BC Holiday Special IV: Dark Yuletide

THE BEN CHATHAM SPIN-OFF ADVENTURES: CHRISTMAS SPECIAL

"SHITE YULETIDE"

After being shot through the head by Toshiko Sato, Ben Chatham finds himself mysteriously transported to his Cambridge apartment. It is Christmas Eve, and he is lying on the sofa in an expensive Harrods dressing gown as the Human League's Greatest Hits plays 'Love Action' over the stereo. Since he should be very, very dead at the moment, Ben is surprised at this development.

Has the nature of cause and effect somehow changed? Is Ben in some limbo or coma dreaming it? Or has he gone mad from absinthe abuse?

Realizing his life is now a mockery of "Life on Mars", Ben lapses into a state of depression and starts swigging absinthe as his slender foot uncontrollably jiggles of its own accord. The lazy, mysogenistic, self-obssessed alcoholic fuck that is Ben Chatham decides instead to wonder exactly how the hell Harrods can make ANY of their products exclusive.

Suddenly, the music stops and the room goes dark.

Ben has a panic attack, at first fearing the cumulative effect of thirty years of continual masturbation has finally rendered him blind as a bat. Then, the K9 assasin the Doctor sent him arrives and laughs hysterically at Ben's moronic superstitions, as it's clearly just the trip-switch flicking off because the appartment hates Ben like everyone else. Ben tells K9 to restore the power and the robot dog gives him a violent electric shock; his way of saying "do it yourself, lardarse!"

Ben stumbles through the dark and after breaking his toe finally finds the switch...

AND IT DOESN'T WORK!!!

K9 giggles and explains that the entire UK has been struck by a power drain of indeterminate cause. "Sucker!" K9 laughs and shoots Ben in the knackers, telling him to fuck off out of K9's apartment so the robot dog can have his bitches round for Xmas.

Ben is flung out into the street and cracks his head against the darkened streetlights as he stumbles around blindly. He is then grabbed by something in the darkness and immediately empties his bowels on instinct.

It turns out his assailant is none other than Katie Ryan, who does not remember the cruel way Ben used her like a kleenex and then threw her into a deep fat fryer, scarring her for life. Ben instead decides to inform Katie of the fact the lights have gone out, since she is a woman and thus incapable of storing and processing such patently obvious facts.

Katie explains she knows Ben is afraid of the dark, which is why she regularly has a friend of her in the engineering department of the electricity board plunge all of Cambridge into darkness so she has an excuse to come round and possibly get a lacklustre shag.

Ben marvels at this implication that a woman is capable of abstract thought, in his usual noble, sexy, arrogance. He then realizes she hanging around outside his door, and for a moment is horrified at the thought she might be homeless and sheltering in his doorway.

Katie insists she is just stalking him, because she is so sexually obsessed that in the dark hours of the night, she starts to pine for "the Smoothe One" and just cannot help herself. Indeed, under her mac, she wears the flimsiest of satin negligees, with two small bottles of absinthe hanging around her neck on a string, strategically placed so their pert necks emphasise her ripe and heaving bosom. She has not brought candles or anything useful like that.

Suddenly, they are nearly run over by a morris minor containing Corrine Shaw and Paul Farrady, the pathetic losers who call themselves Operation Helter-Skelter, a covert unexplained phenomena investigation organization that Touchwood allows to live cause they're so damn stupid and amusing. Paul says that according to his livejournal buddies, there is a mysterious energy burst in the Wiltshire area around Silbury Hill.

Katie asks why the hell OSH are hanging around Cambridge instead, and Corrine explains that they were hoping to swing by and spend some time with Ben Chatham, the only person more selfish and moronic than even they are.

At that point, K9 sticks his head of the window and fires a volley of laser blasts at the group, telling them to get the fuck out of there or he'll call the police and have the lot of them declared terrorists, skinned alive, and buggered to death!

Although OSH look rather intrigued at the notion, Ben and Katie scramble inside the morris minor and drive like hell.

