For most viewers Channel Five's Friday night tongue-in-cheek attempt to return variety to primetime, The All Star Talent Show, was most notable for its distinct lack of both stars and talent. But behind the cheap Wogan Years sets and frigid smiles lay a drama of sex, lies and a "better than porn" videotape...

Competing in the second show was Jodie Marsh - the tabloid mainstay notorious for rating her sexual conquests on her t-shirt and sporting an outfit composed of three strategically placed belts to an FHM event - who chose to reveal her "hidden talent" with a dance routine. To this end, she was paired with nineteen-year-old Ben Harrold, a dancer fresh from BBC1's amateur dance-off Strictly Dance Fever.

I'm in love.......... gushed twenty-seven year old Jodie on her website following her first rehearsal with Ben and his long-term live-in girlfriend, Dawn Nelson, a fellow dancer on the show. Oh my God, in the flesh he is the most beautiful man in the world!!!! I'm in love with Ben - he's GORGEOUS!!!!!    (16/09/06)

Over the next few weeks Marsh would dedicate a series of increasingly graphic and crude weblogs to her teenage dance partner while working on TASTS. Watching a video of herself and Ben in rehearsal was "better than porn"; so thrilling was his touch she threatened to "do a sex-wee" in her knickers; she fantasized about him making love to her other (male) crushes; Tiffany, her diamante-encrusted vibrator had gone into overdrive; her parents, her friends and even her cleaning ladies were urging the two to date; Ben was Jodie's Mr. Right - "gorgeous, talented, sexy, funny, nice, charming and sweet" - whom she dreamt of marrying on a Barbados Beach.

Her entry of the 14th of September read like a desperate advertisement.

I am THE perfect girlfriend. I will see to your every need, I will cuddle you, look after you, demonstrate amazing manners and politeness when needed and be dirty as Hell in the bedroom... I will dress up for you, I will let you act out your wildest fantasies, I will introduce toys, cameras and anything else naughty you can think of. (14/09/06)

When this approach failed, she littered her blogs with offers of foreign holidays and hints at expensive gifts.

And away from her public outpourings, twenty-seven year old Jodie had begun to bombard Ben with unwanted sexual text messages and explicit pictures of herself.

But life isn't always fair, as Jodie observed on the 16th of September. 

I asked him outright "will you ever leave your girlfriend for me? (16/09/06)

And not content with begging him herself, she enlisted the services of her mother and former show-jumper Oliver Skeete, a fellow contestant on the show, to plead for her.

Competing against a tap-dancing Sally James and Peter Duncan on the high-wire, Jodie won her heat and, therefore, a place in the final, some weeks away. Her blog entry for that night was a shambolic eruption of almost transcendental ecstasy.

Life DOES NOT get better than this. Right now I am the happiest I've ever been. I loved last night more than anything I've ever done... It was the best experience of my life and I will treasure it forever... Ben.... I'm waiting. In fact I'll wait forever. You're sexy, talented, handsome, kind, funny, nice and I WANT you!!!!! I'm now dreaming of the time when I wake up in my lovely big bed with Ben's arms wrapped around me (and possibly his morning glory poking me in the back! Ha ha). I want his smiling face to be the first thing I see when I wake up and I want to marry him and do the routine as our first dance.

I F*CKING LOVE LIFE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! concluded the three thousand word epic.

(16/09/06)

But as the short-lived euphoria over her victory ebbed away, Jodie clearly went into an emotional tailspin. The next day a long rambling, self-pitying blog appeared. Imagine you're a really nice girl who excels at school... you get picked on for no reason and nobody likes you...imagine... she begged us and then in 1677 words went on to chronologically list her life's misfortunes. It wasn't Jodie's fault she fell for Ben; no, she'd been abused and hurt all her life; she'd suffered such loss, such awful hardship that, well, it was no wonder she had just tried to grab a little happiness for herself, even at the expense of another, completely blameless, woman.

The last thing I want to do is split up a relationship but you know what? I also want to think about myself for a change... I'm just gutted I didn't get my agent to call Dance Fever and ask him out for me when I first thought of it... I'd like to just take him out for a drink (or whisk him away to Italy, Marbella or Barbados - or all three!). I need to know if there could have been anything between us if he had been single...I know I could make him happy...  (17/09/06)

The following day she boarded a plane to Italy, to stay with an old family friend who owned a small hotel in the Marche countryside. That night, from her Italian retreat, Jodie wrote another long, rambling blog that included an apology to Ben and, particularly, his girlfriend Dawn.

I'm so sorry that I made myself so available to him (even though you really don't have to worry as nothing happened!) and I'm sorry I didn't have more concern for your feelings. I think I got to a point in my life where I was fed up thinking about other people and I just wanted to think about me...

I now know it was very wrong of me to like him the way I did and to say the things I said. I will never get in contact with him again and if we do dance together on the Final; I promise it will be on a strictly professional basis. He didn't like me like that anyway (you'll be pleased to know). The truth is; it's you he loves and wants to be with. He was the perfect gent, he never put a foot wrong so please don't worry...I promise you I will never look at him in that way again and will never try anything on with another girl's man EVER again. Like I said, I'm honestly not like that and I don't know what came over me (well, actually I do - it was the fact that someone was nice to me after years of insults and abuse, bullying and beatings!) (18/09/06)

In good faith, the young couple accepted her apology and Ben agreed to partner Jodie in the final. TASTS, after all, was their first big contract as professional dancers - the big break they had been waiting for. Jodie could write that she had always dreamed of dancing on stage and on television but for Ben Harrold and Dawn Nelson this opportunity was the culmination of years of hard work and intensive training.

