Chart Throb (31 page)

Authors: Ben Elton

BOOK: Chart Throb

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‘Trent?’ Penny, the continuity girl, chipped in. ‘I’m really unhappy about split stories. I make this point at
every
debrief, split stories are a continuity nightmare.’

‘Hear, hear,’ said Costume.

‘Seconded,’ said Make-up.

‘Thirded with knobs on,’ said Hair.

‘Anything can happen,’ Penny continued, warming to a topic on which she could speak without pause for hours. ‘Remember last year when Rodney got stung on the nose by that wasp when we had just shot the first half of the cute toddler story?’

‘Excuse me . . .’ said Rodney.

‘It was a continuity
nightmare
! One minute he’s fine, then what was supposed to be two seconds later he’s got a nose the size of an apple. It looked like his nose swelled up
mid-sentence.’

‘We did our best,’ said Make-up.

‘So did we,’ said Lighting.

‘Never mind his nose,’ said Costume. ‘What about the Frappuccino he spilt all over his shirt when the wasp stung him?
And
I had him in darks that day. More fool me.’

‘Excuse me,’ said Rodney.

‘Just a MINUTE, Rodney,’ Calvin snapped. ‘People! We need to focus here. No sense in fighting old battles. We begin recording
tomorrow
! Now, let us proceed towards a decision here. What costume is Rodney wearing immediately pre-lunch?’

Once more massive files were opened and consulted by all relevant departments.

‘Well, currently we’ve scheduled to go to virtual Dublin at the end of the Minger quickies so that we can knock off the Irish Mingers along with the UK ones, which means he’ll have changed into his St Paddy’s Day rugby shirt. Therefore if we were then to pick up the second half of his row with Beryl we’d have to change him back.’

‘Plus,’ said Props, ‘we’ll have to move the leprechaun gonk and lose the shamrock.’

‘You see,’ said Calvin, ‘it just doesn’t make sense to split the story.’

‘Could we shift the Paddy Mingers to after lunch?’ Trent enquired. ‘And not go to virtual Dublin till then?’

But the production secretary had admin issues with that.

‘They’ve all done their travel arrangements. The last cheap flight back leaves at two thirty. We’d have to put them up and there’s nothing left in the budget for overnights.’

Calvin turned to Trent with a shrug. ‘Gotta tell you, Trent, I don’t think splitting the story and doing the second half pre-lunch is a goer . . .’

‘Excuse me, Calvin?’ said Rodney.

‘YES, RODNEY! What is it?’

‘Did you say . . . Beryl throws the coffee over me?’

‘I
think
that’s what we’ve been discussing for the past ten minutes. Yes.’

‘I thought we’d agreed.’

‘Agreed what?’

‘That we wouldn’t be bothering with all that this year.’

‘All what?’

‘The throwing water over Rodney stuff. I thought we’d agreed that the joke’s got tired.’

‘That’s right. We agreed. Throwing water, very tired. So
X Factor
, so
Pop Idol.
Sharon Osbourne, Louis Walsh, they did that. Throwing water is
so
five minutes ago.’

‘Exactly, and—’ Rodney tried to intervene.

‘Which is why we’ve decided that Beryl should throw coffee.’

‘You really think that makes a difference?’

‘Oh, absolutely. On
Chart Throb
coffee is the new water. I’m glad you brought it up, Rodders.’

‘Oh . . . right. Happy to help.’

There was a moment’s silence before Calvin turned back to the group.

‘So. It’s agreed then, Beryl throws the coffee over Rodney just before the morning break.’

Virtual Carnegie Hall and Other Dreams

Late that afternoon, as Calvin and his team were struggling through the tenth hour of their exhausting pre-production day, one of the subjects of their debate was checking into the Birmingham Holiday Inn.

Most of the selected contestants would be travelling to their ‘auditions’ early the following morning, but Shaiana lived a long way away and so she had decided to come up the day before and take a room.

After consuming an undressed salad and a Diet Coke from room service, she ate all the chocolate in the minibar and washed down a final upper with the little bottle of red wine. She had plenty of stuff to put her to sleep later but for now she wanted to be awake, to mentally prepare, to centre herself.

Sitting on the end of the bed and assuming a lotus position, she closed her eyes and considered the moment. She wondered how she would view it in years to come. Would she look back fondly and remember how the journey towards her destiny had begun right there, meditating alone in a Holiday Inn? Just her, the electric kettle, the trouser press and a heart bursting with dreams. Would she always have a soft spot for Holiday Inns? Would she think them lucky? Her good luck charm? Perhaps in the future, despite having long since been able to afford presidential suites in five-star hotels, she would still insist in staying at Holiday Inn Expresses before her shows. For it was certain that were she to succeed on
Chart Throb
and be recognized as the significant musical artist she so much wanted to be, then no sold-out gig at Carnegie or the Albert Hall could ever compare in importance to the gig she would play on the morrow.

‘The first step on the ladder is the longest stretch,’ she said quietly to herself. ‘Place your foot upon the rung and progress boldly and without fear.’

Then she hummed quietly for a while, enjoying the feeling of the vibrations within her throat. Smiling to herself, she indulged in fantasy.

‘For dreams are the harbingers of reality and what is reality if not a dream?’

She fantasized that one day she would be the ‘face’ of Holiday Inn. Refusing Revlon and Estee Lauder as beneath her talent, she would nonetheless promote Holiday Inns (donating her fee to the UN Children’s Fund) because it had been in a Holiday Inn that it had all begun.

Opening her eyes, Shaiana concentrated on her breathing. Then she got off the bed and stood before the mirror, her hairbrush to her lips. She breathed in deeply and belted out ‘The Wind Beneath My Wings’.