At first they drive blindly through the dark, running over small animals and pedestrians and carol singers, it strikes Ben Chatham's cunning brain to SWITCH THE FUCKING HEADLIGHTS ON, whereupon driving becomes incredibly smoother.

However, Corrine discovers that Katie and Ben have had sex and so grabs his stalker and smashes her head through the car door window, screaming, "YOU HARLOT! YOU'RE NOTHING BUT A CHEAP SHIRAZ TO MY FINEST CLARET!" Corrine forces Katie's head into the fast-moving road below, scraping off half her face. "YOU'RE NOTHING BUT A FLEETING SENSE OF VARIETY!"

Katie, bleeding profusely, punches Corrine repeatedly and then roasts her forehead with the car cigarette lighter, howling, "YOU DISSAPOINT, MISS FINE CLARET, COZ BEN SAYS YOU'RE CORKED, YOU FRIGID WHORE!"

Corrine, with icy elegance, starts to garrotte Katie with her own seat belt, wailing, "BEN WILL ALWAYS COME BACK TO ME, YOU COMMON LITTLE SEX TOY! MY VINTAGE IS SO EXCLUSIVE NOT EVEN MY STEPFATHER HAS HAD A GO!"

Katie tears free, grabs Corrine's throat and forces her head UP through the roof of the morris minor just as it enters a low-hanging tunnel. We hear Corrine's muffled scream as, inside the car her body twitches violently and then goes limp. As the morris minor leaves the tunnel, blood gushes down from the hole in the roof, running gently down Corrine's partially-obscured bodies.

"Oh I’m very sorry," Katie says.

There follows a very awkward silence before Paul Farrady suddenly blinks and shouts, "WOO-HOO! GIRL FIGHT!"

Ben decides to stick to his tactic of ignoring that he has any problems in his life and instead mucks around with cassette deck until it plays Bowie's "Outside" albulm to drown out the obscene gurgles Corrine makes.

Arriving at Avebury, Paul's keen senses detect the armed patrol that stops them only five minutes after they've gone. Ben explains to him that the soldiers are bored shitless and glad of any excuse to cordon off Silbury Hill. This time the excuse is that the Major-General has severe tinitus, but suspects the strange humming he can hear is actually a strange, sinister alien force buried within the hill that is causing all the power failures. Katie explains she is the cause of the power failures and the soldier offers to 'make it worth her while' if she keeps quiet about that and allows their commanding officer to indulge his own insane paranoia.

Ben agrees on Katie's behalf, pockets the cash and decides to go and squat at his parent's house in the Vale of Pewsey. As he drives there, Ben explains that his parents have many houses and yet spend a lot the year overseas, almost as if they are spending his inheritance on random countryside houses in order to make sure he never finds them and spends time with them at Christmas. Paul Farrady suspects there might be a simpler explanation, when suddenly they run over Jake Simmonds!

Somehow, Jake Simmonds got sucked through to this dimension in a story that the series went to incredible lengths to render non-canonical, and apparently has joined up with Touchwood, who immediately send to Pewsey to investigate a mundane and harmless power failure with instructions to "never come back". Realizing that this is a wild goose chase and no body likes him, Jake breaks down in CBBC issue hystrionics, then cheers up and asks to crash out at Ben's place even though they've never really met before.

Since there is clearly no energy translenslature inside Silbury Hill transporting an army to Earth from another galaxy, Ben takes Jake into his ancestral seat, and locks out Paul, Katie and Corrine. He has no interest with either of the wretched, sex-obsessed harpies who believe the ownership of Ben's smoothe chest is more paramount in importance than anything that HE wants. "Ridiculous, stupid, wine-obsessed trollops," muses the emo-boy, whose chutzpah is sharper than the sharp, sophisticated barbs Katie and Corrine are skewering each other with.

Corrine and Katie continue to argue ownership over the man who crassly dumped one and only had a brief one-night stand with the other, but the feelings of women don't matter, so let us move on. Inside, Ben lights up some candles and then concentrates on getting Jake so utterly pissed that Chatham will be able to have his wicked way with the man six years his elder. After gettig the portable stereo to work on batteries, Ben puts on Philip Glass' 'Heroes' Symphony' and drugs Jake with rohypnol and systematically removes his trousers.

