by Harry Hill
Suddenly Matt had an idea. ‘Alf?’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Do we have time for a small detour?’
‘A very small one, yes, sir!’
A few minutes later the limo pulled up outside a large red-brick detached house in a rather leafier lane than any of the three boys lived in.
‘Won’t be a sec,’ said Matt, hopping out and hightailing it up to the entryphone on the gate.
‘Hello?’ came a familiar female voice.
‘Kitty? It’s Matt. What are you up to?’
‘Um, I’ve just come off the phone to Mick at the Rose and Crown – he’s thinking about the gig, which is good news, and now I think I’d better do my geography homework. Anyway, what are you doing here? I thought you were going to see Russel Perkins at the O2 …?’
‘Magda couldn’t make it – I’ve got a spare ticket.’
‘You mean …?’ asked Kitty
‘Yes, the geography homework will have to wait – you’re coming with us!’
‘What?’
‘I’ve got a car outside, courtesy of Excalibur Management, and a ticket with your name on it!’
There was a click as she hung up.
‘Wow!’ thought Matt. ‘She really has got it in for Dickie Hart if she’s happy to pass up a free night out at the 02!’ Then he heard the front door of the house open and the clitter-clatter of a girl’s shoes on the garden path. He looked up and sure enough pulling on her coat and attempting to brush her hair at the same time was Kitty Hope.
‘Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer still,’ she said cryptically as she passed him and clambered into the car.
There were a few disgruntled snorts from Ahmed and Rob as Kitty made herself comfortable in the back of the Roller. They’d never fully accepted Kitty into their circle of friends – she was a year younger after all – but she was perfectly capable of holding her own and pretty soon the four started to relax and enjoy the trip.
They loved the looks they got as they pulled up at traffic lights. You could see the other drivers craning their necks to see who was in the back of the luxury vehicle, but of course they couldn’t see through the smoked-glass windows. A couple of times Matt had slowly lowered one of the windows to reveal just the top of his head as a tease. Another time the three boys had all hung out of the window pulling faces – until Kitty had told them to behave themselves.
After a while they settled down and Matt asked Kitty how she was getting on booking him some gigs.
‘Don’t worry, Matt, I’m working on it. I’m just finalising the last few details. I thought maybe I could meet you in the DMC tomorrow after school to run you through it,’ she said.
‘That’s great news!’ said Matt, eager to get back on stage.
The traffic got heavier as they hit the outskirts of London and the car slowed down to a snail’s pace, but before too long they were pulling up outside the giant dome of the O2.
‘It’s massive!’ said Ahmed.
‘Twenty thousand seats to be exact,’ said Kitty.
‘Imagine one person and a microphone selling that number of tickets!’ exclaimed Matt.
‘Yeah, but he’s doing two weeks,’ said Ahmed. ‘He must be minted!’
‘One day, Matt,’ smiled Rob, putting his arm round him and giving him a squeeze. ‘And you won’t forget your old friends when it comes to spreading the money about will you?’
‘Come on, lads. Keep up!’ barked Kitty who was already striding towards the huge glass doors.
Matt thanked Alf the driver as the boys piled out of the car and ran to catch her up.
‘Shall we go and look at the merchandise?’ said Kitty. ‘It’s always interesting to look at subsidiary revenue streams.’
‘She swallowed a dictionary, or what?’ Rob laughed.
‘She knows what she’s talking about,’ said Matt.
‘And she can’t half run fast for a shorty!’ said Ahmed, struggling to keep up.
Once they got to the ‘merch stand’ and had seen all the different variations of T-shirts, badges, bags, DVDs and souvenir programmes, they realised they couldn’t actually afford to buy any of it.
‘Look at the prices, Kit,’ said Matt, wide-eyed.
‘Yes, someone’s making a lot of money. Look at the queues!’ she said, aghast at the huge number of people lined up patiently to buy a souvenir of Russel Perkins.
‘I wouldn’t mind, but he’s not even very good,’ muttered Rob.
‘Yeah,’ said Ahmed. ‘You’d have to pay me to wear a Russel Perkins T-shirt!’
‘Shh!’ hissed Matt. ‘Someone might hear you. We’re his guests don’t forget.’