Somebody banged on the wall but Shaiana didn’t hear them. She was at Carnegie Hall.

Dreams were alive all over the Midlands that night as in two hundred different homes unborn stars hovered in limbo waiting for the morning when, with luck and divine justice, they would explode into a sparkling, brilliant light, a light that would warm and illuminate every aspect of their lives and the lives of those they loved.

The four members of The Four-Z were in church with their mothers. Each of them was praying fervently that this would be the last evening in which they would contemplate a future with almost no prospect of salvation from the grim urban nightmare into which they had been born. A future in which they and the majority of their friends were either unemployed or criminals.

Quasar was stripping for a hen night. He didn’t mind the work normally but this bunch were rough as dogs’ guts. Quasar was thirty-eight (he admitted to thirty-two) and thought he could remember a time when ladies had still been ladies. When he had started out in the business women had not grabbed at his thong with their long nails and then expected him to humiliate himself for the fivers that occasionally they slipped beneath it. Then it had been
cheeky
(or so he told himself), it had been
fun.
Now it was almost entirely sexual, and some of the women were predatory, as if blaming him for the shitty men they’d have to deal with when they got home.

The Quasar, however, liked to look on the bright side and as the women shrieked and dared each other to touch his penis he told them that they were lucky girls because they were touching the love pump of a future star.

Suki would have
loved
to be stripping – she had always infinitely preferred it to prostitution – but she was forty, which was pushing it for an exotic dancer, besides which her boob job was nearly eleven years old and had recently turned into rather a painful mess. They still looked all right when forced into a push-up bra but naked they were scarred and limp, one hung lower than the other and the implants had hardened, pulling at the skin, so there was now a clear resemblance to a ball in a sock. Suki desperately wanted to get a second job done on them but she was not stupid and understood that it would have to be done properly to avoid serious health complications. For that she needed a lot more money than she was likely to earn working the pavement.

As she leaned across the handbrake of her client’s car and undid his fly she was thinking, as she always did, of her audition. Pulling out his dick, she imagined for a moment that it was a microphone and even smiled to herself. Suki knew that it was an impossible dream; on the other hand sometimes they
did
let the strangest people through. That was what was so wonderful about the show, it gave anyone a chance. Who knew? Anything was possible. Perhaps one day soon she really would swap those dicks for a microphone.

Iona and her bandmates were eating fish and chips and drinking lager in a Tennant’s pub in Glasgow. They had travelled down to the city that evening because Iona had an early flight to catch in the morning.

‘Budget Air,’ said Iona, eyeing the ticket. ‘I remember when that little wanker used to talk to me about private jets.’

‘Ugh,’ said Douglas. ‘Sounds disgusting.’

They all laughed.

‘I still feel really weird about this,’ said Iona. ‘It just seems wrong.’

‘We’ve discussed it over and over again,’ said Fleur. ‘If you do well then it’s good for all of us.’

‘And if you do badly it can’t get much worse,’ Mary chipped in.

‘But I’ve never sung alone in my life,’ Iona moaned. ‘I’ll probably end up just singing the harmonies.’

‘As if they’d notice anyway,’ Douglas sneered. ‘Rodney Root and Beryl “rock chick” Blenheim wouldn’t know a tune from a harmony if it bashed them over the head and Calvin doesn’t care either way. Come on, Iona, we’ve been through this, we know how it’s done. We know what the game is.’

‘I know. I
know
,’ said Iona nervously.

‘Which is why this is so important for us. You have another chance for yourself
and
the band and this time you know a bit more about it. This time you have to play the game.’

‘Oh, I’ll do that all right,’ said Iona. ‘If I can just get through the first round or two, I’ll play the game.’

’Chelle from Peroxide treated herself to a bikini wax while her partner Georgie treated herself to a kingsized Mars bar that would remain in her system for just three minutes.

Graham and Millicent sat in Graham’s room holding hands and listening to Bob Dylan.

A sixteen-year-old boy called Troy, whose room was full of comics but no books, stood before his mirror singing ‘Angels’ by Robbie Williams.

A young single mum struggled to arrange a full day’s childcare for her sick little boy.

Over dinner in a refuge for victims of domestic violence, a group of women toasted the future success of one of their number in champagne that had previously been reserved for Christmas.

And all over Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Leicester and the whole Black Country, right up to Stoke, down almost to Watford and as far west as the Welsh border, they sang their songs, practised their moves, gargled their Listerine and considered their outfits. Mingers danced, Blingers preened, Clingers confided in friends, talked to God and attended self-assertion workshops. And they all shared the same dream. Every Clinger Blinger, Minger Clinger, Blinger Minger with a bit of Cling and Clinger Minger with a bit of Bling dreamed of stardom. And every one of them wondered . . . what would it be like? What
would
it be like? To be chosen, to win through. To be a star!

A few miles down the Ml, Christian Appleyard, winner of the first-ever
Chart Throb
contest, left his Docklands flat for the last time and headed home to his mother’s. There was a photographer there to record the event. An ex-number-one artist having his mortgage foreclosed was definitely still news.

The Prince does the King

His Royal Highness had also been summoned to attend the Birmingham audition, in preparation for which he was trying out songs on his long-suffering wife.

‘I expect I shall look an absolute
muggins
,’ he said.

‘Yes, I expect you will,’ his wife replied, polishing a riding boot.

‘Do you think people will laugh?’

‘I certainly would.’

‘Well really, dear, I do think you might be more positive about all this. I am trying to save the monarchy, you know.’

‘Yes, darling, I know and I’m very proud of you. But it is all rather
droll
, do admit.’

The Prince had been working on ‘Burning Love’, a song made famous by Elvis Presley. He drew a deep breath and began again.