Free Life Swap by Jane Green Page A

worried that they’d never happen again, that you are supposed to have adventures when you are in your twenties but by the time you reach your mid-thirties the adventures stop happening: you are supposed to be settling down and growing up.
    Vicky drives herself to the BBC studios in Portland Place and parks the car. She’s early, so she sits in the car listening to the show for a while before going in to collect her pass and wait outside the studio.
    ‘Next on the show,’ says the voice of Lisa Diamond, one of the presenters of the show, ‘we’re going to be talking about… wait for it, Jamie… speed sex. Yup, speed sex is apparently the answer to all my problems.’
    ‘ Any sex is the answer to my problems,’ says a male voice with a soft Irish accent, one that Vicky recognizes and struggles to place as Lisa laughs.
    ‘Typical,’ she says, ‘although according to the papers you haven’t had a lot of problems in that area lately.’
    ‘Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to believe everything you read in the papers? Although in this case I would say believe everything. Particularly the story about me and Angelina Jolie –?’
    Lisa’s slightly sardonic voice interrupts him, ‘So, coming up after this we’ll be talking about speed sex between Jamie Donnelly and Angelina Jolie, oh and we’ll have the features director of Poise! on to tell us why we’re all raving about speedy sex, although I’m sure Jamie will do a perfect job all by himself.’
    ‘Careful, you’ll get me sued,’ Vicky hears Jamie’s voice in the background as Damien Rice’s haunting tones fill her car, and she quickly checks herself in the mirror before getting out. Shit. Jamie Donnelly. She had no idea he’d be on the show and all of a sudden she starts to feel slightly nervous. Jamie Donnelly! The star of Dodgy , a comedy sketch show that started small on BBC2, swept the boards at the British Comedy Awards, and is now the show that everyone’s talking about, phrases being repeated in pubs all over the country, amidst much laughter.
    All it takes is a raised eyebrow and a ‘Not in my back yard, missus,’ for a roomful of people to start cracking up. Or an ‘Is that your dog or are you just pleased to see me?’
    Jamie Donnelly: Irish, twinkly, usually made to look horrendously ugly in most of the sketches, his teeth blacked out, or dressed as a baby, or a homelessman with a luxury home in the doorway of WH Smith’s on the Strand, has become an overnight star, not least because he is also the writer and producer.
    A regular guest on various radio and TV shows, Vicky never understood what all the fuss was about until she switched on the TV one night and happened to catch Jamie Donnelly being interviewed by Jonathan Ross, and all at once she got it. She sat in her living room, all by herself, shrieking with laughter until her face actually hurt.
    Jamie Donnelly hadn’t been in her consciousness at all until that night, but since then she had seen his name everywhere. He’d been linked with every gorgeous single woman in London, and a couple from overseas who had just been visiting, including, allegedly, Angelina Jolie, from whose hotel he had been spotted emerging in the early hours of the morning.
    But what had really done it for Vicky, what had sealed the deal as it were, in turning Jamie Donnelly into her number one crush, was when Deborah had phoned her at work one day and offered her an interview she had done with Jamie Donnelly.
    ‘I can’t believe you interviewed Jamie Donnelly,’ Vicky had said. ‘I love him! I wanted to interview him.’
    ‘Sorry,’ Deborah said. ‘But I managed to get him on his own at a film do last week and he gave me half an hour. I’ve got some great quotes about being single, the womanizing, what he really wants out of life. A lot of stuff he’s never talked about before. I was going to giveit to the Mail , but I thought Poise! would pay more…’ They both laughed, knowing that no one