Previously, on Pagan Idol:
two weeks to go
week zero
week one
week two
week three
week four
week five, part one
week five, part two
week six
week seven
week eight




WGMY 104.1
week nine

...the GMY Metro running reduced service on the Green Line, which no-one is available to answer questions about. Parody Bay Ferries operating as normal. On the roads, I-666 is flowing well but there’s still huge problems on the east side of Parodopolis, as protestors march outside Channel Nine’s shorefront studios. That’s the travel. Stacey.

STACEY: Thanks Dan. This is WGMY, serving Gothametropolis York and the greater Parody Sound area. It’s eight-seventeen. I’m joined again by Haqqisaqq, Inuit god of vengeance and public relations, though no-one here will own up to having invited him.

HAQ: Good morning.

STACEY: First things first, Haqqisaqq. Former Pagan Idol contestant Brandii may have left the show, but she continues to cast a long shadow. Seems like signing up for over fifty reality series wasn’t enough for your only genuine breakout star. In yet another example of TV execs confusing notoriety with popularity, and conflating media omnipresence with general public approval, Channel Nine are already screening Being Brandii as a camera crew follows every step of her hectic life flitting between all the other reality shows.

HAQ: Wasn't she brilliant? I loved the bit where – ha, ha – where she went into the shop and – ha, ha -

STACEY: It’s just the first in a string of recursive behind-the-scenes shows that now stretches to Brandii Watches The Real Surviving Being Brandii Uncovered, starting tomorrow on cable channel TMI 24/7.

HAQ: - but she’s forgotten where she parked the car – ha, ha -

STACEY: Haqqisaqq, focus. These protestors. You don’t seem too perturbed by their calls to boycott the show.

HAQ: Wait, boycott?

STACEY: Brandii’s virtual monopolisation of the reality television market has met with howls of anguish and tears of wounded outrage from attention-seekers across the country.

HAQ: Well gosh, fancy that.

STACEY: While we’ve been on air, pressure groups have converged on Channel Nine’s studio complex to vent their displeasure. Among them, the Wisconsin Alliance for the Advancement of Attention-Acquisitive Hysterics – that’s WAAAAH. We’ve got the Movement for Empowering Manipulative, Egotistical, Melodramatic Exhibitionists, or MEMEME...

HAQ: Huh. I kind of assumed it was Outraged Mothers Against Visionary again.

STACEY: Roving reporter Red Lester is at the march. Let’s hear some of the demonstrators’ concerns.

MAN: You’ve got to understand – with Brandii hoovering up all these shows, all this airtime, we’re left with no career prospects.

WOMAN: There’s a whole generation of trust-fund blondes out there, all being denied their shot at feigning inability to perform everyday domestic tasks.

WOMAN 2: What about me, huh? I’ve got no talent, I've got nothing interesting to say. Without access to reality shows, how am I supposed to become spokesman for my generation?

MAN: *sob sob* I just... it’s just... I... *sob sob*

WOMAN 3: It’s my turn to hold the bullhorn. Give it here.

WOMAN 1: Out of my way, bitch!

MAN 2: WHOOP! WHOOP! WHOOP!

HAQ: Their concerns are noted, and will be given the consideration they deserve.

STACEY: The good news is that Channel Nine don’t seem at all perturbed. Advertising revenue is through the roof; Brandii’s antics have attracted lucrative product-placement deals from car makers, fashion labels and cosmetics brands.

HAQ: I heard she’d also been invited to represent Moldova in the Eurovision Song Contest.

STACEY: But none of that money has flowed back to Pagan Idol. Since Ernesto, candidate god of Vaseline®, left for steppes new, any kind of advertising has been hard to come by. No major brand wants a close association with the show. That being so, how is Pagan Idol going to pay for itself?

HAQ: We’re exploring a number of funding structures. But the Official Inuit Pantheon recognises the value of the show in publicising our work and what we can offer. Its future is secure.

STACEY: For the moment, the Inuit gods are pouring in money from their own walrus-hide wallets. That can’t be popular up north.

