THAT WAS THE DAY I GOT VOTED OFF "CELEBRITY APOCALYPSE:  CLASH OF THE EXPATS" along with OnlyFans legend Pris Merritt, who doomed us both when she dropped the R-word during a Community Outreach Challenge and a hot mic caught me laughing.

Our unprecedented double-expulsion followed a celebratory dinner at Cosmo Authentic World Kitchen, where Pris and I were honored for leading our team to victory in a Capture the Flag paintball marathon.

We returned to set in a rocking minibus, cheering our SAS tactical adviser Lance as he hung from the luggage rack ripping out one-armed chin-ups.

Bawdy Pris was keen to retake the center of attention. She shrieked over our counting in her rusty Aussie husk and pledged to flash her tits if Lance broke fifty reps.

Such a losing wager made a comfy briar patch for the exhibitionist in Pris. Lance's seal-pup bicep showed no sign of strain, efficiently dipping his model human form up and down like a practical effect on a wire.

He smiled at Pris and she roiled beside me, pounding my bruised thigh with a walnut fist. The heels of Lance's combat boots glanced off his ass as he floated up to claim number fifty.

Pris picked her shirttail from her microphone pack and coiled at the edge of her seat. Her tits came out so often we went blind to the sight of them on set. Now we cheered their imminent release, rowdy concert fans screaming for an encore.

The miracle of paintball distinguished Pris as a martyr. Elevated her implants from freaky umlauts to esteemed team mascots and plugged us all into a powerful third rail of camaraderie.

Fuck a trust fall. Nothing fosters teamwork like paintball and the reward of a buffet dinner.

With those stakes on the line, the Under Thirties never stood a chance. They were stuck back on set eating cold NATO rations around a smoky bonfire, prosecuting scapegoats for elimination.

When Lance cleared the bar for the fifty-first time Pris hauled her wine-stained Gap T-shirt over her head and howled, mouth a gauzy hollow, back arched like a Mongol bow.

In that weird instant she was beautiful to me the way close air support is beautiful, long limbs mottled by paintball bruises, Spanx activewear soaked through.

I howled back at Pris and everyone kicked off.  That crazy bitch turned us into a real fucking team.  We fell upon our bogan Joan of Arc in a wreck of grateful hugs and damn near tipped the minibus.

The driver barked for us to be seated. After some snorts came slouched compliance, then contagious sighs and yawns. The soothing drone of rubber rolling us home ironed out all sound except for a single-malt wrinkle of BBC Radio Scotland.

That's when Pris began runway-strutting the bathtub length of the bus, dropping one lumpy ankle over the other like a draft horse walking off a powerful anesthetic, phone held high blasting Bananarama's "Cruel Summer".

She kinked her arm in the luggage rack and turned a shaky pirouette between my knees. Joints popped and she swayed low, swatted my cheek with soft waffling pats.

"Ears my tactical fackin' geekneeus," she shouted.

I fought to meet her eyes but my gaze was arrested by a witchy spell of décolletage and flung down the tan-lined tunnel separating Pris' incredible decoy ducks.

A hot punch of blood arrived at the end of my spine as I inhaled her scent and held it inside. I saw myself subtract in scale. Imagined crawling out of my clothes and burrowing between those mechanically symmetrical tits like a hurt squirrel in a ukuele-scored rescue video.

Pris slapped me hard enough to water one eye.

She said:

"Bewp."

Hacking laughter burst from her nicotine-cured lungs. She tugged the stringy hems of her Daisy Dukes from her butt and waltzed away to molest Lance. I had to clear my throat before I spoke.

"That's not how you boop someone," I said.

No one heard.

From the first day of shooting Pris was a natural irritant to the Under Thirties and most of our fellow Over Forties. Never speaking lower than a call-the-doctor shout, she had an astounding knack for spoiling interesting conversations, polluting rare moments of peace and quiet.

It broke my heart to see how cold shoulders only compounded the intensity of Pris' need to be included, a quirk of social physics in which her rejected mass and commercially whitened smile came hurtling back at double the velocity.

Now Pris and her hips savaged laps at random, moving through the bus like a tornado upsetting a trailer park, devouring acres of personal space that hours earlier was unthinkably off limits.

We shot "Celebrity Apocalypse" at a former factory outside Edinburgh. It was a miserable patch of land that required little mocking up to serve as the post-nuclear ruins of a brick village and shopping mall.

The Under Thirties were a pack of cheating bastards, denying clear hits and arguing non-stop with the paintball referees. Despite being raised in digital captivity, those school-shooter softies were surprisingly athletic and tactically adequate under fire.

With seven minutes left in the tie-breaking round I knew our opposition would mount an all-out assault. Even if we managed to repel them, nobody had the stamina for another tiebreaker. The game had to end.

A dead-end corridor on the far side of the mall was the perfect place to set a trap. I only needed a brave volunteer to serve as bait. Someone to make a whole lot of noise and lure the Under Thirties to their doom in the food court.

Pris volunteered before I could finish saying the word volunteer. Of course she did.

I sent our best shooters to wait in ambush. Pris shucked all protective gear except for her face shield, kneepads and goggles before bounding off to draw enemy fire in cutoff denim shorts.

Sometimes bravery looks like that.