw her card to the floor in exasperation. “If you don’t want to take part, we’ll replace you with one of the reserves.” She looked around at the crew members. “Let’s get this idiot out of here and not waste any more time.”

Pixie tried to defuse the situation. “Tell you what Joanna”, she smiled sympathetically, “why don’t you and I spend the rest of the day hanging out together in Mossley? We can have coffee, go shopping… lots of girly things.”

“Yeah!” Joanna’s eyes lit up. “I’d proper love that!”

“She’s going nowhere; she’s playing the game!”, called a stern voice.

Heads turned to face Mr Linden, who remained sitting with arms folded. “You’re playing, Joanna”, he told her. “You really need that money.”

“Yeah, go on my love!”, called Mrs Linden. “You’ll proper enjoy it once you get going.”

Joanna’s brother and younger sister began making chicken noises.

“But Daddy, I don’t wanna…”, Joanna whined.

“Do you know how much petrol it takes to drive all the way up here?” Mr Linden was beginning to anger. “Not to mention the hotel bills! You made such a fuss about wanting to come on this show, you’re not gonna back out now, you hear me?”

“Alright! I’ll do it!”, Joanna sulked. Mr Linden settled back in his seat with his arms folded.

“All sorted? Good!” Mel picked up her card. “We can edit this bit out, can’t we?”, she checked with a crew member, before recomposing her sunny disposition. “Right then, let’s get started! Pixie, if you would like to make your way to the isolation chamber… oh, one final thing – your chosen charity?”

“BeatBullying“, replied Pixie, looking uneasy in the light of the coercion she had just witnessed, before taking her position in the tank.

“Right then, Joanna, here come the questions”, Mel commenced. “First up: Name either of Pixie’s albums.”

“Oh, I know this”, Joanna’s smile returned. “Turn It Up.”

“Turn it up is indeed correct”, confirmed Mel. “And you could also have had Young Foolish happy. Question 2: what is Pixie’s real first name?

“Victoria”, answered Joanna without hesitation. “Her real name is Victoria Louise Lott.”

“Again correct”, nodded Mel.

In the gunge tank, Pixie called out “well done Joanna!”, even though Joanna couldn’t see or hear her.

“Question 3: At the London Olympics, Pixie performed Kiss the Stars and Use Somebody at the men’s final of which sport?”

Joanna’s smile faded. “Sport ain’t really a thing of mine”, she shook her head, “but I reckon it were the one hundred metres.”

Mel shook her head. “The answer is gymnastics”, she revealed. “On your marks, set, GO!!”

A lemon-yellow batch of cream was launched from the pie cannon, exploding across Pixie’s front and face, causing her hair to whip back with the force, and making Pixie flinch in shock.

“Oh no! I’m sorry Pixie!”, cried Joanna, looking round. Pixie hurriedly wiped the yellow gunk from around her eyes and then gave Joanna a thumbs up to show that she was ok.

“Question 4″, read Mel. “Pixie made a guest appearance in which CBBC drama?”

After her confident start, Joanna was now flustered. “Byker Grove?”, she blurted.

“Byker Grove?!?”, Mel sneered incredulously. “No, the answer is Sadie J. But seeing as you mention the Grove, Pixie can have some Newcastle Brune Ale.”

Pixie screamed as a sticky black liquid erupted from the floor of the tank. Most of it was aimed low, coating her bare legs and spraying up her shorts, but some reached up to her torso and hair.

“Let’s see if you can do better with Question 5: Pixie features in the song We Own The Night, performed by which American artist?”

“Oh god, I read this once somewhere.” Joanna put her hands to her temples and closed her eyes. The audience could almost hear the cogs whirring under her blonde mane, and after some intense machinations, the following answer was retrieved:

“2 Chainz and Wiz Khlalifa.”

“Uh, no. It was Selena Gomez”, Mel informed her. “By the way, did you know that it is Selena’s ambition to be green-slimed…?”

That ambition was soon lived out by Pixie, as a deluge of Nickelodeon standard-issue slime came cascading down onto her head. A look of surprise was briefly seen on her yellow-coated face, before the slime umbrellaed and blocked the view. A second later, her head came into view again, this time with the slime running down her hair in all directions.

“Dear me, Joanna”, Mel sighed, “and I thought you were meant to be Pixie’s biggest fan!”

“I am, I am!”, insisted Joanna. “But my mind just this minute went proper blank!”

