[Ruth]

Judging from this bit of an interview with Bill Bailey, I doubt he sent any text in support of Preston:

In 2002, he replaced Irish comic Sean Hughes as a team captain in BBC2's pop quiz Never Mind the Buzzcocks. The other week, the show offered him the chance to do a po-mo critique of celebrity fatuousness. It happened like this. Preston, the troubled crooner from ska revivalists the Ordinary Boys, was on Bailey's team. "He'd been on before and seemed quite nice but in the intervening period he'd gone on Celebrity Big Brother and met his wife Chantelle." You mean the ordinary girl who wasn't a celebrity but now is and was ordinary but now isn't? Bailey looks at me and rolls his eyes by way of affirmation. "Anyway, Simon [Amstell, the host] started teasing him by reading out chunks from her autobiography, Living the Dream, which, God bless her, isn't Thomas Pynchon. In terms of slaggings-off it was a one on the Richter scale - really gentle. And then Preston said of the autobiography, 'I haven't read it.' Which was an ungallant thing to say.

"He got the hump because we had the audacity or temerity to have a go at him. He ripped the mic off, said, 'Out of order' and stood up to leave. I managed to say that he thought he'd been voted off. That got a big laugh and he growled even more and left. He'd just been on a reality show, for God's sake! Any friend could have told him, 'Expect to get it with both barrels.' But he didn't."

Then Bailey had a brainwave. He walked into the audience and grabbed someone who looked like Preston. "He was smartly turned out with a quiff. So I said, 'You'll do.' And he was great. He was a really good sport. His family were there, laughing and loving it." The one-time ordinary boy replaced by the genuine article - nice touch.