1.

BRRRRING BRRRRING BRRRRRING BRRRRING BRRRRRI…. “Hello, who is it?” answered a frail voice, most likely belonging to an 80 odd year old widow unaware of the relentless barrage of ear rape she was about to fall victim to.
“Good afternoon, could I speak to Mrs Backhouse please?” Came the over-enthusiastic, slimy response announced in the same manner Kendall McKissarse would spout to teachers up and down the country just in case his after-school fellatio sessions weren’t good enough to ensure top marks in Physics.
“Yes speaking, who is it please?”
“Oh hello Mrs Backhouse, my names Twitch and I’m calling on behalf of ‘Slave the Children’, you know, the charity aimed at reducing the working week to 2 days by ‘encouraging’ a selection of under 8’s from our great nation to [ahem] ‘assist’ in menial tasks up and down the country.”
“Oh sorry dear I haven’t got the….”
“NOW, I am aware you already pledge a gift of £17 a month to us Mrs Backhouse and believe you me EVERY SINGLE PENNY of your donation has been received with the uttermost gratitude. I mean without YOUR gift we wouldn’t have been able to upgrade our whips from horsehair to leather. A move Mrs Backhouse that you’ll be glad to hear has added a sense of luxury to working conditions and vastly increased our ‘little darlings’ work ethic, thank you very much indeed.”
“Oh, well I do try but….I…”
“However. What we’re finding now Mrs Backhouse is that due to increasing overheads within the charity, overheads such as reclining chairs, new caramel coated Flap Jacks in the vending machine blah-de-blah, you know the sort of necessities that allow our staff to achieve the best possible results, we’re finding it dreadfully difficult to provide our children with three square meals a day [pauses].”
“Oh that’s terrible”
“It most certainly is terrible isn’t it Mrs Backhouse but believe you me we’re not the type of people to allow this to go lightly. We don’t want our children to go hungry and let it affect their hard work. How can they be expected to scrape all that chewing gum up off the pavement on an empty belly eh? It’s also especially worrying for our ginger haired under-6s who, as you know, have been used to replace traffic cones in recent years after John Bean, Head of Environmental Health, banned the use of all plastic traffic cones due to his phobia of well, plastic traffic cones. Standing in the same spot for days, sometimes weeks as a ‘Traffic Kid’ takes stamina and without food our road maintenance and traffic services would be out the window, and we don’t want that now do we Mrs Backhouse?”
“No, but…”
“So, rather than reduce our overheads and potentially compromise all our hard work for the sake of a few hot dinners we’ve developed a food supplement, to be taken once a day, that will eliminate the need for 3 square meals but at the same time provide our children with all the right nutrients and vitamins they need. It’s called PlumpyNut and is pretty much the same as peanut butter but with an extra chew…or two...scrumptious I’ve been told!”
“PlumpyNut? That’s a bit of an odd name dear, I suppose it makes sense though because it’s made from peanuts and fills the little blighters up doesn’t it!” Mrs Backhouse chuckled.
“Well you’d think so wouldn’t you Mrs Backhouse? However it’s named after the inventor, a fat, crazy bitc...err…I mean voluptuous, eccentric women from the South of France called Hippolyte Fromage, real genius I tell you. Anyway, the problem lies in producing enough PlumpyNut to go around and although every child only needs one a day we still have over a million children going hungry when all they want to do is ‘assist’ their elders and ‘support’ their great nation. All we’re asking for is a small increase of £5 in your donation which would ensure 6 children are fed and capable of providing me and you, US a service, do you think you could do that for us today Mrs Backhouse?”
“I don’t think so dear, I already give £17 a month and I can barely afford to feed myself. I am 87 you know.”
“Never?! I wouldn’t have put you a day over 21 Mrs Backhouse, in fact I was about to ask you if you were single!”
“My husband died last year actually [sobs]”
“Oh…errm…sorry about that I hope it wasn’t too painful for you.”
“It was actually dear, I had both my legs amputated. I was the passenger in the car.”
“Oh…I didn’t mean it like…”
“In fact the accident happened after one those new Traffic Kids you mentioned earlier was picked up by a very strange looking old man with a beard and bundled into the back of a transit van. Me and Brian thought it were a bloke from Highway maintenance but he wasn’t wearing a uniform and the van had blacked out windows. Anyway, amidst all the confusion we went straight into the back of a caravan.”
“Oh dear, killed on impact was he?”
“You could say that but no, no he wasn’t. Unluckily for us the caravan was carrying a family of gypsies, the mother of which suffered whiplash causing her to accidentally head butt her husband who then went and spilt his cup of tea on their pet Jack Russell causing it to relieve itself all over their horseshoe collection which they’d just had polished, ready to sell down the local car boot. Needless to say the husband went berserk and threatened to kill us there and then, I were terrified I was. He said the only way we could make up for it was to join his circus, well we had to didn’t we! [sobs] Once we were there he gave us odd jobs. Sometimes they were ok, like stacking hay and litter picking, other times though they were awful, like the night I lost my Brian [sobs]….and my legs [sobs more].
“Listen Mrs Backhouse I tell you what lets forget about the donation today, you’ve obviously had a rough time. How about I call back next….”
“It were terrible, the two dwarves who usually took part in The Bare Knuckle Magical Show had gone AWOL, something to do with having to sleep with the animals I were told but anyway, me and Brian were made to take their place. It weren’t going too badly until they started the sword tricks. I mean I knew as soon as they put him in that box and started sliding the first blade through that something wasn’t right because usually the dwarfs would be able to dodge it. Went through one ear and out the other, awful. Of course we weren’t aware it had gone wrong at this point because he was in a box and I was about to be ‘cut in half’ by John-boy Magic and Debbie Flab-ee. I suppose that says it all really [sobs quite a lot].”
[Long Pause]
“O-K, well Mrs Backhouse I’m terribly sorry to have called you at what must be a most difficult time for you, how about I rearrange the call for another time? Tomorrow sound good?”
“Well I don’t…”
“Excellent, someone will give you a call tomorrow then Mrs Backhouse, have a lovely evening byyyye’

DERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

The dial tone sounded like bliss after that tale of depressive misery thought Twitch, not that he wasn’t used to it mind, this was bread and butter to him. Day in, day out ringing the elderly and incapable to pester them out of a few more coppers for ‘Slave the Children.’ However, on this particular occasion Mrs Backhouse had out Twitched Twitch, usually it was the caller hurrying off the phone or, in most cases, abruptly telling him to FUCK OFF!

As he lent back on his brand new reclining chair his beady eyes surveyed his surroundings. Mauve walls, grey and brown pebbledash carpets, plastic cheese plants, filing cabinets that most likely contained little more than used chewing gum gone hard and the remnants of a biro, and, most annoyingly, more twats than a Hackett sponsored WKD promo party. Welcome to the charity call centre, welcome to the life of Twitch Hoddings.

2.

Twitch had never bargained for this when he set out on his voyage to become the next big thing in Hollywood, not that the commute from Walthamstow to Old street could be called a voyage but still, he had dreams and the biggest of all was to become an actor. Second biggest was to grow an iron fist, or just have an iron fist that replaced his normal one. This would ensure he could become world champion at Knuckles, a schoolyard pastime he’d just never been able to shake off even though he’d left school ten years ago and even though no one would ever play with him anyway. Third biggest was to rid of the stabilisers on his StreetWolf BMX, sadly for Twitch however, this was the least likely to come true. You see a ride on a bike for Twitch was like a ride on Kerry Katona for me or anyone else of the male variety reading this. Very wobbly with guaranteed helmet damage and plenty of excess tears in the aftermath.

