Apologies for the very long delay in getting this next instalment out. I won’t be at all surprised if you’ve forgotten who all the characters are; I struggled to remember myself! Hope those of you with submitted characters are still interested in playing.
Disclaimer: Although this story mentions real persons and places, it is purely a work of fiction. The story does NOT describe real events and should NOT be taken to accurately portray any real entity mentioned. 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 and Mess, where we’ve just concluded the first round!”, announced Mel. “Still in the running for a cool £10,000 are…
“Mei-Ling Cheng, the cosplaying prankster from Edinburgh, and her teammate Myleene Klass.
“Rachael Davies, the retail assistant and unruly dinner guest from Manchester, and her partner Kelly Clarkson.
“Abby Smith, pub assistant and maladroit football supporter from Preston, who is paired with Catherine Tyldesley.
“Caroline Stanley, the Bristol canoe instructor who thinks she is a cultural cut above her partner Emma Watson.
“Joanna Linden, the somewhat, ahem… excitable waitress from Taunton, who worships her teammate Pixie Lott.
“Kathryn Ni Chearnaigh, the Dublin model who harbours a near-pathological jealousy towards fellow team member Lauren Conrad.
“and Isobel Redden, the Glasgow student who partakes in amateur dramatics both onstage and backstage, and is paired with Karen Gillan.
“Unfortunately, we do have to say goodbye to naughty Brighton secretary Sally Edwards, along with her partner Tulisa Contostavlos.
“And now joining on them on the stage is Sally’s friend Julie!”
There was a welcoming round of applause directed towards Julie, who was perched on the edge of the pink sofa next to her messy friend. She was a tall, slender girl with dark chestnut hair styled with a swept fringe, and was dressed in a low-cut white top and skinny fit jeans.
“Hi there Julie”, smiled Mel. “I understand that although you and Sally are friends, this is the first time that you’ve met face to face.”
“That’s right”, nodded Julie. “We’re WA… er, gunge buddies on Twitter.”
“Twitter Gunge buddies?”, Mel raised an eyebrow dubiously. “What exactly does that kind of friendship entail?”
“Oh you know, starting campaigns in the Twittersphere to get each other gunged, giving each other messy dares…”
“Whatever keeps you entertained”, shrugged Mel. “Anyway, with that in mind, it sounds like the elimination ride could be right up at your street. So follow me, the three of you!”
Tulisa, Sally and Julie duly got up from their seats and followed Mel. If there had ever been doubt as to the location of the messy ride, it was soon dispelled as the four approached the imposing dumpster located at the rear of the stage. It was mounted onto a pair of rails that receded into the forboding murkiness of a tunnel. Suspended above the tracks en route was a giant agricultural-style hopper.
“It may be a shame to be eliminated first from the game”, remarked Mel, “but it’s certainly an honour to be the first passengers of our garbage disposal system.”
“You calling me garbage?!”, growled Tulisa.
“Only in the most affection sense possible”, Mel hastily assured her. “Now then, Sally, would you like to hazard a guess at what is in the hopper?”
“With the state I’m in, it doesn’t really matter”, Sally responded defiantly. She had a point; having received all six punishments during the round, she was already a complete mess. “So whatever it is, bring it on! Do your worst!”
“Be careful what you wish for”, smirked Mel. “You see, when we interviewed Jane to dish the dirt on you, we also asked her what your least liked food is. What do you think she said?”
Sally though a moment, and then her eyes widened in horror. “Oh my god, it’s curry, isn’t it?”
“Correct!”, grinned Mel. The scene flashed to Sally’s other accompanying friend, Jane, who was still seated up in the audience and now wore a guilty. “Last night”, Mel continued, “we went around the fine curry houses of Mossley and collected their surplus wares. Oh course, it’ll all be cold and congealed by now, but seeing as you like curry so much, that won’t bother you, eh Sal?”
Sally had her hand over her mouth in shock, speechless for the first time on the show. She hated curry, even when it is was fresh, warm and on a plate for the purposes of eating.
Chuckling, Mel turned to Julie. “Now this is the point where I would usually invite a friend or family member of the losing contestant to pull the lever to gunge them, but in your case, I can’t help wondering that you might prefer to join her. The choice is yours!”
Julie didn’t need long to deliberate. “Well Mel, you know I was jealous of Sally going on the show because of all the gunge she would get to play around in, so this opportunity is too good to miss. I’m joining her!”
There came a riotous cheer of approval from the audience.
