LOUISE: There’s a job for you. For too long the disabled have been a wasted resource, denied the opportunity to be economically active—to our loss. The Real Deal is a range of programs to enhance the social usefulness of the disabled and long-term unemployed. So we offer interpersonal skills building and interview preparation workshops, job matching and a referral service, and one-to-one consultation.

Beat.

No I haven’t uh… worked with a super morbidly obese client before. I’ve had heaps of overweight clients but their weight didn’t make them disabled, just unattractive. Which in itself, well, depending on the severity of the aesthetic misfortune, can be an impediment to securing employment.

She relaxes.

We laugh sometimes and say that should be one of the boxes on applications. Do you consider yourself hearing impaired, visually impaired, aesthetically impaired, because the reality is no-one wants extreme eczema on the KFC counter. There’s some you take one look at and just know, it’s definitely back of house for you, flaky face. Well out of the public eye.

LOUISE laughs then stops, not entirely sure she should have said that.

235 DAYS

ARTY: I don’t look in the mirror. I don’t wanna see who I am now but who I could be. Who I’d like to be. I wanna see that person. When I do see me, my refection, it’s like… I dunno. Doesn’t seem real.

PRODUCER: But you’re going to be on television.

ARTY: I’m not gonna watch it.

JOJO: I told him it’s like being a movie star—

ARTY: It’s not—

JOJO: Being on the telly, but he doesn’t like pictures of himself—not vain that way.

PRODUCER: Cut to

A naked Arty pretending he’s somewhere else

His privates blurred to preserve his modesty

He turns slowly for the camera that zooms in on his stupendous breasts

The giant orb of wobbling belly fat that hangs over the rippling, jiggling rolls of his gargantuan thighs

Close-up of his bloated feet

DOCUMENTARY VOICE-OVER: ‘Shocking Fat Stories’ brings you the inspirational true story of one man’s odyssey to transform his life.

PRODUCER: Arty mate, can you dance a little—nothing flash, no-one’s expecting Lady Gaga, but even a sort of gentle ‘Dancing with the Stars’ blind geriatric celeb, brave, giving it a go kinda feel? Just so we get a better sense of, you know, the start of a big adventure? Just when we cut it to music it’ll look more… um…

ARTY is crying.

No wozzas, mate, we’ll um, get that later then.

ARTY: In the life Arty’s living in his head he is

An explorer

Intrepid

He likes the word intrepid

His body is hard and brown and lean

He has facial hair

A sexy, roguish beard ’cause you don’t have to shave in the

Amazon

And he’s with his sidekick Pedro