Roderick Asquith, born and raised on a Leicester council estate, always wanted to be famous. From an early age he had visions of grandeur involving sports cars, white leather sofas and penthouse views across London.
It has taken longer than he expected but now, at the age of forty, Roddy is about to get his fifteen minutes of fame.
Today, at 2.15 pm, he will be on live national television with Gloria Hunniford along with American fashion designer Michaela Fox and Geri from Hollyoaks.
He is sitting in the TV studio Green Room with a cup of bad coffee and a well-thumbed studio prospectus.
In certain circles Roddy Asquith has become something of a celebrity.
There are the obvious comparisons to Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen; the dandified designer on BBC’s Home Front but Roddy doesn’t mind that. It is the long hair and the clothes that do it. And Roddy is only too happy to ride along on the silk damask coat tails of his media idol.
Sadly he can’t afford the Jermyn Street couture but he has a good friend who is a dab hand on the sewing machine and she can knock out an Edwardian smoking jacket or a flouncy shirt for a fraction of the cost.
Roddy’s mother just called him on his mobile. She is glued to the telly with Dad and several of the neighbours. She wanted to know if he’d finally taken notice of her constant nagging and cut off his hair.
“No, Mum, I’ve no intention of cutting it off,” Roddy sighed, wondering for the umpteenth time when his parents will get used to the idea that people like his hair. It is one of his trademarks.
“Oh,” she said, disappointment colouring her tone, “I suppose I can live in hope.”
There is no way that Roddy is going to cut off his gorgeous hair. Women worship him for his hair. They send him letters, they send him photographs, they send him personal items.
He once appeared in Playgirl: three years ago actually – before all of this happened to him. He had just started work at Vidal Sassoon’s and one of his clients sent a photo in to the magazine. The picture found its way to the editor and they contacted him to see if he would be interested in appearing in a professional photo shoot.
He did it for a laugh. Maybe it was bad judgement on his part, he realises that now, but at the time was anxious to make a name for himself and he thought the publicity might fan the flames of his fatuous aspirations.
Of course those pictures are all over the Internet now that he’s become a subject of interest and a tabloid newspaper printed one of the more demure shots a few months ago when there wasn’t much news to fill their pages.
He is the sensitive, romantic figure that women dream about.
He is the wind-swept hero on the front of a Mills & Boon paperback.
Frock coats and embroidered waistcoats, high-collared dress-shirts and frothy neck bows are his plagiarised signature. He is a modern day dandy – a cut-price Beau Brummel for the new millennium. And contrary to what the women’s magazines are saying about the ‘new man’, women love an old-fashioned hero.
Roddy is not currently in a relationship but there is never a shortage of women he can call when he needs a date – especially now. He was married, briefly, back in 1985 but they only stayed together long enough to watch two seasons of Dynasty and now she’s living in Hull with a chap who makes rubber flooring.
So, here he is, Roddy Asquith, sitting in the Green Room of Channel 5 with his lukewarm cup of coffee and a panic of butterflies in the pit of his stomach. A spoiled, over-indulgent egotist with the emotional depth of styling mousse.
What a fake!
What a pretentious ponce!
But sweeping generalisations are bad form and it would reflect unkindly on our intelligence if we were to dismiss him with such presumptions. So let’s give him a closer look. Let’s look beyond the swashbuckling good looks and the sartorial burlesque. Let’s scratch the vulnerable surface of his dubious achievements and overlook the fact that last week he had a glass of sparkling wine and a smoked salmon vol-au-vent with Una Stubbs.
Everyone deserves a fair trial.
Let’s look at his family.
Starting with his useless, pathetic mother.
“I was sure you were going to grow up to be a huge disappointment,” she told Roddy when his name first appeared in a national newspaper. “Who would have thought that people would be talking about you down at the Frog & Strumpet?”
As for his apathetic father, well, why break a lifetime of tradition and show any interest in his son at this late stage of his life?
They are not your average working class parents. They might have moved on from the council estate but the mentality is still the same. They now live in a semi-detached Wimpey home with a whippet and an ornamental rock garden but they still have fish and chips on a Friday lunchtime and talk about winning the pools.
“You make your own life in this world,” is one of his father’s favourite sayings, but what would he know about life? The closest thing Roddy’s father ever came to publicity was the time the local police found him bonking Barbara Drake from the butcher’s round the back of the Fine Fare.
So Roddy had to make his own life, with little help from his parents.
You would think they would have been proud of their industrious son but Babs and Ron Asquith were too busy impressing the neighbours with inanimate objects. The carport and the dishwasher took precedence over the dubious achievements of their child.