It’s been proper blank for a lot longer than that, Mel refrained from saying. “Ah well, that’s life. Let’s see if you can do better with Question 6: In a certain – ahem – ‘contest’ Pixie came No. 45 in 2010, No. 31 in 2011, No. 12 in 2012 and No. 7 in 2013. What ‘contest’ am I referring to?”

“Oh, oh… the FHM top 100 women”, blurted Joanna.

“The FHM 100 Sexiest Women in the World… yes, I’ll give you that, which means you have three correct answers – 15 points.”

There was applause as a green, black and yellow Pixie disembarked from the chamber. “Sorry Pixie!”, Joanna reiterated.

“Hey, you did well!”, Pixie assured as she sat down. She put an arm around Joanna, but then realised this was a bad idea as Joanna recoiled from the mess.

“Might as well get used to it, Joanna”, taunted Mel. “It’s your turn in the chamber!”

“Can I do it without the mess?”, pleaded Joanna. “I proper don’t wanna get covered!”

“No!”, snapped Mel. “We’ve already been through this!”

Pixie wore a pained expression. “How about if I go back in the tank and take the mess again?”, she suggested. “I don’t mind, and I’m sure the audience won’t mind, will you?”

The audience, on the whole, sounded pretty amenable to the idea of further mess for Pixie, but Mel was not swayed.

“It’s not up to them, it’s up to me”, she asserted. “If I let one contestant off the hook, they’ll all be demanding it.” She gritted her teeth and, in the most polite yet firm voice she could muster, instructed. “Now Joanna, we have a tight schedule to keep to, so please take yourself to the isolation chamber and fill in the questionnaire.”

Joanna reluctantly obeyed, while Pixie looked decidedly uncomfortable with the entire situation. Joanna’s dread mounted when she opened the door of the chamber and saw the carnage from the previous nine sessions. Although the floor had an inbuilt grille to allow drainage of the excess mess, and automatic wipers cleaned off the perspex walls between each session to maintain a good view, there was nonetheless a considerable amount of residue. The seat in particular was coated in assorted slush. Joanna gingerly squatted, trying to avoid her backside touching the seat. It proved a difficult position to maintain, especially while trying to fill in the touch screen questionnaire.

“Ok Pixie, you know how much Joanna wants to avoid this”, Mel reminded. “The responsibility rests on your shoulders to keep her clean.”

Pixie looked far from pleased at having the burden of blame shifted onto her, but had no option but to listen attentively as Mel commenced the questioning.

“Question 1: Which of these subjects did Joanna perform best in at school?

(a) maths,
(b) history,
or (c) design tech.”

“Joanna strikes me as a… erm… practical person”, Pixie decided, “so I’ll say (c) – design tech.”

In the tank, Joanna looked like she had seen a ghost. She bowed her head and wrapped her arms on top of it.

“The answer was (a) – maths”, Mel informed Pixie, who tutted and sighed. “Calculate this, Joanna!”

Joanna shrieked as red and green gunge sloshed outwards from either side of her. She kept her arms tightly wrapped around her hair, but it offered little protection against the powerful side surges, and soon the girl’s blonde locks were recoloured red and green.

“You ok, Joanna?”, Pixie looked round anxiously.

Joanna made no signal, and continued looking downwards, shaking at the sensation of her slimy coating.

Mel moved on to the next question. “Question 2: Joanna’s preferred hangover cure is…

(a) hair of the dog,
(b) a greasy fry-up,
or (c) not drinking too much in the first place?”

“I’d really like to say that Joanna doesn’t drink too much to begin with”, Pixie noted, “but she strikes me as a party girl so I’ll go with hair of the dog.”

Mel’s smirk made Pixie’s heart sink. “Actually, the fry-up is her weapon of choice. Do you know what my favourite part of a cooked breakfast is, Pixie?”

Pixie glumly shook her head.

“The beans!”

Upon hearing this, Joanna groaned with dread and cowered even further forwards. The chamber was ready for this, and responded with a powerful upsurge of baked beans from the floor in front of Joanna. Joanna squawked as her face and front were blasted with beans, causing her to rapidly recoil to an upright position, only to be greeted with some semi-set scrambled egg from above. She squirmed as beans and egg ran down her gargantuan cleavage.

“You really are letting her in for a pasting, Pixie!”, Mel tittered. “Question 3: Joanna prefers…

(a) dogs,
(b) cats,
or (c) she can’t stand either?”

Sweat was beginning to mix with the mess on Pixie’s brow as she felt the pressure. “I have the feeling that Joanna is… a… dog person”, she ventured.