He was born in 1980 into the same house in which his father and grandfather were born into to. Not that it was family tradition or anything, his dad and grandfather are in fact the same man, Kenny Hoddings, whom many moons ago had fallen in love with Twitch’s older sister, and soon to be mum, Cassandra. Now at this point your probably thinking that Twitch was named in homage to this incestuous affair, what with most children being born out of such relationships having the odd eye spasm amongst other ‘complications’ to deal with. Twitch however was one of the lucky all-in-one siblings who was born into the world unscathed and was in fact named after his uncle Terry who suffers from Parkinsons. Quite ironically, Twitch’s name isn’t the only thing he has in common with his uncle, no, when it comes to his acting career Twitch always talks the talk but in similar fashion to Terry, hardly ever walks the walk.

Having left the family nest a few years ago to spread his wings and gain some valuable life experience on his way to the red carpet at Cannes, Twitch found himself renting a room in a shared house at No. 23 MonkeySpinach Rd, Walthamstow, East London. He hadn’t fancied moving too far away from Home. It was only 48 minutes away on the bus and because he was as serious as Shakespeare with a shoe bomb when it came to the weekly game of Charades that was tradition every Saturday back at the Hoddings family household, he didn’t want to travel too far to take part.

Twitch occupied the top room of No. 23 Monkeyspinach Rd and trod on the same carpet as a 24-year old chick called Minny, or Dot depending on her headspace. She had a split personality you see and switched between the two without warning. Dot was quite a charming elderly woman whose favourite pastime was to collect Victorian bathmats and lengths of maroon string. Minny, on the other hand, was a poppers sniffing adolescent who resembled a beaten dog awash with every mental disorder in the book. She was quite scary and whenever the house ran low on loo roll she’d been known to use her housemates socks to wipe herself clean, Twitch’s included. He hated this because, well, because who wouldn’t?? Twitch’s second housemate was called ‘Snowp Dog’ to me or you, ‘Dog’ to his adversaries, and Carl Perks to his mum. ‘Snowp’ hailed from a small village in North Yorkshire called Grassington and had moved to the big smoke two years ago to pursue his dream of becoming the greatest white rapper the world had ever seen. His journey thus far had amounted to nothing too grandiose but had seen him employ ex-Really Really Wild Show presenter Terry Nutkins as his manager. After literally bumping into each other outside Walthamstow’s local Costcutter and then striking up an energetic conversation about how much they thought ‘Traffic Kids’ got paid, Terry had mentioned to ‘Snowp’ he’d had plenty of experience in handling dogs and was offered the job on the spot. No questions asked. Terry was happy because at the time he’d found himself spiralling into a world that consisted of nothing but fried egg sandwiches and violent masturbation, Macala Strachen had stopped knocking about with him and he’d got even more balder. ‘Snowp’ was happy because he now had the time to concentrate 100% on his music rather than have to respond to all the hate mail he got from Grassington local council. They saw him as a complete embarrassment who would put Grassington on the map for all the wrong reasons if he were ever to get famous. He was 46 for Gods sake, still wore American baseball caps and used the word 'blood' when addressing everyone, even his nan. Anyhow Terry ran ‘Snowps’ day-to-day operations from NetZone in Putney. ‘Snowp’ couldn’t afford the Internet or an office and neither could Terry so NetZone provided the perfect base. His first single was called ‘Hand-Baked N' Humped Like A Pasty’ and was due for release in about two weeks. Terry had his work cut out. Not only did he have to promote it, he also had to record it onto the 1000 cassette tapes ‘Snowp’ had bought off Ebay. He was going to get CDs but they cost a bit more and that week he’d greedily and rather stupidly bought his lunch from Greggs everyday rather than just making his own like usual.

Twitch didn’t mind ‘Snowp’, they both shared an interest in hiding their socks and not being schizophrenic. The fact ‘Snowp’ still didn’t let Twitch call him ‘Dog’ got on Twitch’s nerves slightly but not enough to put him a bad mood, only enough to make him think ‘I wonder when I’ll be able to call ‘Snowp’, ‘Dog.’

3.

Constantly in denial that he has in fact got as much chance at succeeding in acting as he has racing Madeleine McCann in a non-stabilised bicycle race, Twitch convinces himself day in day out that he’s on the right path to stardom. He does this by telling everyone he’s an actor even though the nearest he’s ever got to gracing the big screen was when a video of him getting happy slapped by his dad / grandad Kenny was posted on Youtube by his mum / sister Cassandra. Twitch has never quite recovered from that incident as it goes and becomes slightly anxious when out and about on his own. I mean if you can’t trust 4 members of your family who can you trust? Just to be on the safe side he now carries a pair of scissors around with him for protection against any future happy slappers or general bad eggs. Not that he’d stab them or anything though, no, no. Twitch’s favourite biblical story is Samson and Delilah and he reckons that if ever confronted by a bad egg all he’d have to do is take a few snips of their hair to make them lose their strength and wilt like a pear on a sun bed. Thus leaving him with enough time to….LEG IT!

Not even the fact he has to rely on Gumtree to find auditions due to his lack of an agent dampens the disillusioned confidence he has in realising his dreams, and dream he most certainly does. You see to try and spice up his fruitless reality Twitch creates little ‘Hollywood’ worlds for each environment he finds himself in. For instance, when he’s sat on his reclining chair and speaking into his headset as Senior Telecommunications Operator for Slave the Children he is in fact Han Solo in the Millennium Falcon. It’s not people like Mrs Backhouse on the other end of the line either, no, he’s communicating with Princess Leia or when he gets someone with a foreign accent or speech impediment it’s just Chewbacca speaking in tongues. On quieter days his imagination transforms him into John Craven the Newsround legend. Still to the day he loves that show but thinks since John left it just hasn’t been the same.

Anyway it’s safe to say that Twitch wasn’t going anywhere fast. In fact wherever he was heading he was doing so at the speed of Stephen Hawking with a puncture, unless of course his destiny lay on the pebble-dashed carpet of Slave the Children, I haven’t decided yet so we’ll all have to wait and see. In the meantime his conversation with Mrs Backhouse happened to be his 73rd call of the day, it was only 9:54am and because he’d started at 9 that’s 1.351852 calls a minute if you didn’t already know. Within that time he’d mainly spoken to a cross section of elderly, retarded and unemployed people. Names cropped up such as Mr Lice, Mr Downer and Mrs Pickle. Names that would have made any normal, non-charity call centre worker giggle. Not Twitch. Once inside the four mauve walls of the Slave the Children HQ every ounce of humour was sucked out of him as vigorously as Vanessa Feltz sucks out the creamy nice bit of a Cadbury’s cream egg. These names made him depressed. ‘How did he, Twitch Hoddings, future Hollywood star end up associating himself with people of this ilk?’ Add to the uninspiring clientele the fact he was surrounded by people he considered to be complete wankers and it’s hard not to feel sorry for poor old Twitch.

On this particular morning he’d been sat next to a stereotypical American call centre girl, you know the type, they always pop up when your in no mood to be sat within an inch of a fat, loud, obnoxious swamp donkey talking about her sex life. In fact after reading that last sentence back it has occurred to me there is no mood you can be in to ever find such a predicament even slightly bearable, not unless your deaf and blind, so it’s safe to say Twitch was rather downbeat.
“So….I like met this guy the other day and when I told him I was 17 he was like quite shocked and said I was too young but I said ‘don’t worry cos I fuck like a 21 year old’ a huh huh!!” she shouted as her friend listened on looking like she was thinking exactly the same thing as Twitch. ‘Quick somebody pass me the net and spear, if we can nail this one while she’s still young and find a Japanese fisherman we can make a bloody fortune!’ Or so he hoped anyway.

The American girl’s brashness made Twitch curdle inside and acted like an imaginary hand about to slap him as he swung his head back in despair, flinching profusely and gritting his teeth like a bulldog with a thumb up its arse. The last time that had happened was when he’d walked in on one of Kenny and Cassandra’s spin the bottle sessions, a game that a 7 year old Twitch had haplessly found out ends with the bottle being used in more ways than one, and, in more than one hole, of more than one parent…err sibling…relation….whatever.

However, as he’d turned away his head in disgust the nausea he felt quickly melted into a flutter of the heart as he noticed his one saving grace in the call centre. Past the line of callers and gracefully perched next to the water dispenser was Slave the Children’s shining light. The flower that grew from concrete. The diamond in the rough. The pungent cascade of rose water that gently flows between the spongy thighs of the Virgin Mary as she bathes her Bethlehem bosom in Jesus’ homemade Hay-in-a-manger Hot Tub 3000. The one and only call centre siren that was…Jackie BigTits. The girl of his dreams and object of desire amongst the mannish libidos scattered about the office floor of Slave the Children. She wasn’t even called Jackie but because the call centre consisted of a mix of plebs and people similar to Twitch no one had the balls to ask her name, never mind hold down a conversation with her without convulsing in a ball of nervousness and drowning their pants in a sea of piss. Twitch never knew who’d coined the name Jackie BigTits and he didn’t really care, he just focussed on the attribute that had inspired her make-shift surname and prayed to God that one day he’d wake up with enough confidence to ask her out without coming across as though he was permanently having an epileptic fit.

You see whenever Twitch caught a glimpse of Jackie the whole world around him slowed down and he was transported to a Devonshire meadow surrounded by poppies and miniature horses. ‘Oh how I wish she were my Juliet’ he dreamed, as his eyes remained transfixed on her as she poured the most beautiful glass of water ever poured. His mouth gawped and his heart raced as the overwhelming feeling of lust that always accompanied her sightings attacked his body like a sweat-infested army of love ants. As always Twitch started dissecting her beauty in his head. ‘Oh her hair, her beautiful, long, dark luscious brown hair that sits like a crown and falls oh so gracefully over those gorgeous large wells of never ending green eyes. Eyes that sit perfectly in her heart shaped face that casts a heart shaped shadow over the two most wonderfully formed pair of…..what the…what the fuck is he looking at…oh no…OH NO!!!’. During his starry-eyed dream Twitch hadn’t realised that as he’d sat there staring down the line of other callers towards the water dispenser at Jackie, the caller sat just in front of the dispenser had mistakenly assumed the lustful stares had been for him, yes HIM! And, not only was the him a him, the him concerned happened to be a certain him that looked like a Pee Wee Hermin and Hitler Youth gigolo lovechild who was getting wet at the thought of Twitch’s puppy dog gawp being directed at his pencil tache and skin tight Chino combo. He sat there smirking and staring at Twitch with a ‘come get me’ look plastered all over his squirming face, oozing clammy wrongness and trying to work his gaydar like a tractor beam. ‘SHIT’ thought twitch, but this time out loud, prompting the fat American girl next to him to turnaround and throw him a look of disgust. ‘OH FUCK OFF’ Twitch snapped back before he’d had time to think.

‘Err ex-cuse me?!’ responded the American in a tone executed half in disbelief, half in anger.
Twitch could have extinguished the situation with a swift apology there and then but he was in no mood to be nice having just had his affections for his dream girl dampened by Adolf Shitler’s gay death stare.
‘You heard love. Your face is bad enough without you frowning so do me a favour and stop dishing out the dirty looks.’
‘ERRR and who the hell do you think you are buddy, I’m on a call and all I hear is you swearing, like HELLO, people are like trying to be professional here!’
‘That’s rich coming from someone who insists on sharing their supposed sex life with half the fucking office, I’d rather hear a cat die so do us all a favour and go hug a knife!’
‘You mess with dynamite before you mess with me pal, at least I have a sex life you GEEK’
‘What! I’ll have you know that I’ve got a very healthy sex life thank you very much…’
‘Yeah right….GEEK’
‘Err just last week I was with a girl’
‘Who your mom ahaha….GEEK’
‘No, actually her name was errm,…errrrm..her name was…’
‘Her name was errrm? Whatever GEEK’
‘Yes, her name was Errrrm-ily, that’s right Errrrmily and she was Dutch and bloody brilliant so why don’t you bugger off back to America and start a family with a camel or something you twat’
‘We don’t get Camels in America hun, what are you stoopid?’
‘Ok a Yeti then, yeah go have hairy babies with a Yeti!’
‘No such thing as a Yeti, try again dickwad’
‘A Llama?’
‘South America dumb ass’
‘Elephant?’
‘Africa’
‘Kangaroo?’
‘Australia’
‘Ok ok whatever, just go do it with a bear then, you get them in America’
‘Can’t I’m allergic to em’
‘Oh for Christ’s sake I don’t care anym…you what? Your allergic to bears? How the hell did you find that out?’

Before the American girl could answer back and further humiliate Twitch, a team leader came bounding over and cut the argument short with an interception that sounded like it had sprung from the same pot of smugness Jeremy Kyle uses to dip his cock in before another caravan park catastrophe in which he exerts his authority over a clan of boss eyed in-breads who, given the chance, would quite happily fuck sparrows for cheese.

‘You two be quiet, we don’t pay you to chat to each other, save it for when you’ve finished ok?’ Colin Bothered had the most monotone voice EVER. He sounded less motivating than white noise and bored the back knackers off everyone that much Twitch imagined his favourite past time was probably reading a book on plumbing, about how to dispose of shit. Not only was his voice as excitable as cancer, after every sentence he spoke he made a noise with his mouth that sounded like a cat lapping up milk or more precisely, a smug cat lapping up cream. This really annoyed Twitch as did all the other team leaders he had to endure on a daily basis. Like the cat lapping sound Colin made all of them seemed to have some sort of weird trait or ailment that befitted their disgusting personas perfectly. Each characteristic was like a claptrap birthmark God had dished out to them when he decided they would forever be destined to wear shit shirts and order around kids half their age that didn’t give a flying rats arse about what they said. Take for example the welsh team leader Vincent Dishfart who’s eyes rolled into the back of his head every time he said the word ‘team’. Each time he gave his little prep talk before a shift he looked, one suspects, like Howard the guy off the Halifax adverts without his glasses on or, an E’d up Mr Toad. Along with the most atrociously patterned shirts since Laurence Llewlyn Bowen’s wardrobe got shat all over by his pet dog, Vincent also sported a plastic cast that supported his left hand making his crooked little finger permanently stick out like a Wotsit suffering from rigor mortis. To make matters even more revolting he would use his cheesy finger stick to point stuff out on the whiteboard whenever there was a training session whilst coining phrases such as ‘Charity has no age limit, we’ll take off anyone’ or ‘£10 was a silly figure, why not just help us out with 6 extra babies!’

Then there was Johnny RottenEyes who was of Irish descent and had peepers that small and beady Stevie Wonder would have turned down the offer of a swap even though it meant he could see. Peter Skidfingers had a permanent crustation affixed to the side of his mouth that if removed would have answered the charity’s prayers as it could’ve passed off as the worlds biggest cornflake able to immediately eradicate world hunger. And Sandra Wrongpitts B.O problem wafted beyond humane and into, or rather out of, the arse of a rabid dog-pig. Each was uniquely awful in their own special way and to make matters worse they all had what Twitch thought only supply teachers could get, 24/7 malmaninga coffee breath, rank.

Swivelling back round in his chair with as much enthusiasm as an ME suffering sex slave Twitch shot his newly found American nemesis a scowl and acknowledged Colin’s chastising with a grunt as the boring bastard sloped off content in the knowledge that he’d showed his worth and proved his £5.85 an hour price tag. ‘This is war now bitch’ thought Twitch as he grabbed his pencil sharpener and started aggressively sharpening his pencil in the Americans direction, hoping his heavy handed technique would project some kind of manly authority and scare her into quitting the job to get the first plane back to the U.S of A. His plan was foiled however due the lack of interest she showed in him, instead choosing to ignore his sinister sharpening technique and get back on with her job without a glance. This angered Twitch even more and in a moment of madness he relieved his stress by twisting the pencil into the sharpener that fast he went and broke it in two. Twitch jumped out of his seat at the sound of the snapping, landed back on the edge of his chair and nearly slipped underneath his desk. The American girl looked up, sniggered and blew him a patronising kiss. Twitch was angry, really angry. In fact the last time he was this angry was when Kenny had beaten him at Charades with a really piss poor imitation of Jaws in which he simply turned to Twitch and upper-cutted him clean on the chin.

All of a sudden Twitch was snapped out of his near-homicidal trail of thought by what sounded like a Parrott being buggered by John Leslie.

“Right you lot follow me, come on get a move on, chop, chop” squawked the dream shattering voice. It was Sally Throttlebottom, another team leader and equally all round twat face leading another unsuspecting group of new recruits to the training room for 3 days of bullshit aimed at teaching you how to scrounge down the phone. Sally was the type of person who has a really shit job, knows it and takes it out on everyone else by lathering her every word in a patronising and condescending tone. Twitch thought she looked like a real poor mans Davina McCall, in fact he didn’t just think it he knew it because he saw her with his own eyes and confirmed it with this Aussie guy called Steve. Anyway, not only did she slightly resemble Davina McCall after a makeover from Spitting Image, she unblinkingly tried to act like her. During his training Twitch couldn’t believe it when this became apparent. It was if she been told by some pissed up punter in Benidorm fishing for sex that she looked like Davina and actually believed it but not only believed it and just shagged the shit spouting scallywag, actually gone out of her way to carry out her life as if she was presenting an episode of Big Brother. On his second day of training Twitch sat and watched her ask some Chinese girl what three things she’d take to a desert island with the same urgency and engrossment usually reserved by the real Davina for eviction night. ‘Davina Mc-fucking-Callcentre.’ Thought Twitch, ‘What a twat.’

Twitch was quite proud of his new name for her and told Steve, the Aussie guy who’d agreed she resembled Davina in the first place. Steve laughed as well, Twitch felt good, a feeling he wishes he’d savoured as feelings like that in Slave the Children are about as hard to come by as ethics in Austrian basements.

Davina twaddled on by, neophyte’s in tow and now squawking as if John Leslie had double-teamed that poor parrot with Bill Oddie. ‘Oh well’ thought Twitch, exhausted by the nonsensical environment he was a part of and deflated by his current standing in life. ‘At least I’m not having to make ends meet by selling pages of Woman’s Own again.’ A business he’d once dabbled in behind the bike sheds at school so he could afford more aniseed balls from the tuck shop. Discouragingly for Twitch however his business soon liquidised after Pike Riddler, a kid who had brown bread sandwiches in his pack lunch so blatantly had a richer family, started knocking out pages of Bride To Be. Obviously amongst their wank-hungry peers there was no contest, Bride To Be had better quality paper and a higher skin-to-bra ratio. Plus because Pike was such a rich little bastard he could afford to encase each page he sold in see-through plastic wallets, a pretty ingenious idea given the service the business provided and the easy-wipe capabilities of the wallets. Looking back, Twitch’s first foray into the world of business and employment had pretty much set the standard for his considerably lacklustre CV. A CV that had thus far included cutting edge roles within pea picking, shelf stacking, promotions, data inputting and of course charity call centres.