They put what little money they did have together and had enough to buy two portions of chips and a bottle of water between them.
‘Why would anyone pay for water when it’s free out of the tap?’ mused Matt. ‘I mean, you don’t pay for bottled air!’
‘Is that a gag?’ said Rob.
‘It is now,’ said Matt reaching for his little black book.
An announcement came over the tannoy asking the audience to take their seats.
As they walked up to the ticket check and security, Rob pointed to one of the queues with a sign over it saying ‘VIPs only’, which was pretty much empty.
‘What’s a VIP?’ he said.
‘That, my friend, is what we are,’ said Matt. ‘Come on!’
As they approached the desk a girl appeared with a clipboard.
‘Hi,’ she said brightly. ‘You’re Matt aren’t you?’
Rob nudged him and whispered, ‘You’re in there, mate!’
‘I’m Claire,’ she continued, ‘and Mr Hart has asked me to look after you tonight. Here’s a few little things that he wanted you all to have.’
She handed them each a carrier bag. Matt peered into his – there was a Russel Perkins tour T-shirt, an ‘I Love Russ!’ badge, a souvenir programme and a copy of his latest DVD.
‘eBay,’ whispered Rob under his breath.
‘Great! Thanks, Claire!’ said Matt, digging Rob sharply in the ribs.
‘That’s my pleasure,’ said Claire. ‘Now, if you’d like to walk this way I’ll show you to your seats.’
As they followed her through the doors into the auditorium Matt started moving in a very odd way, like he was holding a pencil between his bum cheeks.
‘What are you doing, Matt?’ said Kitty.
‘You heard her, I’m walking that way!’ he laughed, pointing to Claire as she clattered along in her mini skirt and high-heeled shoes. Rob and Ahmed laughed along and started imitating her too.
All four of them gasped as they entered the auditorium.
‘It’s enormous!’ said Rob.
‘If you wait in your seats at the end of the show, I’ll come and take you to the after-show!’ chimed Claire.
‘Great seats,’ said Rob as they sat down. He was right – they were only three rows from the front. Matt looked around at the other people in their block, and spotted a few faces he recognised off the TV. There was the Radio One breakfast-show host Nick Arbuckle, the TV presenter Liam O’Deary, a few of the girls from The Only Way Is Kent, and then he spotted him.
‘I don’t believe it! Look, Rob! There’s Eddie!’
‘Where?’ said Rob, craning his neck round to see where Matt was pointing. He was right! About siz metres away was Matt’s all-time comic hero, Nigerian-born stand-up and host of Stand-Up at the Apollo – Eddie Odillo.
‘Look, Matt! He’s waving at you!’ said Rob. Matt looked round to see if there was someone standing behind him but there wasn’t – Rob was right, Eddie was actually waving and smiling at him. So Matt tentatively waved back. Surely he didn’t remember him from when they’d met backstage after his T Factor audition? Eddie raised his hand in a thumbs up. Then went back to chatting with his mates.
‘OMG,’ said Rob. ‘He remembers you!’
Matt just laughed. This was turning into quite a night. Just then
the lights dimmed, the music got louder and a voice came over the PA.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Russel Perkins!’
The crowd erupted in cheers and applause as the young comic ambled on in just a pair of jeans and one of his own tour T-shirts.
‘Good evening, London!’ he bellowed into the mic. ‘Let’s hear you make some noise!’
‘Sounds like he’s taken a page out of Pavey’s book! What sort of noise does he mean?’ Matt whispered to Rob.
‘Yeah, bit corny,’ said Rob.
‘I mean, I could do my impression of a chicken! Cluck-cluck-cluck!’
‘I don’t think he means that sort of noise,’ said Rob.
‘Or my elephant caught in a lift! Phwwwweeeeeeeeep!’ joked Matt with a grin. ‘All I’m saying is he needs to be more specific about the sort of noise he wants us to make, that’s all!’ As he was saying this he was reaching for his little black book again. He found a blank page and scribbled in it ‘Make some noise/opener’.
