“With Big Brother having ended, we see this as the perfect replacement,” says TV executive Kevin Frooker, introducing his latest format – Celebrity Messiah – to the press. “It’s got everything – the reality TV aspect, celebrities humiliating themselves, interaction with the public, and religion!” The proposed TV series would see a group of celebrities charged with creating their own religion. Each week, the celebrity with the least followers would be kicked off the show – quite literally dragged out of the Celebrity Messiah church by devils, and cast into a fiery pit. “Obviously, the devils are actually production assistants, and the ‘fiery pit’ is an arena full of the baying followers of their rivals,” explains the producer. “But the ‘devils’ will be allowed to poke the evictees with their tridents, and the crowd will be encouraged to throw things and spit on them, just to make the experience as humiliating as possible.”
Frooker admits that the original concept of having evictees burned at the stake as heretics, was rejected after taking legal advice, as were the initial proposals for the eventual winner. “We originally wanted the new ‘Messiah’ to be carried to ‘heaven’ – a luxury penthouse suite packed with booze, drugs and prostitutes – by angels,” he says. “Instead, we’ve settled for them being whisked away in a limousine to the eponymous gay night club.” The celebrities involved would be given considerable leeway in how they go about attracting followers. “They can try and persuade people any way they like, short of beating them up or paying them, obviously, to convert,” enthuses Frooker. “Each week they’ll be set a task – performing a miracle of some sort usually, like feeding five thousand homeless derelicts with only a tin of sardines, or healing cancer patients with the laying on of hands. Of course, we wouldn’t expect them to perform real miracles, just convince people that they had. Some weeks we might skip the miracle, get them to do something humiliating like washing their disciples’ feet, or even better, wiping their arses. Just imagine the likes of Danny Dyer having to wipe the shitty backsides of a couple of dozen tramps. That’d be great television!”
According to Frooker, the participating celebrities will be free to devise any theology they choose to be the basis of their religions – barring those based on race hate, misogyny or child abuse. “We want them to be creative in their religions,” he says. “The more bizarre the belief system involved, the better the entertainment! You’d be surprised the kind of weird shit people can be persuaded to believe in!” Indeed, during the pilot shot for the proposed series, self-styled impressionist and comedian Bobby Davro succeeded in converting over two hundred people to his Church of Latter Day Naturists, which offered salvation through nudity. “Mind you, creating a religion is far more difficult than most people realise,” warns Frooker. “For every L Ron Hubbard, there are a thousand David Shaylers – sad deluded self-publicists confusing cross-dressing with spiritual epiphany.” He points to the fact that in the pilot one-time pop star Kerry Katona found it impossible to attract more than six followers to her cult devoted to the worship of the holy trinity of Father Smirnoff, Junior Cocaine and the divine Iceland giant prawn platter. “It left her an emotional wreck,” says Frooker. “Although I can’t help but feel that rather undermined her cause by continually consuming the entire trinity, leaving nothing for her acolytes.”
Similarly, after an initial surge of enthusiasm, top heavy model Jordan’s breast-worshipping mother cult quickly lost popularity. “I think her disciples were a bit disappointed that it was a huge stone effigy of her knockers they had to jerk off over as their act of worship, rather than the real thing,” the TV executive muses. He warns that the object of the show isn’t for celebrities to actually create their own religions for real. “We don’t want a repeat of Jim Davidson’s attempted Jihad against benefit cheats, illegal immigrants, feminists and lefties,” Frooker says. “That led to an instant disqualification. Really, this isn’t an exercise in egotism, just cheap entertainment.” Nevertheless, as the producer points out, Davidson’s participation in Celebrity Messiah has still boosted his career. “He’s now playing to packed houses of brainwashed acolytes,” he says. “They’re the most receptive audience for his dubious material he’s had since the National Front disbanded – they laugh and applaud all his ‘amusing’ comedy black person voices and misogynistic ‘jokes’.”
Frooker is keen to emphasise that, despite the number of apparent failures on the part of celebrities to create viable religions in the pilot for Celebrity Messiah, there were some notable successes. “Take Darren Day, for instance, who would have thought that he’d be able to persuade so many people to worship his penis,” he muses. “I mean, it isn’t the biggest, or even the most appealing looking, member that anyone’s ever seen, but nonetheless, at one point he had a queue of people over a mile long, lining up to kiss it in order to cure their mouth ulcers and cold sores – not all of them women.” Frooker believes that former gameshow host Day’s success lies in the one- time singer’s instinctive understanding of the appeal of real religions. “It’s all about promising your followers the impossible,” he opines. “With Christianity it’s the promise of salvation and eternal life, with Darren it is the promise that they too can share the power of his penis and enjoy everlasting shagging.”
So successful was the cult of Day’s penis, that he made the final of the pilot version of Celebrity Messiah, facing off against celebrity nutritionist Gillian McKeith and her church of excrement. “The final was where they faced the ultimate test – to be ‘crucified’ in a manner appropriate to their religion,” says Frooker. “Obviously, only a true Messiah would be able to rise again after such an ordeal.” However disaster nearly struck when McKeith narrowly avoided being drowned after being flushed down a giant toilet. “The idea was that she would naturally float back to the surface like a huge turd. Sadly, she got stuck in the U-bend, and had to be freed by divers,” Frooker reveals. “Thankfully, Darren Day fared better, managing to rise again, despite having been forced to masturbate continuously for twelve hours.” Despite the potential humiliations involved, Frooker is confident that there will be no shortage of minor celebrities prepared to appear on Celebrity Messiah, should it be commissioned as a series. “It’s offering them what every celebrity wants: the blind adulation of masses of unquestioning fanatics,” he says. “Just think of the merchandising they could shift with thousands of obedient followers prepared to obey their every edict?”
