‘Mate.’ He held up his hands when one man brought him over another drink, because the table beside him was littered with pints. ‘I should be buying you one.’

‘Don’t you worry, Abs,’ the man said in a gentle Welsh accent. ‘We don’t get many celebrities around here. I’d love a photo to show the wife. She’s visiting her sister tonight and she’s going to be gutted she missed you.’

‘No problem.’ Abs put his arm around the guy and grinned into the camera phone.

You’d think he’d saved the planet the way everyone acted around him, and wasn’t just some chump who got lucky appearing on a telly show. And his fame, he knew, was only going to grow now he was going to star in his own series.

Abs was already drowning in offers, and knew that Vince didn’t even bother to tell him half of them. He took part in telly panel games and quiz shows, and made personal appearances all over the country. He gave out business awards at gala evenings – what did Abs know about business? Nothing. He’d been offered panto at Christmas for silly money, and not in some fleapit local theatre, but at the London Palladium. His diary was full months in advance.

His life was exhausting, and he loved every single minute of it.

Because that was the thing about Abs: he didn’t take it for granted. Some of the other guys on Laid In Essex! had let it all go to their heads. Sooner or later they got a reputation for being difficult and were let go from the show, and they went back to being labourers and electricians and hairdressers. There were thousands of good-looking Essex lads aching for a shot at stardom, and Abs knew that the only way to stay at the top was to work hard and be nice.

But he also knew that he had that little something extra. Call it charisma, or stardust, but there was something about Abs that people loved, and made Daily Star readers vote him the Britain’s Sexiest Guy three years running. Women wanted to bed him, and men wanted to be like him. His positivity, his enthusiasm and friendliness, was infectious.

‘Mate, I don’t think I can drink any more,’ he said when another guy came over with a pint.

‘The night is young, Abs, there’s plenty more where that came from.’

It was all becoming a bit of a blur. When he got back to Essex, he’d have to phone his personal trainer to book in extra workouts. Abs kept in good shape, he had to, because he was getting a lot of modelling work now.

And then someone started playing a piano in the corner of the pub and all the locals started singing, some old-time song he’d never heard of, and he wanted to join in. This little pub with its low-beamed ceiling was a world away from the bars and clubs of Essex, with their harsh neon, glittering chrome furnishings, flashing mirror balls, and the music that crashed against your insides. Everything here was old and knackered, and the decor surely hadn’t been changed for decades. The ceiling, with its knotted beams and cranky corners, was low and cosy, and it was stifling hot now because the fire had been burning all night in the crowded room.