Now of course, since Roddy made a name for himself, they are all over him. His mother calls at least twice a week and even his father is showing a modicum of interest in Roddy’s career. They like to hear showbiz gossip; they want to know who he’s met and how much he gets paid.
One of the most embarrassing things about Babs and Ron is the fact that they are ‘swingers’. They actually call themselves that and they belong to a club that organises weekend breaks in the Lake District for married couples who like to swap partners now and then. You would think that they would hide this little proclivity of theirs but Babs and Ron are quite proud of their uninhibited sex life. At sixty-two years old it is sickening just trying to imagine anyone of that age even having sex let alone sharing it with others.
While other kids had to sit through the tedium of Tupperware and fondue parties Roddy was sent off to his Gran’s bungalow for the night so that their parents could enjoy a key-swapping party with four or five local couples from the club. It was always common knowledge on Starling Crescent that the Asquiths liked to ‘swing’ and Roddy had to go through some very painful ribbing by children who loved nothing more than an eccentric family upon whom they could heap ridicule.

“We’ll be calling you on to the set in about five minutes, OK?” Roddy looks up from the prospectus he was reading and flashes a broad smile at the girl with the clipboard and the Union Jack tee shirt.
“Am I the only one here?” he asks, “what about Michaela Fox and that girl from Hollyoaks?”
“Oh, they’re in the VIP lounge.”
The VIP lounge.
Roddy sighs.
He has waited forty years to be famous and still he is being treated like a second-class citizen. Don’t they realise that he has Vanessa Feltz and two cast members of Eastenders on his speed dial?
He glances at the sheet of paper they gave him when he arrived at the TV studio. It is a list of the questions Gloria will be asking him so that he can prepare himself beforehand and not make a fool of himself in front of the cameras. The questions are all pretty standard: How did you get started? How has this changed your life? What are your plans for the future?
Roddy thinks about the future and it would appear that he’s got it made. He just signed the contract on a brand new flat in Canary Wharf and business is booming. His childish aspirations of sports cars and white leather sofas may have matured slightly but Roddy is still impressed by the materialistic trappings of success. He intends to become rich and famous, but until that happens he is doing his best to at least look as though he is. Ron and Babs Asquith instilled the importance of public image in him at an early age.
Image is everything.
Substance can follow later.
The door to the Green Room flies open again and the girl with the clipboard is back. “Are you ready?” she asks in a breathless gasp of breath. “I’m going to bundle you in to the wings and Gloria will announce you in a couple of minutes, she’s just doing her preliminary chat. I’ll get one of the makeup girls to touch you up before you go on – you’ve got a bit of a shine.”
Roddy jumps up and brushes his hands down the front of his velvet jacket.
“I’m ready,” he replies and he follows the girl down the long corridor to the backstage area of the studio.
There are people waiting for him there, people wearing black jumpers and headphones. They whisper instructions to him as somebody dabs at his nose and forehead with a powder puff. He can hear Gloria talking to her audience and he feels physically sick. He can actually hear his heart thumping and the collar of his ₤130.00 shirt is cutting in to his neck.
He’s going to fall to pieces as soon as he gets out there.
He’s going to stumble over his words and dry-up like the first time he did a radio interview and they had to edit him out with an advert.
Oh, God! This is live TV.
And she is calling his name. Gloria Hunniford is announcing him and the audience begin their applause. A pair of hands propels him forward and suddenly he is assailed by the blinding brightness of the studio lights.
Everything is a blur and yet he still manages to advance across the stage to where Gloria is standing now with her hand outstretched to welcome him to her show.
The applause dies down and Gloria offers him a seat beside her.
“I have to say, Roddy, that you look fantastic. That suit is a knockout!”
Roddy smiles and accepts the compliment with a gracious nod of his head.
And then they move on to the topic at hand: Roddy’s sudden rise to fame. Gloria starts by listing some of the less publicised accomplishments of his career, building the tension as she reads from her list, approaching the summit of his mountainous achievement with careful deliberation.
“And then, one morning last April you got the call that was to change your life.”
“That’s right, Gloria. It was just a normal morning in the salon. I was blow-drying a client when my assistant came up to me and said that there was a call she thought I should take. I was annoyed that she interrupted me but when I answered the phone I was gobsmacked.”
Appreciative sounds of mirth from the studio audience. Gloria leans forward to touch Roddy’s knee and she lowers her voice to a reverential whisper. “Tell us who that person was at the other end of the line.”
Roddy smiles. He lifts up his face and stares directly in to the cameras. This is his moment. This is what the last few months have been leading to. Now, at last he will be recognised for who he really is.
“It was David Beckham. He wanted a haircut.”
And in response to the men with the placards the crowd go wild.
This is it.
Roddy has finally arrived.

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