Beautiful People

Bullied for being gay Simon decides to run away from Reading on the same night that Debbie is holding a party to celebrate her television acting debut in a crime reconstruction where she plays a woman missing from home, who is her exact double. However,thanks to a bus strike and the influence of the gorgeous Mickey - whom he will one day marry - Simon returns home in time to see Debbie punch Jackson, his chief tormentor, for impregnating Ashlene and picking on her son. Simon is so happy he falls off a wall and gets his gash, while the missing woman comes back to complain about Debbie's feeble impersonation of her.

Simon relates the story of a pair of golden curling tongs in his possession that once belonged to Tameka, his mother's hairdresser, who won them in a styling contest and claims that only death will part her from them. After a row with Kylie following a hair dying job that went wrong, Simon spends time at the salon but when an annoyed Tameka tells him to go away he replies, "Drop dead." In fact she does and he feels guilty but, after he and Kylie are reunited in grief following Princess Diana's death, he returns to the salon where Tameka's body is lying in state, clutching the tongs. For years he believed he had got the tongs from her until Kylie admits he swapped them with a pair belonging to Reba.

Simon and Kylie are entranced by glamorous new teacher Miss Prentice who regales them with romantic tales of her passionate lover Francois. Debbie is less captivated when Miss Prentice takes the boys into the pub where she works and throws the 'beautiful person' out. At odds with his mother Simon decides to follow Miss Prentice to London when she answers a call from Francois to re-kindle their affair. However, on arrival he finds that Miss Prentice leads a far from romantic existence and lives on a council estate. Disillusioned, he is surprised and heartened when Debbie tells him of a gay friend of hers, Jamie, whose motto was 'Never Give Up on Your Dreams' and encourages Simon to do the same. Sadly Jamie died of AIDS but he gave Debbie a snow globe, which she passes on to her son.