"STOP GETTING FUCKING DRUNK!" Katie shouts in the background. "STOP LISTEN TO STUPID MUSIC! YOU'RE MINE, MOFO!"

"OH GROW UP YOU DRUNKEN SLAGS!" Ben shouts out the window.

Outside, in the cold, Paul Farrady bounces up and down shouting he is in love with Ben and nothing else in the universe matters while Corrine ties Katie to the front door and starts hurling daggers at her.

Inside, Ben pours a fifth bottle of absinthe down Jake's throat and, smoking an opium cigar, Ben downs three bottles of Chardonnay and then forces his firm cheekbones into Jake's inner thighs. Jake is now paralytic and mumbles something about "Ride me, Mickey, ride me! Use me, call me Rose if that helps!" before passing out in his own vomit.

Outside, Katie has strapped Corrine to the front of the morris minor and is about to drive it straight through the front door when a strange wibbling sound is heard and swirling colours light up the house.

"Well, blow me up and call me Nagasaki," muses Paul Farraday, "Something IS coming to Wiltshire from another galaxy! Fancy that!"

Ben is horrified at having his sweet lurve interrupted as the flashing lights flood the house.

A melting sky-ray lolly the size of a jumbo jet is hanging in the air above the house. Drops of the lolly are falling and killing small animals in the immediate vicinity. Realizing this puts the other three in incredible danger, Ben draws the curtains and opens a bottle of exclusive Isle of Arran Cream Liquour as the others outside scream for help.

"HELLO!" Paul Farrady screams. "ALIEN INVASION! GET YOUR FUCKING ARSE INTO GEAR! THERE'S A FUCKING ALIEN INVASION ON YOUR PATCH! DO SOMETHING!"

"OH, TALK ABOUT IRON AGE HILLFORTS OR SOMETHING! I'M BUSY!"

Ben kicks Jake conscious and drags him to his bedroom. There Ben threatens to show his father's collection of antique 18th century pistols to Jake unless they the nasty, and Jake mumbles something about "you drunken hetrophobic cunts" before vomiting all over Ben and passing out once more.

Outside, Paul Farraday obediently starts talking about the celts as Katie smashes a martini glass in two and rams the shards into either side of Corrine's head, causing her to flail around the place and scream hysterically. "Look, I made a Cyberwoman!" laughs Katie insanely.

"YOU PAROCHIAL DOUCHE BAG BITCH!" Corrine roars before blob of sizzling confectionary drops from the UFO and microwaves her skull.

Giggling, Katie assumes a strange kung-fu pose and mystically flies directly up into the air and smashes through the window of Ben's bedroom and finds him trying to lick Jake back to awareness with what he no doubt considers smouldering passion. Katie reacts to this with her usual reserve by grabbing the sides of Ben's mouth and pulling in opposite directions in attempt to rip his head open, shouting homophobic abuse as she does so.

"Fuck off, Katie," sneers Ben.

"OI! CHATHAM!" Katie roars. "WHAT PART OF 'SERIOUS RELATIONSHIP' DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND, YOU FUCKER?!?"

Before Ben can lose all his genintals in a meat cleaving accident, suddenly the door to the bedroom explodes to reveal a Dalek! "I'M HERE FOR THE PARTY! WHERE IS THE GOOD BOOZE? WHERE IS THE GOOD BOOZE?!?"

"You've got some nerve interrupting me!" shouts Ben as he grabs Katie and hurls her at the Dalek in the vague hope she might make a good human shield.

It transpires that the Dalek mailed itself to Ben's house via Parcelforce. Once delivered it burst out of the parcel and disguised itself as a magazine or paper cup or something and when the time was right it revealed itself. Ideally this would have been during a dinner party or small social gathering and ridicule Ben on his choice of curtains/wine/trousers etc until he is suitably chastised.

However, things have gone out of control and there is no chance that the Dalek can order a cab or something in order that Ben's guests could go to a wine bar or function room in a pub to finish their night in some style!

