Chart Throb

by Elton, Ben

  ‘By appearing on a nationwide talent show?’

  ‘Yes! By appearing on the single most influential, ubiquitous and powerful cultural institution in the country. You, sir, with the help of your passionate commitment to organic farming, high-fibre diets and full youth employment, and your pleasant light baritone, can save the monarchy as surely as Queen Bess did at Tilbury. This, sir, is your duty!’

  ‘My duty?’

  ‘Yes! Your duty!’

  ‘To appear on Chart Throb?’

  ‘Yes, sir! Your country needs you.’

  His Royal Highness did not reply. For a time he sipped his tea in silence, seemingly trying to come to terms with the enormity of what was being suggested.

  ‘Sir,’ Calvin said with heavy significance, ‘we are living in a post-modern world.’ This was a phrase which Calvin used regularly and with great effect, despite having no idea what it meant.

  Still the Prince remained silent.

  ‘Plus,’ Calvin urged, laying his trump card down on the table, ‘people will love you again.’

  His Royal Highness looked up.

  ‘Do you . . . Do you really think so?’

  It seemed to Calvin that there was a wealth of weariness in his sad eyes.

  ‘Of course,’ Calvin said quietly. ‘Everyone loves the winner of Chart Throb.’

  ‘Winner?’

  Calvin had almost revealed too much of his hand.

  ‘Well, perhaps not winner, sir, that of course will be up to the public to decide, but as the country’s foremost judge of talent and personality I am convinced that you could go a very long way. At least far enough for people to have the opportunity to see the real you.’

  Once more the Prince fell silent for the time it took to nibble a biscuit. When he spoke again Calvin knew he had his man.

  ‘I’ve never seen Chart Throb,’ he said, ‘but I remember my boys watching X Factor.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I believe they received upwards of seventy-five thousand entrants.’

  ‘We got ninety-five last series.’

  ‘Well, forgive my stupidity, Mr Simms. How do you propose to convince people that having auditioned all those ninety-five thousand the best potential pop star you could come up with was yours truly?’

  Calvin was actually surprised. He had imagined that, having been a part of the cultural establishment all his life, the Prince of Wales might be a little more astute than the average punter. He might have just a modicum of media savvy. Some simple common sense even. But it turned out that he was wrong. The heir to the throne clearly still believed in the tooth fairy.

  ‘Ninety-five thousand people?’ Calvin said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you think we audition them all?’

  ‘I was under the impression that that was the whole point. Don’t you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You don’t audition them?’

  ‘No, we don’t.’

  ‘Oh . . . I’m not sure I follow.’

  ‘Sir. Please. Just do the maths.’

  The Maths

  Ninety-five thousand people.

  Three judges.

  Twelve finalists.

  Just one Chart Throb!!

  That was the breathless message with which (accompanied by the urgent, pounding, Chart Throb theme music) the lovely Keely would preface each episode of the show. Reminding the public yet again of the gigantic number of applicants and the three stern, unbending arbiters of poptastic excellence whose arses each and every wannabe star must attempt to rock in order to reach the finals.

  Ninety-five thousand people.

  Three judges.

  Twelve finalists.

  Just one Chart Throb!!

  Keely would shout it over footage of impossibly long escalators crowded with gurning hopefuls. She would yell it in front of leisure-centre reception areas packed with a cheering, chanting throng of stars in waiting. She screamed it as the dizzying, whirling crane shots spun over the heads of vast crowds in car parks. She shouted it again as the endless queues snaked their way forward so that the thousands of hopefuls might be numbered, badged and registered at the long trestle tables.

  And after the crowds came the moody and dramatic shots of the three judges, dressed in black, arms folded, staring into the cameras with those grim, unsmiling faces. Faces which said ‘We will see you, we will judge you fairly, you will get your chance. But do not fuck with us because we will not be taking any shit and only the best and the toughest will survive our ruthless selection process.’

  Ninety-five thousand people.

  Three judges.

  That was it, the whole show in a nutshell. The connection made loud and clear to the meanest intelligence.

  Ninety-five thousand hopefuls. The mad and the sad. The sublime and the ridiculous. The tragic and the gifted. The beautiful and the damned. The good. The bad. And the very, very ugly. And then the ruthless Politburo of Pop. Calvin, Beryl and the other bloke, who would after an exhaustive audition process choose twelve finalists to be offered up to the nation.

  It was all very simple. And it was all complete fiction.

  ‘Sir,’ Calvin explained, ‘when most of those ninety-five thousand hopefuls get rejected they won’t even be in the same country as Beryl, Rodney and me, let alone the same room.’

  ‘Really? That’s extraordinary! Have I been terribly naïve?’

  ‘Don’t you read the celebrity magazines?’

  ‘I sometimes find them in the loo when my lads’ girlfriends have stayed.’

  ‘I thought you considered yourself a man of the people, sir? Anyway, if you did read them you’d know that I spend half the year in LA! I am a huge star over there. Chart Throb USA is the biggest show in the world.’

  ‘Goodness, well done.’

  ‘So how could I possibly find the time to wander around provincial Britain personally considering the star quality of ninety-five thousand nobodies?’

  ‘Well, perhaps not you, but . . .’

  ‘Maybe the other two, you think? Beryl lives in America full time! It’s public knowledge that she looks after the entertainment ventures of the vast Blenheim family business. Rodney’s around, of course, but even he has a life of some sort. How could you, how could anyone possibly imagine that the three of us could arrange to meet up and conduct ninety-five thousand auditions?’

  ‘Well, I suppose I hadn’t imagined that you actually auditioned them all.’

  ‘Maybe you think we open the envelopes? Maybe you think we read ninety-five thousand of these?’

  Calvin handed the Prince a copy of the Chart Throb entrance form. In that carefully worded document the applicant was required to promise to abide by the rules of the competition no matter how often they might be changed and never, on pain of criminal prosecution, to discuss any aspect of their experience with the press.

  ‘Every single person who fills in one of these,’ Calvin continued, ‘does so because they want to prove to me, Beryl and Rodney that they have what it takes – that X, that It, that Pow! which will propel them from the humdrum inadequacy of their current existence towards that mythical nirvana called the “celebrity lifestyle”. They all think they have a chance. That once they get themselves in front of those three famous judges they have a genuine chance, no matter how small, of all their dreams coming true.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure they do.’

  ‘But they’re not going to get in front of us, are they, sir? At least about ninety-four thousand of them won’t. The chances of any of them actually getting to perform for me, Beryl and Rodney are tiny.’

  ‘Goodness gracious,’ the Prince said, genuinely surprised, ‘so it’s all a lie?’

  ‘Of course it isn’t a lie, sir! It’s show business. It’s entertainment. We don’t deceive anybody. The information is there for people if they want to see it, they only have to do the maths. Ninety-five thousand contestants, three judges. How could we possibly consider even a fraction of that number? Sa
y we did ten an hour, that’s nine thousand five hundred hours. Assuming we worked a ten-hour day, that would be nine hundred and fifty days! That’s nearly three years we would have to be sitting there behind a trestle table saying, “I think you need to find yourself another dream,” to an endless stream of idiots, and that’s if we worked flat out without a break.’

  ‘I suppose it does all seem a bit improbable when you come to think about it,’ the Prince conceded.

  ‘Of course it is. People can work it out if they want to. They only have to do the maths. But they don’t want to do the maths and why should they? Any more than they would want to watch a film that reminded them that it was only actors reciting a script. We are an entertainment show. My researchers select the most interesting and entertaining personalities to bring before the judges. I am in no doubt, sir, that you would be selected, with or without my help. Just as I have no doubt that you will make it to the finals. