Do You Mind if I Put My Hand on it?: Journeys into the Worlds of the Weird. Mark Dolan
to Brazil. I was quite anxious about whether she would actually catch the flight, as up until now, on the phone and on email, she’s been mercurial to say the least. But something told me, particularly after looking at her website (which is a masterclass in self-promotion), that this was another media appearance she wasn’t going to miss.
I wander around Houston Airport, dazed by a heady mix of jetlag and weak American lager. And there she is, standing outside a Hudson News, looking lost. And glamorous. She’s wearing what looks like a woollen bra, in tartan, and a matching miniskirt approximately one centimetre in length. All the clothes look incredibly tiny. In keeping with the Mrs Beckham theme, it looks like she has stolen one of Posh’s outfits and forgotten she is a size 12, not a size 6. Her skin is caked in a glutinous light-brown make-up/fake tan. She looks like her entire body has been dipped in a vat of the caramel bit of a Cadbury’s Caramel. Her hair is blonde and brittle; I’d suggest it’s been so long since it was the colour God intended that now even God can’t remember what colour it was supposed to be. She’s wearing heels that approximate in height to all the Harry Potter books piled on top of each other, and her ability to stand for more than five seconds in them involves a similarly impressive amount of wizardry. And her breasts…
Ah yes. Her breasts. Why we’re here. Well, they are very large. But they are not on the Minka scale. Instead she looks like a sexually frustrated cartoonist’s impression of a woman. Like a supersized Jessica Rabbit crossed with a Russ Meyer actress, and a bit of Babs Windsor thrown in for good measure. And there is something comical looking about this lady and it’s not just her top-heavy profile. She looks more like a character than a real person. She is a sort of walking human caricature. And I’m about to get on an airplane with her. Fortunately we are allocated seats at separate ends of the plane, allowing me to keep my powder dry in terms of questions and avoiding a syndrome the great Les Dawson used to refer to as ‘having the fight before you get in the ring’. I sip my Caffeine Free Diet Coke, thus experiencing no physical emotion whatsoever and wait for the hours to pass, only to be occasionally stirred by the sight of the inflated, tartan-clad blonde making her way to the loo. In the context of this flight, she is a vision, an airbrushed, bouncing bombshell, clashing wildly with the grey plastic backdrop of this American Airlines 737 and its jaded passengers.
We arrive in Brazil, and she seems to perk up once she strides into the airport. Every footstep of her faux Jimmy Choos can be heard for miles. The shrill clatter of her heels announces that Sheyla’s coming home. She is speaking at double speed, perspiring slightly, and is fidgety. It feels like she is morphing into her public persona and is somehow preparing to put on a show. As we walk through the sliding doors into the public part of the airport, there is the sound of shrieking and general excitement. They are calling out her name. Flashguns on cameras are splashing light onto both of us, and I’m feeling like a spare part, knowing they’re not here for me, but I’m there anyway – a feeling Denis Thatcher undoubtedly had for about three decades. There are perhaps thirty people gathered, with all permutations of camera equipment with which to capture the moment. Bizarrely, in the mêlée, a woman rushes up to me and gives me a hug! Now this is my first time in Brazil, so perhaps this is what happens. Or maybe she has never seen someone quite so tall, thin and pale in her country before, and feels the need to touch me to see if I’m real. With a little help from Sheyla as interpreter, it transpires that Balls of Steel – a late-night TV comedy show I presented for Channel 4, is shown in Brazil. This is a surreal interruption to an otherwise surreal arrival. Luckily Balls of Steel appears not to be a ratings monster here, as, apart from some odd looks and whispering in an elevator later that day, that’s the last time my global fame is to interrupt this journey.