“I was hoping you’d say that”, winked Mel. “There are only two seats though, so one of you will have to sit on the other’s lap. Tulisa, please take the other seat; your sentence… erm, forfeit has been handed down!”
The trio clambered into the dumpster. Sally invited Julie to sit down first, and then sat herself down on Julie’s lap. She was aware that this position would leave her exposed to the deluge to curry, but she had noticed a discreet hole in the centre of the seat. This indicated to her that a bum-squirter was installed, and she was keen to give Julie a taste of her own medicine. Sally chuckled quietly to herself, noting that her unwitting friend was seated with the squirter dead on centre. A grouchy Tulisa seated herself next to them. They were sat so that they faced outwards into the studio, and thus would be travelling backwards.
Meanwhile, Mel summoned Jane down from the audience as a replacement lever-puller. Jane approached the stage somewhat apprehensively, worried that she might also be roped into taking the right, but this fear was unfounded.
“Ok folks, let’s have a big count down, shall we?”, led Mel. “five, four…”
The audience joined in. “THREE! TWO! ONE! TAKE OUT THE TRASH!!”
Jane ripped down the lever, setting the dumpster into a trundling backward motion. Almost immediately, a barrage of poppadoms whirled in the from the sides like frisbees. Tulisa jumped at the initial surprise, but quickly sought to regain her cool. Seconds later, however, a squeal emanated from her lips as she leapt to her feet in an even bigger state of shock. A switch of camera soon revealed the reason; a jet of light-brown gloop was spraying upwards, splattering against the seat of her already sodden shorts. Sally had been right about the bum-squirter!
“You can’t have poppadoms without mango chutney!”, Mel explained with a wink.
While Tulisa squirmed on her feet, trying in vain to avoid the mango jet, Julie had no such option. Sally pressed down with all her weight, determined that her friend would not be moving anywhere. Julie’s face was a picture as she felt the full pressure of the sticky condiment through her jeans. The chutney escaped through any gap that it could, shooting out from between her legs or up her back. “How do you like the bum-squirter now!?”, Sally smugly asked her.
Julie was relieved and disappointed in equal measure when the bum-squirter’s reign of terror came to an end. A second later, the dumpster ground to a sudden halt, jolting Tulisa back into her seat. Casting a nervous glance upwards, the three saw the steel hopper poised directly above them in all its enormity. The slats opened and the contents began to pour out, at first a curtain-like trickle, rapidly crescending to a fully-feldged delulge. The faces of the women – a manic if cringing grin in the case of Julie, a screwed up look in disgust in the case of Sally, and a scandalised scowl in the case of Tulisa, promptly disappeared under a wall of curry. It was sandy-yellow in colour – presumably a korma – and interspersed with lumps of unidentified meat and veg.
As the audience hollered in excitement, the curry kept pouring, the pale yellow giving way to a darker brown – perhaps a dansak or a rogan josh. Eventually the deluge began to abate, until just the last few dregs were sliding out of the hopper. The contents of the hopper had been transferred to the dumpster, filling it up neatly to the brim. Amidst it all, up to their waists, were three mishapen browny-yellow figures. Initally, they were motionless, frozen in position with shock, and a fleeting lull in applause fell upon the studio, as the audience pondered whether this extreme gunging had gone horribly wrong. Fears were soon allayed when an unrecognisable Tulisa took to her feet and began swearing at all and sundry. Sally and Julie snapped into a spirited play fight. Indeed, although it was hard to tell what exactly was going on in all that mess, they may well have been doing more than just wrestling… Mel was relieved when the dumpster finally slunk out of sight, into the dark and dry-ice mist of the tunnel.
Back on the stage, the camera panned the ring of sofas to gauge the responses of the remaining players to what they had just witnessed. Mei-Ling, Rachael and Abby looked nervous but also rather excited and intrigued. Lauren, Caroline, and Isobel looked horrified, and Joanna had all but fainted. There was a similar range of reactions amongst the celebrities.
“I think this might have been a game sharpener!”, smiled Mel with approval. “Join us shortly for round two, when there’ll be more games and more goo!”
While the participants were herded off to the much-needed shower facilities, Mel trudged back to her emperor-sized dressing room where she collapsed wearily into a reclining leather armchair. She was promptly attended by a bevy of strapping young men, one of whom began to massage the tension from her shoulders, while another removed her shoes and commenced pampering her aching feet with lotion. A third fanned her with a giant palm branch, while a fourth served her a reviving cup of strong Northern tea.
“Bloody hell, and that was only the first round!”, she thought aloud.