Unsurprisingly, neither dancer had prior experience of working with a besotted topless model who offered up her every thought, feeling and sexual fantasy - in fact, everything short of her bowel movements - to the public in the form of a daily confessional weblog. Nearly ten years Ben's senior and a seasoned face on the reality circuit, Marsh had the advantage of both age and experience - but it was she who resembled a naïve teenager as she poured her heart out to her online diary. At best, her unwanted attentions were a source of huge embarrassment; at worst, the Beatbullying representative's lewd, crude and humiliating behaviour could have seen the show's producers, Endemol, in breech of the Sex Discrimination Act 1975.

And, inevitably, Jodie's relentless pursuit of Ben began to put a strain on the couple's relationship.

Despite her many promises, within days of her return from Italy Jodie was blogging about Ben again.

And once more, Jodie was forced to resort to bribery.

And of course a blog wouldn't be complete without a little erotic fiction - not directed at Ben, you understand, but "a fit bloke... that looks like Ben."

His hand slips round my back and rests on my bum, my hand is moving further up his thigh. I can feel his excitement growing and I want to kiss him. I'm tingling down below with anticipation and when the credits on the film eventually roll, neither of us moves. The room goes black (with the only glint of light coming in through the window being the moon). He turns to face me, holds my face and leans in to kiss me. The kiss is so electric that my whole body feels like it's on fire. We roll around for a bit kissing and touching and grinding against each other and then we gradually start to undress each other......... and that's enough for now. I won't tell you what else I'd like to do cos it's just too rude!! (24/09/06)

Monday the 25th of September was, apparently, It's National Be Honest Day - Tell me you love me!!!!!!

I want to challenge every single person reading this. If you are thinking about someone, missing someone, in love with someone, wanting to sleep with someone or even wanting to dump someone; tell them! Tell them today! Stop pussy-footing around and do it. Be brave and be honest. It's only your own feelings and life you are compromising anyway by remaining quiet on what it is you really want. And trust me, when you do get if off your chest; you'll feel a hundred times better.  (25/09/06)

A later blog from that day included a poem "Ode to Ben."

There once was a girl who needed sex,
She wanted it all day long,
She sent every man on her phone a text,
But they know she's just plain wrong
 
She hunted high and low for it,
She stalked one man to death,
Her standards were so flamin' low,
She didn't even care about their breath
 
She chased a man who turned her down,
She chased one that was wed,
She chased one man and his girlfriend out of town,
And it really screwed her head
 
She loves the feel of a c*ck that's hard,
Nothing pleases her more,
From a millimetre, centimetre, foot or a yard,
She'll try them all for sure
 
Now she sits at home alone,
With only pictures over which to linger,
Waiting for the beep of her mobile phone,
She slips herself the finger.  (25/09/06)

This was the final straw for Dawn and Ben, who asked Jodie, by text message, to refrain from mentioning Ben in a non-professional context in any further blogs. A torrent of abuse spewed forth from Jodie's keyboard in what was her fourth blog of the day.

I have realised that people are everything I thought they were... vile and rude and nasty and selfish. They are stupid, uneducated fools with too much time on their hands... So you see, now I have just had it all confirmed to me that people are w*nkers, and that I shouldn't worry so much about them. I thought I was going mad, when I fact I was right to be depressed over everything because all my life I've been shat on. Well, nice Jodie is no more.  (25/09/06)

A series of blogs then followed in which Jodie insinuated that Ben had responded to her advances and that her Italian apology had been insincere.

The guy I received the texts from last night (lets call him 'texter') should have been grateful to me. You see, I lied for the texter. Really lied. I lied to get him out of a really difficult situation. I know lying is wrong but if there's ever a time when telling lies can be right, then this was it... So tell me this: why do I bother?! Why do I bother helping people?! Why am I so nice?! Why am I ALWAYS the one to get hurt and let down?! (26/09/06)

And once again Jodie chooses to express her feelings in verse.

Tonight as I lay down to go to bed
I'm going to sing a lullaby in my head
I'll think of bunnies and flowers and trees
I'll try NOT to think about the birds and the bees
 
I'll read a nice book about dancing and joy
I promise I won't go near my toys
I'll act like lady and be reserved
I'll try to stop acting like a perve
 
It's not my fault I've become this way
It's been too long since I had a good "lay"
I only want fun and laughter too
I think deep down that so do you
 
I promise I'll be good and go straight to sleep
I won't do anything you regard as 'cheap'
Although I'll have to pray to the Lord on High
For ONE decent shag before I die!! (26/09/06)

Yet only four days later she herself revealed that the pair had never so much as kissed and nine days and eighteen lengthy blogs later she admitted,

[Ben] flat out turned me down and I should NEVER have pursued [him] in the first place. (06/10/06)

The last week of rehearsals was tense. As Toby Anstis had also won his heat he, too, would be competing in the final - with Dawn.

If I'm honest I was dreading seeing Ben again...wrote Jodie. [We] both agreed to just be professional in rehearsal... Wow - I am definitely a grown up. A few years ago I would have wanted him booted off the show or I'd at the very least have refused to even talk to him. Like I always say though "Live and let live"  (09/10/06)

She neglected to mention, however, that she had demanded Dawn be removed from the studio during her performance.

The night of the final came and went. Jodie came fourth in the public vote, one place behind Toby and Dawn in third. Her blog entry the following day was another rapturous two thousand word saga in which she failed to mention the ultimate winner, opera-singing former cricketer Henry Olonga, once.

Anyway, I had the absolute time of my life up there and will never forget this as long as I live... (14/10/06)

And that should have been the end of the story...