Revealed - the truth behind the Space Cadets lie
In its finale on Friday night, the hoax of Channel 4's Space Cadets was at last revealed to the four "astronauts". But one of them had been in on the practical joke from the start - writer and actor Charlie Skelton. Here he describes his part in the deception.
So, that was the oddest three-and-a-half weeks of my life. My poor brain is a scramble of half-truths, astronomical lies and unbridled lunacy. I've just scribbled a list of what I know for sure: I've been a mole on a fake reality show called Space Cadets; I have a Russian doll in my hand luggage; I've just spent the past five days in a flight simulator in a hangar on the Suffolk coast; and - last but by no means least - I've just spent the past five days in space.
My default brain position aboard Earth Orbiter One was that we were 200 kilometres up, travelling at about seven kilometres per second. Too many things were telling me that for me to think otherwise. The simulator was too damned convincing. The Earth looked too serenely real whenever the pilots ushered us forward to the cockpit to view it.
"This is truly humbling," I muttered, humbly, the first time I saw the planet spinning below us. I shuffled humbly back into the mid-deck and wrote a poem about how, when I was seven, I had killed a dog with a slab of concrete; and I was hugged by my fellow cosmonauts. I felt a bit guilty about those hugs, because the poem was a tapestry of lies. I've never killed a dog, or set fire to a leisure centre, but what the poem said about redemption reflected my true feelings. Seeing that high-resolution plasma planet spinning quietly away had given me a rush of goodwill towards all mankind, and hugs were just what I needed.
And there were hugs aplenty aboard our shuttle. We were a close-knit band of explorers, sharing an extraordinary journey. When we weren't hugging and giving each other high-fives, we were writing poems about our feelings.
I enjoyed the poems. I also - it has to be said - enjoyed the lies. I lied about my father being a violent wannabe jockey. I lied about my fear of Christmas tree. I lied about not believing that Albert Einstein existed. But always the truth outweighed the lies.
The morning after we finally stumbled from the shuttle, I met cosmonaut Billy Jackson in the hotel lobby. He asked me: "It was real, wasn't it - what we were thinking and feeling?" and I assured him it was.
For me, Billy Jackson was the emotional heart of Space Cadets. The tallest, handsomest of the cadets, he began the show brash, bullish and insensitive. He ended it charming, kind, and thoughtful. A gentleman. A thinker. A poet.
The other two who went to space - Keri and Paul - were more certain of who they were. Jackson has had his world turned upside down: not because he's been told a pack of lies, but because he has been shown truths.
It's up to Billy himself to find out if he can continue this journey of self-discovery now that his feet are back on planet Earth. As for me, I've discovered that I can now only go to sleep if I'm curled up alongside Paul French on a single bed in a brightly-lit caravan perched on a cement mixer. All good grist for my therapist.
guardian
