What I Do by Jon Ronson

Author:Jon Ronson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: For the Benefit of Mr. Kite
Published: 2006-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

“So that turned out to be not so good,” I say. “Maybe if you’d written down, ‘I want to meet somebody by the end of September and I don’t want her selling her story to the Sunday People – ’”

“No, you can’t do that,” Noel interrupts, “because that’s a negative. The Cosmos only accepts positive orders. The word I probably missed out was ‘trustworthy’.”

I continue to peer surreptitiously around to see if I can spot anything weird or secret in the Winnebago. Noel almost immediately notices what I’m doing.

“Go and have a look in the bedroom,” he says. “Go on.”

I look doubtfully at him. “Are you sure?” I ask.

“Have a look in the bedroom,” he says.

I shoot Noel a slightly suspicious glance and then I wander into his bedroom. I have a good poke around. And unfortunately I find nothing incriminating. Still, it was nice of him to offer.

♦

I tell Noel that I can’t understand why he doesn’t give up the mysticism. I’ve spent three days here, watching three shows a day, and I’ve seen so many disappointments, so many broken dreams, so many systems – telepathic or otherwise – that didn’t pan out. And Noel has presented three hundred shows. By now he must know that life is just random.

Well first, Noel replies, it was the Cosmos that gave him Deal Or No Deal. The BBC had unceremoniously dumped him in 1999 after twenty years as a star presenter. It looked like he’d never be on TV again. He was a workaholic without work. So he spent five fallow years throwing himself into various businesses and charities – the British Horse Society, some anti-wind-farm lobby group called the Renewable Energy Foundation, et cetera. But he asked the Cosmos for a new work challenge, and the Cosmos gave him Deal Or No Deal. It was a huge and instant success, nominated for a Bafta, and winning a Royal Television Society Award and a Rose D’Or, all within a few months.

“Have you looked Deal Or No Deal up on the Internet?” Noel asks. “It can do your head in. Did you know that someone’s compiling a dictionary of my phrases?”

This is true. A large Wikipedia entry is dedicated to Noel’s oft-repeated expressions (‘Some people call it an entertainment drama, some the Red Box Club…Welcome to Planet Tension!’ ‘It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish.’ And so on.)

“Somebody else,” says Noel, “is tracking the repetition of my shoes, trousers and shirts.” Noel is thrilled: “I’m delighted people are reading so much into it. I want to be popular. I want people to like me. Not long ago I talked to someone in the audience and she went to pieces. Just because I was talking to her! It is really important I keep my feet on the ground here.”

I don’t think Noel should be thanking the Cosmos for the success of Deal Or No Deal. I think it takes a rare presenting talent to make the opening of twenty-two boxes so gripping.

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