As he sat there reflecting on his existence, he realised all this introspective thought had made his mouth dryer than Maggie Thatcher. He needed a drink but more importantly he needed to devour time and reduce the amount of minutes he was expected to spend on the phone. Time wasting was an art at Slave the Children, a secret art that only veterans of the call centre were able to execute efficiently enough for the results to mean anything. Kind of like Karate Kids ‘Crane Kick’ but without the violence and with a lot more loitering....on both feet, not one….and in the men’s. To squeeze out an extra couple more minutes Twitch incorporated the trip to the water dispenser on his way to the toilet. A detour that meant he’d have to take his freshly poured plastic cup of water back to his desk before carrying on to the lavs thus doubling the time wasted.

Moving at the pace of a disabled snail Twitch removed his headset, pressed pause on the on-screen dialler and looked over at the water dispenser to make sure Jackie had gone back to her work station. He didn’t want to have to speak to her and look like a mong now did he? As he shuffled over to get his glass of water he noticed out of the corner of his eye the gaggle of Team Leaders who’d congregated around Vincent Dishfarts workstation. They looked like flies on shit, humming around like one big smelly breath of coffee induced halitosis. ‘What the hell are they doing?’ thought Twitch, unaware that his curiosity was overpowering the fact he usually didn’t give a toss what any of the Team Leaders did, EVER. As he poured his glass of water he was still prying and noticed that Vincent was holding a piece of paper that was focussing all of their attention. ‘What is it?’ he mused. Thinking that hard about it it was now imperative to find out what just what the hell was going on. ‘Just what is that distracting them?’ His curiosity overpowered any other feeling he might have been feeling at that point and after knocking back his glass of water and wiping his mouth on his sleeve he crept over in the direction of the Team Leaders. As he got closer he could hear Vincents fervent voice addressing the rest of the group about something to do with health and safety.

‘OK listen up team, due to Sandra’s unfortunate accident a few months ago when she dislocated her neck after slipping on a Flap Jack wrapper, management have decided we need to make a dedicated push for health and safety awareness on the call centre floor. As part of this it’s been decided that in order to ensure 100% commitment from all staff we should give them a more active role in the process and involve them from the start, thus ingraining the value of staying safe in the work place.’
‘That’ll probably mean we get to put up the posters in the office or wear futile badges that say ‘A SAFE work place is a HEALTHY work place’ thought Twitch, knowing full well the anti-climatic tendencies of Slave the Children.
‘So, what we’re going to do’ continued Vincent ‘Is a produce a short film that will highlight the importance of health and safety.’
‘Film….short…produce?!’ Twitch’s ears pricked up like Winnie the Pooh’s hard on after he caught Piglet in a thong, bathing in honey.
‘All staff will have the chance to be involved and auditions will be held to determine who will get the main parts. More details about the script and such will be disclosed at the auditions so now all we’ve got to do is inform the call centre and wait for the response.’ concluded Vincent, hands clasped, eyes bloodshot and little finger showing the same form as Winnie the Pooh. The team leaders trundled off back to their boring little workstations exuding the same dreary lack of enthusiasm a normal person might show if they were told a dog has four legs or the grass is green, or Mark Ronson is shit.

Twitch on the other hand was frozen in disbelief, paralysed with amazement and super-glued to the spot by Vincent Dishfarts astonishing revelation. What he had just heard was not just music to his ears but music orchestrated by Bach, devoured by Jimi Hendrix and then shat out by Mick Jagger. This was it. His chance to shine. His opportunity to show everyone the raw, unadulterated talent rattling inside of him, ready to explode and cause havoc on all those in it's way. Only the best kind of havoc mind. The kind of havoc that brings fame, money and women not the sort that summons pain, suffering and a flaky scalp.

As his disbelief started to thaw, Twitch made his way back to his desk with a hop, skip and a jump, grinning from ear to ear and anxiously awaiting the details of the audition. The audition that would catapult him into the lead role and let him unravel his acting skills in front of the masses that made up Slave the Children. The audition that would lead the way to a Slave the Children fame, where Jackie would fall at his feet and they would adorn the front cover of all call centre literature as the charity IT couple. The audition that would most certainly be his, oh yes, RO HA HA HA......or so he hoped anyway……..to be cont....