I had e-mail this week about Diary of a Nobody. The woman who wrote to me said that reading about my achievements made her feel ashamed. I was amazed and saddened by her e-mail and I wrote back and told her that building a wonky erection, macerating my thumb and remaining resolutely single did not necessarily constitute my inclusion on the list of ‘One Hundred Greatest Britons’, and that she herself had much to be proud of, having managed to survive five years of widowhood and also finding a man to share her life, which certainly gives her one up on me.

I don’t write out of a need to achieve fame or riches, but purely because I want to pass on some of the strength and hope that I feel to people who really need it. Life is pretty strange sometimes, and if the past six years have shown me anything at all, they have made me realise that getting my picture in a magazine or appearing on ‘Kilroy’ doesn’t make me a better person or mean that I am mobbed by adoring fans everywhere I go. I couldn’t get recognised in Tesco’s even if I wanted to; I’ve tried on many occasions to draw attention to myself, but even wandering around the store with a large frozen turkey under my t-shirt fails to attract so much as a passing glance from the security guard.

Having said all that, appearing as a guest on ‘Kilroy’ was an experience never to be forgotten. My friends told me not to do it, but I agreed to go on the show only because I thought the website would get a mention. On reflection, it was a major error of judgement, but I like to think of my experience with Mr. Kilroy as a small piece of frayed nylon in the tapestry of my life; ugly, useless and impossible relate to anything else.

It was a pretty surreal experience to find myself sitting in a large, airless anteroom, drinking tea with a selection of new and old widows and a group of rather bewildered senior citizens. The elderly section of the audience had been brought in by coach to make up the numbers, and seemed quite happy to be sitting in a warm room eating Battenberg cake and sipping tea. However, they appeared a little bewildered when the show started, and it occurred to me that those who weren’t asleep clearly had no idea where they were. I decided that they were part of a pilot ‘Care in the Community’ scheme dreamed up between Social Services and television producers, to ease overcrowding in care homes and fill seats on unpopular talk shows. I think those old ladies must still be in a coach somewhere on the M25, driving around and around, waiting for tea urn to arrive in the green room of ‘Tricia’ and wondering exactly what they have to contribute to a discussion entitled, ‘I was a teenage crack whore.’

As for Mr. Kilroy, well he was just as unctuous and orange as he appears on screen. ‘Young and widowed’ was his third show of the day and the strain was clearly beginning to tell. The producer told us Mr. Kilroy wanted to get home to watch the football, and intimated that if any of us were going to cry, that we should try to make it a quick blub and not a prolonged wail so as not to use up too much air time. I didn’t make the best start because I refused to clap when Kilroy walked down the steps - (I didn’t see why I should, he hadn’t done anything and I’m not a performing seal) but he fixed me with a withering stare as he rounded the front of the stage and I knew it was going to be a long thirty minutes. The show passed in a blur of tears and oleaginous insincerity. Our orange host oozed around the audience like a toadying, tanned super-slug, leaving behind him a glistening trail of empty condolences; no mention was made of this site and as the end credits rolled I knew I’d been Tangoed. I’d let myself be used as televisual fodder for an insatiable media beast and I can only thank God for the fact that Kilroy is no longer at liberty to badger and belittle the people who ultimately pay his salary.

I’ve been on television several times since then, but my finest hour ended up on the cutting room floor. I had been asked by Kilroy’s production company to take part in a programme called ‘Mind of a Millionaire.’ And I accepted for two reasons: firstly, because they were paying me £100, and secondly, because I would get the chance to mingle with lots of fabulously rich men for the day. Call me mercenary and shallow if you like, but I felt they’d made me an offer that I couldn’t refuse.

I was to be part of a ‘control group’ of ordinary mortals, mixed in with the millionaire entrepreneur subjects of the series. The idea was that a group of learned physiologists would submit the entire group to a series of lengthy psychometric tests, and from studying our behaviour and the results of the tests would then be able to pick out the millionaires. All very good on paper, and on screen it appeared that they were perfectly accurate in every case - but I know differently...

I had a wonderful day, mingling with uber-rich entrepreneurs, doing hard sums until my brain hurt and messing about with bamboo canes and bits of string. I’m not a physiologist, but even I could spot that the man with the garish cowboy boots and confident swagger wasn’t an accountant from Slough (turns out he was the founder of Yo! Sushi). In fact, I managed to spot a good few millionaires; most had one ear glued to a mobile, and one louche young man (scooter millionaire) spent the entire day with his lips glued to a bit of totty in a Juicy Couture jogging suit.

It was completely fascinating, and at the end of the day we all had to line up in front of the cameras, so that the psychologists could reveal just how astute and clever they were in correctly identifying all the millionaires. Only they clearly weren’t that clever, because between the super-rich workaholics stepped one rather bemused part-time picture editor from Devon. I don’t know who was more surprised when our identities were revealed, but it felt pretty fantastic to be told that I had the same money-making potential as some of this country’s most successful entrepreneurs. My fifteen seconds of fame never made it to the screen, but the experience will be forever engraved on my memory; a tiny nugget of fools’ gold that will glint and sparkle but never make me rich.

So what is the point of all this, I can hear you asking? Well, just this: Life isn’t really about making money, and if there is one thing that I’ve learned in the past six years it is that possessions and cash don’t make you happy - they can make you comfortable, but they can’t ever bring true contentment. I know I’ll never be a millionaire, but I know also that there are hundreds of people out there who think nice things about me. I have a wealth of love flowing into my life, and that alone gives me riches beyond compare. Sorry if I’m making you nauseous, but I’m feeling philosophical today and I wanted to let you know that my proudest achievement, apart from my darling girls, is this site. So thank you for visiting, and thank you for your kind words.


© Kate Boydell 2004. All rights reserved. e-mail: [email protected]. Close window.