HAQ: We’ve always said that Pagan Idol is an ambitious project, but it’s one which will pay huge dividends in years to come. We’re building for the future, and that's what Pagan Idol is all about.

STACEY: Some see Pagan Idol as emblematic of the pantheon’s over-reaching and misplaced priorities. Yet another vanity project, as you try to prove you can mix it on the big stage with Ausgard and Olympus. We’ve read about your plans to relaunch the Great Ice Palace as an international conference centre and spa. Your audacious bid to host the 2019 Cricket World Cup. Do the Inuit even play cricket?

HAQ: We love it. Tiger Woods is a hero to us.

STACEY: Most controversial, your grandiose scheme to build a thirty-storey igloo in central Parodopolis as your so-called Embassy to the Warmer World. How’s that coming along?

HAQ: It’s still at an early stage. We have approached Extraordinary Endeavour Enterprises to prepare a feasability study.

STACEY: And they said?

HAQ: We’re still waiting for a response. Could be their answer machine is on the fritz.

STACEY: So another week, another challenge. And a potentially controversial one, as the contestants hit the showbiz circuit to see which of them could attract the most impressive roster of celebrities to their cause. How does this feed into the duties of a god?

HAQ: You know me, Stacey, I’m a pragmatist. These days most issues are taken seriously only to the extent of their celebrity endorsements. Without a posse of credulous rockstars and Hollywood liberals, who would think twice about Scientology, Kabbalah, climate change or animal welfare? In the same way, no deity is going to cut it in today’s crowded pagan marketplace without some big-name followers to grab the magazine covers.

STACEY: So you sent the contestants out to sign up a few star worshippers. Tell me about Letitia, candidate goddess of financial support for traditional handicrafts and sustainable cottage industries.

HAQ: She showed a lot of promise, scoring several big names from the city’s financial sector. Bankers, business leaders, venture capitalists.

STACEY: Powerful people – and I concede that coaxing an endorsement from the reclusive Timoleon Shashboot was a minor coup – but do these suits really qualify as celebrities?

HAQ: In the financial sphere, absolutely. They’re people who matter. They’re making a public statement that they believe in her, and in her plans to kickstart the Inuit economy. Crucially, each is prepared to put his money where his mouth is.

STACEY: Assuming she wins the contest.

HAQ: Er, yes. If she wins. But of course we’ll have to wait and see.

STACEY: Oscar’s first celebrity recruit was former child star Keeley Montgomery, whom he spotted in a downtown boutique. Sadly he failed to recognise her companion, the hero he later identified as “Captain Baconhead”. Instead, his second signatory was soccer coach Tony Fontaine, who declared “I know a winner when I see one.” Fontaine this week confounded the bookies by steering Parodopolis Pudus to their ninety-eighth consecutive defeat, two-nil against Orlando.

HAQ: That’s got to hurt.

STACEY: It would have been worse, but Orlando’s mother called him in for dinner. Oscar also gained the support of guitarist Marty Kosygin of Trylöbyte and was visibly starstruck in the presence of adult performer Meggan Foxxx.

HAQ: I can totally understand that, speaking as a long-standing fan.

STACEY: His campaign finished on a low note when he tried to recruit community activist Reverend Mac Fleetwood. The pastor explained patiently, and in words of one syllable, why he wouldn’t be lending his support.

HAQ: That guy’s a class act all the way. On the whole, Oscar did a great job of gathering adherents from many different regions of the pop-cultural landscape. It gives his cause a real broad-based appeal.

STACEY: While Oscar and Letitia prowled Parodopolis, suggestible hamster fan Alix stalked the corridors of Channel Nine’s own studio complex, seeking out the stars of the network’s other shows. Top of her list, Being Brandii. Brandii herself refused to have anything to do with “this rodent-bothering loser” and flounced off, later returning to freak out, sack her agent via Twitter and discharge a fire extinguisher over Alix and her camera team.

HAQ: It’s nice that success hasn’t changed her. But, you know, once Alix had wiped herself off she did put together a pretty impressive roster.

STACEY: Let’s hear a few of those endorsements, starting with actor Ted Barwick from hit sitcom My Dad’s A Hamster.