There are placards with Sheyla’s name scrawled across them, being held aloft. Quite poorly scrawled. It always amazes me that people who make placards, in all walks of life, couldn’t have a better sense of production value. Be it striking workers, protesting students or celebrating football fans, I’m always wondering whatever happened to good quality marker pens, and fabric suited to the painting materials being deployed. And couldn’t someone decide in advance what the size and style of the font will be? And surely only the person in the group with the greatest artistic skill and command of the English language should be allowed anywhere near the paint itself. I don’t think this is unreasonable.
And speaking of paint, these placards for Sheyla lack the whiff of authenticity. And as there are lingering, emotional hugs all round with her ‘fans’, it starts to look more like a reunion of family and friends, than the arrival home of a Jordan-like icon. Even the most rabidly ambitious starlet doesn’t kiss fans on eight different parts of their face. Interrupting the adulation for a second, I ask, ‘So Sheyla, how do they know that you are here?’
‘Ah well, like, obviously, I talk with the local news about what’s going to—’
‘You give them a little tip off?’
‘Yeah’, she says.
Oh, well that answers that. I’m used, in these journeys, to dealing with people who are as evasive as they are unique. Not Sheyla. It seems it’s not just her tights that are transparent. We leave the media scrum (5 per cent local media, 95 per cent uncles and aunties), we jump into a waiting taxi and head to her sister’s place, where I’ve been promised a Brazilian barbeque, which sounds like a violent variation on the Brazilian wax, but which I’m hoping is a meal. Villa Bella is a seaside town not in the mould of what you’d expect from the Brazilian coastline. Not a particularly eye-catching beach, no soft drinks concessions, no sun umbrellas, no six-pack-clad dudes working out on the sand and no local girls showing off their legendary South American derrieres. There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of beachfront entertainment either – it seems to be one of those seaside towns which is more town than seaside. It’s Hove to Brighton’s Copacabana.
We drive through a nexus of fairly rundown streets, featuring motor parts shops and local eateries that would take some personal courage to enter; the drooling Rottweiler at the entrance being the most welcoming member of staff. The town is ramshackle, scruffy and a bit untidy, but it has a certain ugly duckling charm. And with young kids happily playing football on the street – no doubt preparing to thrash England at the 2030 World Cup – and with mums hanging their washing on lines while exchanging the latest gossip, this place does feel like a community and there’s a warmth in not only the temperature. We reach her sister’s house. It is a tired-looking, small, white building, accessed via a narrow iron door and up a flight of stairs. The myriad gates, spikes and bars on the windows in this town betray the darker side of Brazilian life.
Sheyla rings the doorbell. Her sister answers and greets her with a hug. She and Sheyla are very alike, but she looks altogether more real and sensible. Siblings are often a useful way of gauging just how much plastic surgery someone has had, as they are by definition a control in the experiment – a walking ‘before’ photograph. Her sister’s softly weathered face suggests that all her time is taken up with a job, being a mother and being a wife. A glance at Sheyla’s face doesn’t tell you anything, because like the rest of her, it isn’t hers. These are two siblings that have demonstrably taken different paths in life.
I’m invited to sit and enjoy a coffee from a flask. I’m told the coffee is a fine-ground variety of Brazil’s finest, boiled and left to settle, after which sugar is added. Flying across the Americas and changing various time zones has left my head feeling like it left my body weeks ago, so the coffee is a welcome elixir. I needn’t have bothered – Sheyla is a walking stimulant. We’ve been in the house for five minutes and she strides back into the living room, wearing a different, dazzling outfit. I am to learn that she changes outfits more often than Beyonce at an awards ceremony. She is clutching a variety of medicinal-looking empty plastic sacks and tubes. These are her implants. The secrets of her success, the tools of her trade. And they look nearly as awful inside someone as out. She has saline implants – essentially salt-water-filled plastic bags. There is a little valve in each implant which a tube is inserted into, through which the solution can be squeezed, allowing you to inflate to a degree you are comfortable with. Sheyla is comfortable with an uncomfortable amount. Currently her breasts contain 4000 centilitres of fluid per breast. But this isn’t enough, apparently.
‘So