Death is here and he's in a mmeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaan mood!

Ben runs for the emergency fire escape not realizing his parents removed it as a precaution so if there ever WAS a house-fire and Ben was in his room, he would immediately burn to death.

Ben plummets ten metres down and lands safely atop Paul Farraday. As he gets to his feet, Ben mutters, "Hmm. Obviously my father listened to my advise that the fire escape ruined the look of this listed building, otherwise there would be a moral question mark over trapping me in a burning house."

Ben then remembers that he is being chased by a flying all-purpose armor-plated killing machine unseducable even by Captain "Shag Me" Jack, and runs off into the night, waving his hands in the air and screaming hysterically.

Corrine muses that she looked up the events of the Battle of Canary Wharf on wikipedia, and since all the Daleks were sucked into the void between universes along with the Cybermen, this is obviously some kind of projected illusion trying to tap into their worst fears, and thus, they are perfectly safe.

The Dalek zaps the trio, reducing them all to porrige.

Meanwhile, Ben runs through the wood wailing for his mummy, his pony, Rose Tyler - ANYBODY! - to help him, and finally trips and falls face down into a cowpat. Behind him, the Dustbin follows, intending to suck on Ben's vital juices and absorb what little artron energy can be found.

Ben thinks of Jake's inner thighs and firm, welcoming lips, and smiles happily until he gets a low-level radiation bolt fired up his arse by the Dalek who is right behind him.

Ben flees to a nearby hill which suddenly unfolds like a Barbie playset to reveal an old prop from Space: 1999. The door opens and a tall and elegant old man with long flowing robes and a white beard emerges.

"Oh Christ!" Ben moans fearfully. "It's Brian fucking Blessed!"

"Greetings, Ben Chatham," booms the alien. "I detect that you also have travelled through time."

Ben is confused. "But you... you can't have. The Doctor said that only the Time Lords have that power and that he is now alone. Apart from all the ones that survived and avoid because he's a total prick."

The strange being chuckles and says, "Let that remain..."

"And time agents."

"Let the..."

"And the Family of Blood. And the Vortexians. And the Rachnoss. And the..."

"SHUT THE FUCK UP! Now, as I was saying, I'm trying to be mysterious here and you attempting rational thought isn't helping! Right. Where was I? Oh yeah. My name is Merlin. Your civilisation may have legends based on my name. I have slept here for a long time. But now its time to travel again. I apologise for the temporary power drain, unavoidable I am afraid."

"Why did you sleep on Earth? Why do you have to travel again now? Why is it that you need puny Earth energy to do it? And isn't this a total rip off of Stargate SG1?"

"Oh, fine!" The figure tears off his beard to reveal... Bilis Manger. "Typical, Christmas fucking Eve and you have to be even remotely sober! YOU SUCK, Ben Chatham, and I was just trying to cheer myself up. You loser!"

"Are you a Time Lord?"

"Have you been listening to a word I've been saying, emo boy? NO ONE LIKES YOU! YOU ARE A USELESS PIECE OF CRAP WHO DRINKS TOO MUCH!"

"Or are you something else?"

"I give up."

"Is Merlin real?"

"Get a fucking life, Ben, I'm off to Milliways."

The figure vanishes into the space ship and flies away.

Ben muses on this and suddenly has a vision!

A vision of Paul Farraday passed out in his own body waste as he hugs an empty bottle of wine he has affectionately dubbed "Anna Nicole Smith"; a vision of Corrine jamming a skewer through Katie, placing it on a rotissery by a roaring fire; and of himself and Jack making hot, sophisticated non-chav love as snow falls in ridiculous amounts of Fraudien symbolism which will ruin all Ben's expensive Habitat sheets...

The vision intensifies, ala 2001: A Space Oddessy, and Ben watches himself sleep in on Christmas Day, take a shower, put on an exclusive Harrods silk dressing gown, and then gorge himself on mints, tea and croissants.

He sees himself being startled by a Victoria sponge and hiding in an exclusive IKEA filing cabinet with the slow understanding no one got him any presents whatsoever.