Russel Perkins was usually described in the papers and online as ‘young, fresh-faced’ and ‘boy next-door type’, and his humour reflected that. It was broadly observational humour on the kind of subjects that affected twenty-something people and in particular blokes. So stuff about relationships, stuff about texting, stuff about getting drunk – that sort of thing. Not the sort of stuff that particularly excited Matt and his friends, but Matt had to admit that he seemed to know what he was doing.
‘Where have you come down from?’ he asked a girl in the front row.
‘Essex!’ she squealed back at him.
‘I’m sorry?’ he said.
‘Essex!’ she squealed even louder.
‘No, I heard you the first time, luv, I’m just sorry!’ he said, then moved on to another victim. It went really well for about the first ten minutes – big laughs, one rolling into the next – then it started to slow up. He wasn’t being helped by the acoustics.
‘It’s weird,’ whispered Matt to Kitty, sitting next to him. ‘There’s like a delayed reaction.’
He was right. As Russel delivered a gag, it hit the front few rows first and then took maybe a couple of seconds to hit the back of the arena, where the audience were pretty much just watching him on the giant video screens. So there was a strange effect of the two halves of the audience laughing at different times, which seemed to really upset Russel’s comic timing.
‘He’s struggling,’ whispered Kitty. ‘The venue’s just too big.’
‘If you’re sitting up the back, you might as well be watching the DVD,’ chipped in Rob.
After twenty minutes, the audience response had all but creaked to a halt – after forty they started to get restless. An hour in and Russel’s set was punctuated by the sound of seats flipping up as people walked down the rows to the toilets or to get a drink. He just about managed to pull it round at the end, and the audience gave him a good applause. He bounded back on a bit too quickly for his encore and then he was off and the lights were up. The whole show had lasted an hour and a half.
‘Not great value if you were paying top price,’ said Kitty, shaking her head.
‘It was pretty slow, wasn’t it, Matt?’ said Rob to his old mate.
‘Everyone has tough gigs I guess,’ said Matt, a fact he knew only too well from bitter experience.
‘You’re being too generous,’ said Kitty. ‘There were great long pauses! He just didn’t have the charisma to fill that stage – not yet anyway. If he’d been playing a smaller place maybe it would have taken off, but here? In this barn? Big mistake.’
Ahmed was the least enamoured.
‘It was SOOOOOO lame,’ he said.
‘Stand-up wasn’t designed for these sort of places,’ said Kitty.
‘That’s not always true, Kit,’ said Matt and pointed out he’d seen Lee Evans and Michael McIntyre really kill on the same stage in their live DVDs.
‘True,’ said Kitty. ‘But imagine what those shows would have been like if they’d been at the Apollo!’
‘Still, think of the money,’ said Rob.
11
Backstage at the Dome
As they stood up, Claire appeared.
‘Mr Hart asked me to come and find you to take you backstage to meet Russel,’ she said brightly.
‘No, you’re all right,’ muttered Ahmed with a snicker. Rob stamped on his foot causing him to let out a yelp.
The girl seemed surprised that the group didn’t look more excited at the invitation. In fact Rob, Ahmed and Matt had all simultaneously looked at their shoes.
‘That’s if you want to?’ continued the girl, a little embarrassed.
‘That would be great,’ cut in Kitty.
‘Right then, follow me,’ Claire said and led them through a doorway to the side of the stage and down a corridor.
‘That was the best acting I’ve seen all night, Kitty,’ whispered Rob as they fell in behind Claire and made their way backstage.
They followed her down a long corridor, then down another at right angles to the first, down some steps, along another corridor and through a door marked ‘GREEN ROOM’.
‘More like the red room than the green room,’ whispered Rob as they walked in. And he was right! The whole room was suffused with a murky red light and was packed to the rafters with people. People of all different shapes and sizes, and it seemed that every last one was shouting at the top of their voice to the person next to them. There was a dull, distant throb coming from some speakers and through the crowd Matt could see the dim figure of a DJ.
‘This way,’ said the girl as they snaked through the vast throng until suddenly, as if they were walking through a forest, they came to a people-free clearing. There in the centre of it was the blond-haired, snaggle-toothed star of the show, Russel Perkins. For someone who’d just finished playing to 20,000 people he didn’t look particularly happy.