“It gets easier from herein”, came a voice from behind that Mel recognised as belonging to Mike, the director. “You did a cracking job back there, Mel. Textbook!”
“There aren’t any textbooks written on what I’ve just been through”, Mel complained. “The guests are never this arsey on Let’s Do Lunch with Gino and Mel!”
“You don’t try to gunge the crap out of anyone on Let’s Do Lunch”, Mike chuckled, as he perched himself on the corner of her dressing table. “Although it would liven things up if you did.” Short and bearded, almost gnome-like, Mike possessed neither the handsome visage nor the muscular physique of the studs who presently fawned over the 42-year-old presenter, but he more than made for it with oodles of charm and a very persuasive manner (how else had he managed to get 8 big name celebs to agree to be obliterated with mess?).
“It’s a shame we had to get rid of that Brighton girl”, rued Mel. “She was one of the more stable ones. I get the feeling we’re going to have a fully-fledged catfight between Irish one and her celeb, and as for that silly girl from Zomerrrzehht… there’s no way she’s going to stay the course.”
“Fear not. Joanna’s father and I had a, ahem, supportive word with her – a bit of classic good cop, bad cop”, Mike assured Mel. “She’s agreed that she’ll accept whatever we choose to throw at her. Signed in triplicate, in fact.”
“Yeah, but I’m still going to have that sanctimonious Pixie Lott on my back every step of the way”, Mel grumbled. “She called me a bully, Mike! Me, the lovable Melanie Sykes, a bully!”
“Relax! We’re going to edit all that out. Nobody will ever know.”
“Apart from everyone in the studio audience”, Mel fretted. “It’s going to get leaked to the press, I know it! I’ve spent years cultivating the image of a cheery, chirpy, happy-go-lucky Northern lass, and now I’m in danger of having that hard work wrecked. I don’t want to be typecast as a domineering gungemistress!”
“Hmmm, I see your point”, Mike slowly nodded. “You do come across a touch… tyrannical.”
Mel nearly spat out her tea over the male concubine who was attending to her feet. “Tyrannical!? Me, Mel Sykes, a tyrant?! Tell me you don’t mean that, Mike, surely!”
Mike appeared not to be listening, but instead stared off into space and pensively stroked his beard. “Yes… it’s always a danger with these shows where starry-eyed contestants and well-loved celebrities get humiliated; the presenter often ends up becoming a hate figure…”
“A hate figure!?” Mel gasped.
“Noel Edmonds… Simon Cowell… Ant and Dec…”
“Nooooo!!” wailed Mel. “Is there anything I can do to avoid this fate? Tell me!!”
Mike pursed his lips. “Well… I guess you just need to offset your heavy-handedness with humility, your stridency with self-deprecation… you need to show that you can be a good sport as well as a big bad boss.”
“And how exactly do I do that?”
“Give your victims a little opportunity for some payback”, Mike ventured. “We’ll have a few spare minutes at the end of the show. Maybe we could wheel on a gunge tank or…”
Mel’s eyes widened. “You mean me getting… oh no, uh-uh! Oh no no no!” She wagged a finger at Mike sternly. “There’s a no-mess clause in my contract, remember?”
“How could I forget?”, Mike smirked. The no-mess clause was one of the non-negotiable terms that Mel had laid down on the table when signing up to present the show, along with the hunky ‘personal attendants’ and her own personal on-site gym. “I’m just saying it would be in your own interest to waive it.” Mike took out an official-looking document and a pen.
“So that’s what your game is!”, Mel scowled. “Trying to scare me into agreeing to get messy! You rat!”
“Just giving my advice…” Mike held up his hands.
“Well you can keep advice like that to yourself! I am not going to let you trick me into a gunging!”
Mike decided to push his luck. “How about a few pies?”
“NO!!”, snapped Mel. “No gunge, no pies, no nothing! Now get out of my dressing room! OUT!!” She picked up one of her black stilettos and drew it back, threatening to throw.
“Ok, ok, I’m leaving!” Mike didn’t want to test Mel’s conviction; he knew her aim would be good. “I’ll just the leave with the waiver here on the table. If you change your mind…”
“OUT!!” snarled Mel.
Mike scampered out of the room. Mel quaffed the dregs of her tea and ordered the server to fetch her another cup. Exhaling with frustration, she lay back and tried to relax as the young studs continued to massage her shoulders and feet. It’s ok, Mel, she told herself. No-one will think you’re a bully. There’s no need for drastic measures. But her eyes kept returning to the waiver on her dressing table.
