Two days later, Jess and Hannah both had square eyes.
"My arse hurts." Hannah moaned, having been sat down for the past two days.
"CONCENTRATE!" Jess shouted at her. She had nipped down to Homebase to buy herself a mini-white-board and multi-coloured pens. She had now nailed them up on the wall in the living room and drawn an inventive way to escape any game show forfeits. "Ok, so 'JANGO!' has 25 ways of killing it's contestant...and they all seem to be centred around this area-" She pointed to where the cameras were situated.
"Jess, I think you're taking this all far too seriously. I mean, if we lose, we lose…then we just get gunged, or shot in the back or decapitated, hung, spine-broken, karate chopped in half, drowned in rum, thrown against a brick wall at 100mph out of a cannon-"
"Shut up, Hans." Jess snapped. "Right, so what happens if the masked man with a shotgun pops up?"
"Duck."
"Correct." Jess pointed to another area of the chart. "What happens if the gunge comes down towards you?"
"Get out the way."
"Good." Jess pointed to another part of the board. "What if-" She was cut off as there was a loud banging on the door. "Oh, hell. Who could that be?" Jess walked to the door.
"Post!" The postman announced, cheerfully, thrusting a pile of envelopes into Jess' hand as she opened the door.
"Why are you always so goddamn happy?!" Hannah asked, snatching a parcel addressed to her. "It's raining, it's cold, you're not even HALF-WAY through your round yet…"
"I KNOW!" The postman grinned manically. "It's the Prozac Consignia put me on!" He tipped his hat to them. "Have a great day!" He skipped off down the path.
"Freak." Jess shut the door. Hannah examined her parcel.
"Ooh!" She exclaimed. "There's a 'JANGO!' stamp on the package!" She tore it open. "Look, Jess! It's our… Factorisingbabbler!!"
"I thought nothing else weird could happen, but obviously someone up there wants revenge."
"Yeah, probably Steve Coogan."
"Yes-" Jess stopped and thought about it. "You're probably right." She pondered. "Anyway, my point being WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!"
"Ok," Hannah took a deep breath ready to let rip on what sounded like a lecture. "It's a-"
The phone interrupted them.
"Yes?" Jess snapped. "Yes. Yes. Yes, ok then." She put the phone down. "That was 'JANGO!' headquarters, apparently they want us to make our own way to the studio."
"Bastards." Muttered Hannah. "Anyway, what was I saying?" Hannah wondered. "Oh yeah, the Factorisingbabbler, well, basically it's a-"
There was a knock at the door. It was the postman – he'd purposefully forgotten to post all the bank statements and bills in his van to make everyone's day a happier one…then his boss found out.
Hannah came back into the room. "Ok, it's a-"
A flying pig flew into their living room window, stunned itself and died in the rose bed.
"Ok, this is getting bloody ridiculous, what the hell is it?!" Jess asked excitedly as Hannah unwrapped it and put it together.
"Ok, it's a special controller thing you use to select your answers for the 'Near Certain Death Round'. You point it at a big computer in the game."
"I thought we just had to answer some questions by mouth." Jess said. "WHAT ELSE HAVEN'T YOU TOLD ME?!"
"It's ok. People don't usually get that far!" Hannah smiled. "They usually die in the first or second round."
Jess scowled.
"Are you on the same drugs as the postman?!"
"No." Hannah giggled. "I'm on something BETTER."
"It's LSD, isn't it?"
"No!" Hannah pulled a bottle out of her pocket and looked at the label. "Or…at least I think so…"
Jess looked at her wall chart. To her nearest calculation there were 753 general knowledge topics left to revise (including that tricky one on 1920's Mongolian GCSE results) and they had less than two days to do it all. Things were beginning to look hopeless, and hopeless was how things were beginning to look. Get it?! I'm not sure if I do…well, maybe. Hell, and I wrote 'The Book'! Well, half of it at least.
The phone trilled once more interrupting Jess' trail of thought and Hannah's non-existent haze.
"Hello, home of the pink elephants, how may I help you?" Hannah smiled at the phone.
"Give it 'ere!!" Jess snatched the phone handset. "Hello?"
"Hello." The man who sounded especially unimpressed said. "Finally somebody with more than one brain cell."
"What's he saying?" Hannah asked Jess, tugging at her sleeve. Jess put her hand over the receiver and spoke quietly at Hannah, not 'to' note. "Nothing that would interest you, Hans." She spoke back into the phone. "What can I do for you?" She asked.
"Well, you can get your arse down to my studio in 4 hours for tonight's show."
"What the hell happened to tonight's guests?" Jess asked, not quite sure whether she wanted to hear this.
"They died of anxiousness."
Jess put the phone down. "Oh, right."

Jess and Hannah sat in the back of the taxi on their way to the studios.
"This is so exciting! We're completely unprepared and ANYTHING could happen!"
Jess put her head in her hands and sank to the floor.
"I get the impression your friend isn't a very spontaneous person." Said the cab driver.
"No, she's not." Said Hannah. "I remember once she- hang on, you sound familiar…" She leapt up to look in the mirror. "JIMMY!"
"Who were you expecting?" He asked.
"A NORMAL cab driver!"
"Oh, like your NORMAL postman."
"Oh, sweet Jesus." Jess burst into tears.
"Hey, don't worry, Jess. I'm not that boring."
"It wasn't that what I was thinking," Jess sniffed, "More along the lines of annoying."
"OH JIMMY!!" Hannah leapt from the back seat to the front passenger, almost throttling Jimmy with a hug that caused the cab to swerve dangerously across three motorway lanes on the M40.
"I missed you so much!!" She hugged him again and the cab swerved back to where it had started.
"Please don't do that, I like my life." Hannah giggled and poked him playfully.
"Hang on a minute-" Jess said smelling a dead rat (well, come on, it was Jimmy's cab." "-You're dead!!"
"Oh come off it, Jess!" Hannah laughed. "He can't be dead, silly."
"I'd rather not talk about it." Jimmy said, giving Jess a stern look in his rear-view mirror. "It'll just upset Hannah."
"Nothing will upset Hannah," Replied Jess, "She's on pills now."
"Oh, well." Jimmy said, shocked. "Kelly paid me 50 quid to pretend I was dead in the wheel barrow."
"THE BASTARD!" Hannah snapped, viciously. "PROVE HIS LOVE FOR ME, MY ARSE!!"
"You're looking very sexy today, Hans." Jimmy said. Hannah smiled, putting head on Jimmy's chest.
"You always were such a charmer, Jimmy Joannou."
Both Jimmy and Jess sighed with relief.
"Please don't use that affectionate name-shortened term for my best friend, Jimmy. That was MY name."
Jimmy looked in the rear-view mirror and stuck his tongue out.
"Just when I thought life couldn't get ANY shitter…" Jess muttered, putting her head in her hands. Jimmy suddenly put his foot on the brake.
"Uh oh. We've hit a traffic jam."
"Oh…" Jess bit her tongue. "…Sticklebacks."