‘Russ, this is Matt Millz and his friends,’ said Claire, ‘… sorry, I didn’t catch your names.’
Matt held out his hand to shake the older comic’s hand, but Russel didn’t take him up on the offer – he just stood staring into the middle distance like he’d lost something.
‘Eh? Oh, hi?’ said the comedy superstar, snapping out of whatever it was that was bothering him. ‘Did you enjoy the show?’
‘Er … yes! Yes!’ said Matt. ‘Yes it was great! How about you?’
‘Bit slow wasn’t it?’ said Russel, his eyes roving round the room as if he was looking for someone in particular. ‘Have you seen Dickie?’ he said to the girl.
‘I’ll see if I can find him,’ she said and delved back into the forest of people.
The four youngsters stood awkwardly staring at Russel and Russel just looked back at them and then at the half empty glass of something, which he swirled around in his hand. It was Kitty who broke the silence.
‘How did you find the room?’ she said.
‘Er … bad, right? I mean it’s like playing an aircraft hangar,’ said Russel.
‘It’s not exactly built for comedy, that’s for sure,’ said Kitty.
‘That’s what I said to him,’ said Russel, suddenly engaged and animated. ‘I told Dickie – I said I’d much rather do somewhere smaller for more nights, but they weren’t having any of it …’
‘It would have been great at the Apollo – I mean it was good, don’t get me wrong, but at the Apollo, although it’s over three thousand people, everyone’s got a good view, and they can hear every word you say …’ said Kitty.
‘At the same time as each other!’ chipped in Matt.
‘Exactly!’ said Russel, suddenly interested in these kids. ‘You are spot on – sorry I didn’t catch your names?’
‘Oh! Sorry, yes. Kitty Hope!’
‘Matt Mills, hi! Kitty’s my manager,’ said Matt as Kitty stuffed one of her business cards into Russel’s hand.
‘Manager?’ said Russel studying the card. Then the penny dropped. ‘Oh, I’ve got it! You’re
the kid off The T Factor? The one that got disqualified for being too young – that Matt Millz!’
‘Yes, that’s right. Mr Hart invited us along.’
Russel rolled his eyes at the mention of that name. ‘Huh! Did he, yeah … every free ticket he gives out costs me two-thirds of the ticket price.’
‘That can’t be right,’ said Kitty. ‘Surely it should come out of the promoter’s allocation?’
‘You’d think, right?’ said Russel, intrigued by her apparent knowledge. ‘Anyway, it’s not that, I mean … I don’t begrudge … I’m glad you could make it. So you’re the youngest comic to raise the roof at the Apollo?’ said Russel. ‘What’s that like?’
‘I can’t explain,’ said Matt. ‘Just very, very, very exciting.’ He’d long given up trying to communicate the thrill of that special night. ‘But surely you must have played it?’
‘Sadly not,’ said Russel. ‘Dickie fell out with the management.’
‘Ah,’ said Kitty.
‘’Ello, ’ello, is someone taking my name in vain?’ came a voice from behind them and a hand grabbed Russel’s neck, then worked its way round to his shoulder. There was a strong whiff of pine aftershave.
‘Nice one, Russ!’ said Dickie Hart puffing on an e-cig. ‘Started good anyway. Lost ’em a bit in the second half. Sorry about that heckler but I sorted him out.’
‘Sorted him out?’ said Russel.
‘Had him thrown out – can’t have my boy being made a fool of on his big night can we?’
‘I think he was just trying to tell you to turn the sound up,’ said Kitty.
Dickie peered down at her and gave her a withering look.
‘Yeah well, any form of shouting is not to be encouraged.’ Then he noticed Matt and the others.
‘Matt! Glad you could make it. Car turn up OK?’
‘Yes thanks, Mr Hart, that’s some car!’ said Matt, a little more star-struck at Dickie Hart than at Russel Perkins.
‘Well, I thought you deserved a taste of what could be to come. This kid could have a big future, Russ, if only he could get himself some decent management.’ He shot another even meaner look at Kitty, who shot a similarly aggressive one back. Then he let out a big guffaw. ‘Only joking! You all right for a drink? Here, darlin’!’ he called to a passing waitress. ‘Get these young men a lager!’