BARWICK: I’m not a hamster, but I play one on TV. Hamsters everywhere, and the people who love them, need someone they can call on in times of trouble. Someone who understands. Someone who cares. That's why I'm backing Alix in her campaign to become goddess.

MONSTER: Me love hamsters. Almost as much as me love cookie! Om nom nom nom nom nom. Om nom nom nom.

LANIA: I’ve been a fan of Alice since day one, and I have no doubt she’ll be great at, er, the thing she wants to do. Was that okay?

STACEY: All these household names, and one confused janitor called Frank.

HAQ: Let’s be charitable, he really did look like Magnum P.I..

STACEY: I don’t know what it says for Alix that so many of her celebrity endorsements came from fictional characters.

HAQ: It’s greatly to her credit. Deities must operate on many planes of existence; Alix showed a very sophisticated understanding that we can work in partnership with entities that others might regard as “not real”. Though I still don’t understand why she thought Fraggle Rock was a documentary.

STACEY: Meanwhile GMY native Hope surfed a huge wave of support from her homies in the Bad Apple. Her celebrity followers included veteran daredevil Dutch McNeill and hip-hop artist C-Ment Mixa, who praised the prospective lentil goddess in a song called Finga On Tha Pulse. Also Nascar legend Dirk Plum, whose #37 car will carry lentil sponsorship at next weekend's GMY 400.

HAQ: Ha ha! Sorry, just got the “pulse” thing. Very good.

STACEY: Hope enjoyed an audience with Mayor Klein and a group of legitimate businessmen. She even received a ringing endorsement from one former mayor. “It’s not my fault,” was the message from Badripoor, “really, none of this is my fault.”

HAQ: Once again, going to the people whose opinions matter.

STACEY: At this point, and in the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that Hope did approach me for an endorsement. Naturally I refused on grounds of journalistic impartiality.

HAQ: I think we all admire your principled stance.

STACEY: During the show, however, her parade of disciples did include local radio personality Dan “Dan with the travel” Cavill. That was quite a surprise.

DAN: I don’t think impartiality really comes into this, Stace. It’s just a bit of fun.

STACEY: No, I mean I was surprised to learn you have a surname. Or indeed a personality. As for Felix, prospective god of the actress Rosanna Arquette, there was only ever going to be one name on his list.

HAQ: Right. On that -

STACEY: As luck would have it, she was in town filming a guest appearance as a corpse in Channel Nine’s simplistic forensic show Diagnosis: Dead. Pagan Idol engineered a meeting in her dressing room.

HAQ: Now if I could -

STACEY: Here’s the audio from Ms Arquette's hidden-camera encounter with her number one fan.

ARQUETTE: Well I’m telling you now, Chad, you’ve done it to me again. This role is a load of – what the...?

FELIX: Rosanna! It is I!

ARQUETTE: I’ll call you back, Chad.

FELIX: I, your eternal true god! The hour is come, our long separation is over.

ARQUETTE: Get out of my laundry basket, you little freak.

FELIX: At last, at last we are reunited!

ARQUETTE: That’s close enough.

FELIX: Rosanna, I forgive you for – oof! Ow! Ugh! All I need is your devo- Argh! Ugh! Not the face! Not the face!

HAQ: This turn of events was... unfortunate.

STACEY: But not unforeseeable, given his two previous arrests in very similar circumstances.

HAQ: He didn’t mention them during the audition process.

STACEY: Nevertheless, Pagan Idol did aid and abet him in breaching the conditions of the restraining order. I think you were very, very lucky to walk away from this with a slap on the wrist. Which is more than can be said for Felix, stretchered out under police guard and a modesty blanket.

HAQ: Ms Arquette put in a lot of training for her role in Lunchlady Ninja. That’s a woman who knows how to take care of herself.

STACEY: She’s an inspiration to us all. She also denied us the chance to phone-vote, yet again. Haqqisaqq, for a show now funded as de facto pro-Pantheon infomercial, this ghastly affair was publicity you could have done without.

HAQ: On the contrary. Any publicity is good publicity. Isn’t that what they say?

STACEY: You’re the expert. Dan, give us the weather.

FADE TO STATIC