So Robbie Williams came into my office today. I’d just settled upstairs into my vast corner suite with a bubble tea and a bushel of deep-fried plantains, ready to write the bit in my million-selling erotic novel trilogy where Anya goes on a glamorous date with Crispian, who takes her to his penthouse apartment in his matte-black helicopter. As you do. My farmer sister, in CharmingVille on a three-dollar-mani-pedi bacchanal, having absconded the pastoral yoke and a harebrained project at her local daycare to turn the decrepit family RV into a rescue-chicken petting motel, was downstairs in reception practicing her fruit sculpture.
I heard the front door open, a man’s voice then a squeak of shock and indistinct babble, the latter both from my sis. ‘Zounds!’ I thought. She may be struggling with a) the local firemen demanding money to check our extinguisher for the third time this week, b) that touchy-feely fake Tibetan monk who seems to be everywhere lately luring her with some pretty convincing mala beads or c) a lost French person. Such are the pitfalls awaiting an innocent country girl just trying to make it in the big smoke. Though by now smeared in fragrant banana grease and batter-deep into a particularly lusty ‘ardent manhood’ trope, I thrust my sizzling bestseller aside to pop down and help my hillbilly sibling. As I was going down, she was coming up, almost exactly like a person windmilling away from a fatal wasp attack. “OMG,” she whisper shouted. “What shall we do? It’s Robbie Williams!!!”
Wowser! Robster. The Rob. Mr ‘Angels’ himself slouching cheekily in our very reception. No wonder sister was agog. She’s routinely starstricken at the faintest glimmer of famous person. Once she passed out in the dairy aisle at Big W because she’d so seen Sting buying yoghurt. I also promised her I’d never tell about the time she… Oh, never mind.
You don’t see many A-listers swanning around Riverside glad-handing us little people. Though not long ago, after a few appletinis, I thought I saw that blue-eyed soulster John Newman aka Sam Smith over in Street 308. You never see them in a room together at the same time, right? Anyway. After I said: ‘Oh My God, if I was 20 years younger’ and ‘I love your song how does it go again?’ about 15 times, his mam came over and told us to fuck off. I haven’t seen him lately and I’m over him, frankly. Lovely singing voice but now that he’s climbed aboard the Bob ‘n’ Bono Ebola Train to Patronising Schmalzville… well, I won’t be buying him another passionfruit caipiroska, let me give you the tip.
Ronan Keating crooned at Olympic Stadium in 2007. Then there were some K-Pop D-listers and Stacey Orrico. Pitbull turned up from his non-stop Miami discoke party in the days before he was everybody’s rapping-bit-in-the-middle bitch. CharmingVille isn’t even a whistlestop for tragic troubadours Michael Learns To Rock, and they’ll go anywhere. Jesus. Can you believe they’re still at it? Southeast Asia has a lot to answer for. David Archuleta. Bryan Adams. Limp Bizkit. Don’t even get me started now.
Anyway. My only physical touching of an actual famous person Bodes-side was in 2008 when me and the ever-fragrant Preap Sovath stood in front of Sambo the elephant for a photo op back when you could make her wear fairy lights and satin pants and put your client’s logo all over her saddle. There’s been a Boeung-Kak-size black hole in the starless firmament since, but the turntables they are a-turning now that we have Buth Seyha, our first home-grown reality TV singing superstar. In case you live in an underwater pineapple or you simply don’t give a shit, he’s a beer-garden wedding singer turned winner of Cambodia’s version of The Voice. The one where questionable cultural tastemakers sit with their backs to you in massive vinyl thrones and press the buzzer if they like the sound you’re making. Young Seyha wins 25K, a moto and enough Cambodia Beer to keep us all believing he can actually sing. Given those melodica ‘n’ bontempi hand-dancing shows, he’s a fucking prodigy.
But meantime back at the office I was calm on the outside but inside gagging to throw down some louche banter and swap numbers with Stoke-on-Trent’s Naughtiest Nightingale. I flicked the crispy batter crumblets off my perky rack, hitched up me trews and stepped into reception with what I hoped was a convincing approximation of an appreciative but not desperate resting niceface.
It was immediately clear no one in reception remotely resembled Robbie Williams. It was actually Bon Jovi, with his teeth and everything. Crestfallen, my sister offered him a fried banana. They chatted for a bit. I went back upstairs to write porn. Just another CharmingVille work week. Ho hum.