A Star is Blown
The Saga of Chauncey Bugger
Scene 1, some years ago.
[Nearly-young, angel-haired CHAUNCEY BUGGER luxuriates in deshabille – baby blue boxer briefs, gartered black socks with little pink Bettie Page images on them, a flimsy white silk camisole, and a long blue-and-white-striped silk dressing gown with fringe – in what looks like a shabby-chic Bloomsbury hotel room from a 70s movie about dissolute rock stars, all chintz and covered dishes and underwear and disorder. His stubby American manager LUTHER DINERO, in an ugly suit, hurriedly waddles in.]
DINERO: Chauncey! What were you up to last night! I got a call from a lady who says her daughter says you raped her and then gave her an Oyster pass and an orange Fanta and kicked her out in the street!
BUGGER: Dinero, Dinero, cahn’t you see I am relaxing and cannaught be disturbed.
DINERO: But Chauncey, this dame is plenty sore, and she says her daughter’s only 13!
BUGGER: Tsk! They all say that.
DINERO: She sent me a pitcher! This the girl?
[DINERO proffers his phone, at which BUGGER glances.]
BUGGER: Maybe. Could be. Cahn’t tell, they all look like that.
DINERO: They all look like that because they’re all underage! That’s the third one this month! Thousands of euros in payoffs, we can’t keep it up — and listen, I hear some of these dames are talking to lawyers!
BUGGER: Solicitors? Rubbish! I have NDAs from the lot.
DINERO: In writing?
BUGGER: Better — in videos. Here:
[BUGGER hits a remote and from a nearby widescreen TV, not visible to the audience, come the sounds of copulation.]
BUGGER’S VOICE: You won’t tell anyone about this, you underage bitch!
GIRL’S VOICE: No, mister, please put down the gun!
[DINERO hits the console to turn this off.]
DINERO: That’s not an NDA, that’s 20 to life! We gotta burn all these tapes, and you, you maniac, you gotta, I dunno, go on TV, say you got a sex addiction maybe —
BUGGER: Rubbish! I’m a big star, nothing can touch me.
DINERO: A star! A star is someone everyone loves. You’re just a celebrity. That remake you did of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off? That only three people bought tickets for and they all demanded their money back? It had the first negative numbers rating in Rotten Tomatoes history. And the Rotten Tomatoes page was full of more sex accusations! This thing is gonna blow up big and send you to the can for life!
BUGGER: Oh, Dinero, you’re such a worrier. Fear naught. I have a plan.
Scene 2, shortly thereafter.
[Some sort of studio. An animated BUGGER, dressed like Benjamin Disraeli going to see the Queen, is seated on a plush couch, surrounded by video podcast paraphernalia and facing a camera and an open laptop; TOADIES and LACKEYS surround, holding sound baffles, twisting dials, etc.]
BUGGER: And that’s what Area 51, Judge Crater, JFK and Marilyn Monroe all have to do with the microchip vaccination of millions of innocent victims of what the Yanks call the Deep State. It’s why Bill Gates is selling you lab-grown meat, so it will get in your bodies and activate the microchips and make you into his slaves! If anything should be getting into your body, it should be my John Thomas — particularly if you’re an underage girl.
TOADY: Cut.
[Quick edit.]
BUGGER: I see in the chat window thousands of you lovely bastards are just hanging onto my every word and saying you’ll kill anyone who dares cross me. Good show! That’s just the sort of independent thinking we need to defeat George Soros!
Scene 3, some years later.
[BUGGER is back in the 70s movie hotel room, which is more crowded with crap than before, sprawled on a divan. He is unshaven and dressed as he was in Scene 1 but with a red MAGA hat and a Union Jack pin added. A male CAMERA OPERATOR and a female BOOM OPERATOR focus on him as he speaks; a BEEFY MAN, hair cut high and tight and wearing casual clothes, sits on a folding chair by the door.]
BUGGER: I mean you cahn’t believe them, all these Deep State operatives and quislings and dogsbodies like the board of the BBC and my ex-wife and these [makes air quotes] alleged underage girls who [makes air quotes] allegedly had relations with me — which were totally consensual by the way, just as I said in the last take but Rachel made us take it again, thank you very much Rachel, well done.
[The CAMERA OPERATOR and the BOOM OPERATOR give each other weary looks.]
And look here — letters of support from people who really matter! People like Ian Miles Cheong, Ben Shapiro, Charlie Kirk, J.D. Vance, Ted Cruz, Eric Trump –
[As BUGGER reads the names, he leafs through what at first may be taken for telegrams or letters but which on closer inspection turn out to be paper towels.]
— people who really know the truth. And though my video channels have been demonetized — all except Rumble, bless you gentlemen — I know all you wonderful, brilliant, beautiful people out there who have believed in me for years, or months at least, and who still believe despite all the slander and lies spread by the international conspiracy of Zelenskys and Rothschilds and Luther Dinero and my ex-wife, and I hope you remember what you said then about my enemies and what you would do to them for me, for now you must be my voice and my strong right hand, and go out unto the social media platforms from which I am banned, and when they smite me you smite them back, good and hard, smite them like they were the buttocks of an underage girl, unnnnngh, over and over, bloody hell Rachel, you minx, you wore that crop top just to entrap me, you filthy whore, have at you now!
[BUGGER lunges for the BOOM OPERATOR, who screams; the CAMERA OPERATOR drops the camera and beats BUGGER. The BEEFY MAN sighs and opens the door to the room, through which a dozen LONDON POLICE stream with truncheons drawn.]


Susan Collins: Russell Brand has learned his lesson.
RB is one of those folks I had mentally consigned to my personal cornfield: now, maybe, he will really go away…