A drip of doubt trickled down his strange, hooded face, his grip tightened noticeably on his glass of free champagne. And it had all started so well. Although his head was down and his eyes were fixed on the floor, a babble of excited titters indicated that he had been recognised immediately. To his credit, he was also the only contestant to have even a ghost of a winning concept, although his plotting ended in tears - his own, when he was found out. You have to take the rough with the smooth.
Labels tend to stick.
Even if I became the Mother Teresa of England, I would always be called nasty. He was disqualified from the show, a nine-week popularity contest, after attempting to manipulate the voting process by which contestants were evicted from their shared house. While inside, he also lied outrageously about his past, trying to arouse respect and sympathy by claiming to have an important job in the City and to have lost a wife in a car crash. In reality, he had left his lowly job with brokers Willis Corroon because he was bored and, not only has he never married, he appears to have had no significant female relationships to speak of. Once ensconced in our booth, he orders a glass of red wine and, while the waitress pops off to fetch it, immediately establishes his Nasty reputation by remarking how much he hates her hair, which is dyed a fetching shade of tomato-soup red.