I don't wanna be a pop star tooooooo...

When Paulina and I were living together one of our rituals was to dash home from whatever it was we were doing to watch Neighbours. "Watching" Neighbours involved telling each other what our favourite storylines were, evaluating new characters, howling at particularly bad acting or dialogue, developing lame running gags about certain actors, criticising hair, costume and make-up decisions, deciding who should get together and who should break up, and predicting what would happen next. I once got a text message during a date which excitedly read, "I forgot to tell you, Kerry is Dylan's baby!"

So when Seb told me that his dad was directing a video clip for Ian 'Harold Bishop' Smith and needed extras, we were there.

After Paulina arrived an hour early to pick me up (thank you, daylight savings), we headed out for a coffee around the corner, and then onwards and upwards to the Darebin Performing Arts Centre. When we went in, we found ourselves surrounded by... many Christians. Maybe, in a nod to Harold's long association with the Salvos, they had recruited a church group to make up the bulk of the extras? Maybe the single would be a morally hard-core Christian rap song, in the vein of 'Baby's got Bible'!!! Except, it wasn't. We had just wandered in to some sort of post-church get-together. So we wandered out again and sat on the steps in the sun until Seb came over and pointed us to the door around the corner, where a hundred British backpackers were waiting impatiently for to be let near the man himself.

The actual filming, as anyone who has ever being involved with any sort of film production would know, was extremely boring. We sat around while a guy in a green shirt tried to keep us entertained with repeated references to his nipple and many rounds of "meet the staff". One of the staff turned out to be our lighting director friend Katie, who wasn't too impressed with being interrupted in the middle of what she was doing to wave to a theatre of mad keen soap fans.

Then! Go-go girls! Teenage go-go girls in microscopically short skirts, of course. We watched them finish their take, and then they were joined by Ian Smith in a black turtleneck, who put his arms around them in a grandfatherly way and cracked some mildly dirty jokes. The bald rugby-player type next to Paulina nearly started hyperventilating. It was surreal to watch the fans in their room lose their collective shit. Most of them had been trucked in from Neighbours tours and trivia nights, and Ian was quite gracious about the fact that he would probably be seeing half the audience at a pub tomorrow night.

Anyway, Paulina and I decided that if we were going to be there, we might as well make the most of it, and so we screeched and jumped around and pretended to sob when Ian came on stage and clutched each others arms. There were a few glittery signs going around for the 'audience', and we nicked one while people were being herded around and waved in above our heads madly. I mouthed "marry me Ian" at the camera. Paulina jumped up and down in the 'mosh pit' like a schoolgirl.

In between takes of the 'audience' going wild, there were shots of Ian dressed as four different women in the crowd, who the real Ian on stage would serenade. The go-go girls writhed around a spot where Ian's gigantic head would be superimposed. Then they disappeared and came back in Pulp Fiction wigs and show-girls feathers, and you could almost smell the collective pheremones rising from the lads behind us as they did some 'show-girl' dancing. We took great delight in impersonating the oaf on Paulina's right - oh yeah! Objectify those schoolgirls! Hey lay-deez, you're UNCOVERED MEAT!! And then we collapsed in a fit of giggles.

Eventually, though, the novelty wore off, and just as Paulina was getting a bit hungry and grumpy* and making motions to leave, Ian Smith came out in a final ludicrous sparkly Elton John number and thanked us all for coming. People wanting photos and autographs could line up to the right of stage. We headed off to the left and ducked over to say thanks and goodbye to Seb, who was standing with his dad, who was chatting to Ian. So we ended up having our photo taken anyway, and while I am NOT a photogenic person, I can honestly say that I looked better that Ian Smith in a teal sparkly jacket, a fright wig and a gold headband. So that, my friends, is truly something.

I'm not sure when 'I don't want to be a pop star too' is coming out, but keep an eye out. I'll be the one in the leopard print scarf whose face is contorted in spasms of delight, overacting my heart out, and putting it all into one last tacky Neighbours hurrah with my best friend.



*Paulina was being a bit short with her mother once, and her mum turned around to her and said, "Are you hungry Pusia? Because Polish people get cranky when they're hungry." And God bless her - it really is true.