He sees himself recieving absolutely no texts and messages from anyone begging him to join their New Year's Eve parties, so he sends an offensive text to Katie Ryan instead.

He sees himself still getting no phone calls from the Doctor praising him for saving humanity with his aftershave on no separate occasions, even after three years of patience.

He sees himself dancing with joy as he gets three texts - before getting depressed when he realizes every message begs him to stay home and put his head in the oven at gas mark 4 for forty minutes until crisp and golden.

He sees himself stalking Jake and hiding in a cafe where he is mistaken for a robot criminal and repeatedly stabbed by people who are well brought up and eductated.

He sees himself gatecrashing his old university friends Nat and Astrella, who claim to have no idea who he is and demand he leave before they call the police.

He sees himself begging Nat to remember his life has no meaning without Ben Chatham, who once smiled at him in 1993.

He sees himself discovering Nat is an international gun-runner and when he tries to talk about late 16th century Flemish art, Jake arrives and uses one of Nat's landmines to blow Ben into the strasophere for being "a boring bunch of dirty Tory tosser scumbags who spend hours smelling their own farts".

He sees himself crashlanding in a club with no dress code full of people with moral certainties, who then kick Ben unsconscious.

He sees himself being dragged out of the Friendly Onion After School Club Disco by police, having been kicked in the head until his kidneys bled.

He sees himself stalk Jake back to his bedsit and demand sex, only to be told he is 'a total prat' and is stabbed through both kidneys by Genghis Khan, who happened to be passing.

He sees himself stagger into a shower and discover the tap was connected to a landmine shortly before he was blown into several thousand pieces in an explosion that left him in increasing order of priority: without corporeal form, with a singed CD collection, and somewhat concerned.

He sees himself as a ghost without legs or pancreas, forced to watch Jake shag Katie while a cat pokes a landmine into a sock with a stick...

This vision ends as the Dalek right behind Ben blasts him at point-blank range.

With a crackle of burning atoms, the mutli-coloured stream of fierce energy leaps from the gun-stick, tears through the air and evelops Ben, tearing at his flesh, burrowing deep into his very soul. He lets out a whining scream as his entire body is set on fire. His back arches as he recieves a huge charge of electricity, and is flung to the ground under the deadly dose of radiation. The smell of ozone floats in the air as the ray floods over Ben, tearing away his skin and flesh, crackling his bones to dust, burning his internal organs, and exploding his mind. As the deadly ray reaches its greatest intensity, Ben lets out a great high-pitched shrieking scream as the searing pain tears apart his very being as the sweeping agony of death tears through his living fibre. Ben's blackened body shrinks and evaporates in an agonizing illusion...

WHOA! Got carried away there.

Ben is shot, screams and suddenly wakes up to find himself sitting naked on a toilet clutching an empty bottle of absinthe and about to castrate himself with a mattock.

He is in fact still in the tiny village of Dertain Ceath in 2005, on Christmas Eve when he was murdering people for diabolic satanistic fun.

IT WAS ALL A DREAM!

ALL OF IT!

The illogical, non-causal, narrative-lacking framework of a very gauche dream!

He never met the Doctor and Rose, or travelled in the TARDIS! Operation Helter-Skelter, Richard III, the evil guinea pigs, Hitler as a baby, it was all a dream and none of it happened!

Shaken, Ben leaves the toilet and discovers the landlord's daughter - Katie Ryan - has gotten drunk again and thrown up her breakfast of bacon and eggs on a plate. She hands it to him, claiming it is a cavair and French blueberry croissant omelette.

Ben calls her various derogatory names he doubts Katie has a hope of understanding, then tells her that he is Father Christmas and he hates her. As she runs off crying, Ben muses that she just doesn't understand him. On second thoughts, however, she looks alright on his arm and allows him to hide his shameful homosexuality.

Ben tracks down Katie and sleeps with her, muttering "Needs must" as he forces her to wear an Adam Rickitt mask during the act. He then punches her unconscious and watches a compilation tape of Lee Willaims and starts wanking as Christmas Day arrives.

The End/The Beginning