Visitors were asked to write a short story on modern celebrity. The winner would get star billing on the Steffi site as well as having Andrew Crofts as a mentor to help work up the story into a novel, find an agent, publisher and so on.

Finalist: The Purple Peignoir
By Sue Clark

First time I catched sight of the old girl, I almost choked on me gum. Had to hide me face so she wouldn’t clock me laughing. I wasn’t used to seeing an old bird in bed, see? Three o-bleeding-clock in the afternoon and she was in her nightie, propped up on a pile of filthy pillows, a flowery purple thing slung round her shoulders, and the outline of her big, saggy tits showing through. No wonder I was smirking.
          ‘Come and sit here, boy, and let me look at you properly,’ she said, pushing away an eggy plate and patting the threadbare counterpane. ‘I like to get to know my staff.’
          But I plonked meself down on the chair next to the bed. I wasn’t falling for that one.
          ‘Don’t mind if I do, missus,’ I said.
          ‘How sweet!’ she laughed, giving me a good view of her fillings. ‘But call me Miss Eloise. Everybody does.’
          I wondered who she meant by ‘everybody’. Didn’t look to me as if she’d had any visitors in donkey’s years. I’d had a good butcher’s round. Dust in the cups. Fridge growing its own penicillin. Could hardly open the spare bedroom door for stacks of newspapers toppling over, turning brown and curly. And everywhere there was bags, bulging bags of old clothes.
          ‘So,’ she said, lifting one bum cheek and squeaking out a little fart, ‘tell me about yourself.’
         
          ‘Me name’s Wayne,’ I spluttered, trying not to laugh. ‘I’m seventeen and …’
          ‘That won’t do!’ she cut in, a finger pressed to her chin, her long fingernail digging in. ‘I shall call you Russell, after …’
          ‘Russell Crowe? Brand?’
          ‘… Bertrand Russell. Darling, darling Bertie – the old goat!’

By the second week, I was getting used to the way she looked. Which, even by the dim lamp in her bedroom, was pretty shocking. And believe me, I’m used to old dears that cake on the slap. Me gran on karaoke night for one. But the old girl was something else.
          Yellow her face was, like Marge Simpson’s, with a sticky pink outline painted on over her cat’s-arse lips. Should be a law against anyone over thirty wearing lip-gloss, if you ask me.
          A few grey wisps stuck out from under the scarf wound round her head like a turban. Only she hadn’t done it right and it dangled down over one eye, like a pirate. And what had she done to her eyes?
          ‘I see you’re admiring my lashes,’ she purred, flapping them up and down at me, making shadows like big, hairy spiders on her face.
          God, I thought, the old bird’s only flirting!
         

          ‘I’ll let you into a little secret. I make them myself. I make most of my own beauty aids. Have done for years.’
          ‘And yer clobber, by the look.’ I hadn’t meant to say that so she’d hear. I needn’t have worried.
          ‘How perceptive of you,’ she said. ‘As a sometime fashion designer and style leader, I do indeed always wear pieces from my own collection. This silk peignoir, for instance, was greatly admired by the late Aga Khan.’ She stroked the purple wrap thing. ‘The Begum was simply furious.’ 
          It looked to me like something a rum and black drinker had been sick over but I buttoned me lip.
         
It was the following week I spotted the jewellery box under a tangle of her underwear. Pants and bras all yellow-brown and crunchy to the touch. Couldn’t believe it when I cracked open the lid of the box. A great knot of gold chains and bracelets there was, rings and big stones gleaming and sparkling like jewelled eggs in a bird’s nest. Interesting, I thought to meself.
         
When I got there today it was obvious she’d been giving the gin bottle a bashing.
          ‘Spending time with my best friend, Bombay Sapphire,’ she called it.
          ‘Where d’yer want me to start, missus, in the kitchen or here?’
         
          I bent down to pick a shrivelled black banana skin off the floor and wished I hadn’t. Guess what was under her bed? A pink plastic potty. And it was brimming.   
          ‘S’up to you,’ I told her, wafting away the ripe old pong, ‘but you’ve only got me for two hours.’
          ‘Better get on with it then,’ she slurred, a dreamy look coming into her eyes. ‘I asked for Martin Bashir you know. An interviewer with his track record would’ve been just the right man to tackle my memoirs.’ She sighed, setting her gigantic bosoms off wobbling. ‘But he couldn’t make it. So you see, boy, like it or not, we’re stuck with each other. Have you pen and notebook to hand?’
          What was she on about now?
          ‘It’s me, Wayne. Remember, missus? From Upstairs, Downstairs. The agency?’
          ‘Call themselves an agency! I’m telling you now, boy, if you don’t come up to snuff, I shall send you back, like the last one. Didn’t speak a word of English. Couldn’t type or take dictation. Hopeless.’
          ‘I’m here to do yer cleanin’.’
          It was as if I hadn’t spoke.
          ‘Be so good as to bring over my photographs.’
          Then, clutching the battered photo album to her chest, she cleared her throat, stared at the ceiling and started up in a funny, fruity voice.
         
          ‘What do you think of, dear reader, when you hear the name, Eloise Slaughter?’ she boomed. ‘Outrageous fashions? Extravagant parties? Affairs with every Paul, Mick and Terence on the King’s Road? Ah, but there is so much more to my life than frocks and fucking, as will become apparent as this, my poignant tale, unfolds.’ She stopped. ‘You, whatever your name is, what are you waiting for? Get scribbling.’
          ‘Did you used to be somebody famous then, missus?’
          ‘Better than that, boy. I used to be somebody infamous. Ready?’
          ‘Ready,’ I said, grabbing a stub of pencil and an envelope from her bedside table and lowering meself onto the chair. ‘And the name’s Russell, by the way, Miss Eloise.’ 

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