“She is”, nodded Mel. Pixie exhaled with relief, and Joanna looked even more relieved.

“Question 4: In Joanna’s view, which of these locations would be the most romantic to watch the sunset with a lover?

(a) The top of the Eiffel Tower,
(b) a hillside overlooking a Scottish loch,
or (c) a secluded tropical beach.”

“The beach, with the waves gently lapping at their toes”, Pixie guessed, looking almost prayerful.

“Joanna said the beach”, confirmed Mel, while Pixie pumped her fist. “Question 5, the moral dilemma: Suppose that Joanna is at her boss’ housewarming party. She spills a glass of red wine, causing a stain on a brand new cream carpet. Does Joanna…

(a) own up immediately,
(b) surreptitiously move furniture to hide the stain,
or (c) add some white wine to the mix – after all, that’s what the old wives’ tale recommends?”

“Joanna strikes me as an honest girl, and someone who faces up to responsibility”, Pixie pondered. “So I reckon (a).”

The disappointed look on Mel’s face was met by a relieved one on Pixie’s. “(a) is indeed right – Joanna would own up. Which leads us to the embarrassing story. Now, Match and Mess isn’t Joanna’s first excursion into the public eye, and if she looks familiar to anyone it’s because she was a contestant on Britain’s Got the Voice Factor, on which she performed one of your songs, Pixie.”

“Oh that’s nice”, Pixie smiled weakly.

“It certainly wasn’t nice for anyone who watched it”, Mel rejoined with a chortle. “Joanna was booed off stage and got five ‘no’s from the celebrity judging panel, who made the following comments: Piers Morgan said ‘you sing like a hyena with bronchitis and dance like a rhino on laxatives’, David Beckham said ‘that was the worst singing I’ve ever heard’ (and he’s married to a Spice Girl), Richard Dawkins said ‘I now believe in Hell because I’ve just had a glimpse of it’, Katie Price said ‘nice boobs, shame about the brains’ (although I think there’s a strong case for pots and kettles to be made there), and Ed Balls said ‘Ed Balls’.”

As she listened to Mel recount her failings, the dripping Joanna sank lower and lower, in terms of both posture and morale. She was close to tears and thoroughly regretted signing up for the show.

“The question for you, Pixie, is which of your songs did Joanna massacre? Was it…

(a) Mama Do (Uh Oh, Uh Oh),
(b) Boys and…”

“Just hold it right there!”, Pixie snapped. “As a BeatBullying Ambassador, I can hold my silence no longer! You make poor Joanna go through with the messy parts of the game even though she doesn’t want to, you show her no leniency or sympathy, and to cap it all you humiliate her with a cheap anecdote about some nasty talent show!” Pixie pointed an accusing finger. “You, Mel Sykes, are a bully!”

Mel looked taken aback. “What are you talking about!? I didn’t force her to do anything. I just gave her the option to withdraw and she decided to continue! And I haven’t treated her any differently to the other contestants – it’s all just banter!”

“Banter’s one thing, but it should be obvious that it’s gone too far in this case”, Pixie crossed her arms. “I’m surprised at you Mel; you used to be really nice on that show with Des O’Connor!”

“I still am nice”, Mel insisted, “but rules are rules!” There were a few boos and hisses from the audience, and she realised that she could have a major rebellion on her hands if she didn’t nip it the bud. Defiant, she returned to her question card. “Which Pixie Lott song did Joanna make a complete hash of on Britain’s got the Voice Factor? Was it…?”

“Mel, I’m not playing!”, Pixie interrupted. “I won’t be complicit in bullying.” With that, she got up from the sofa and opened the door of the chamber. “Out you get, Joanna.” She extended an arm and Joanna readily accepted it, managing to raise a smile. The audience applauded her kind act of friendship.

“Cheer up, Joanna my love!”, called Mrs Linden. “Your singing weren’t that bad!” Mr Linden remained in the same position with his arms folded, an I-told-you-so look upon his face.

“You’ll lose a chance to get the points!”, Mel threatened, livid at this disobedience. Pixie paid no attention.

“Continue as normal, Mel”, the director spoke into Mel’s earpiece. “We’ll edit it.”

Mel turned to the camera and forced a smile. “Well, after that eventful round, I’m pleased to announce that Joanna and Pixie have done well enough to get through to the next round, with 30 points!”

The audience continued to cheer as the messy pair returned to the sofa with their arms around one another, while Mel received further information in her ear about how they were going to deal with Joanna…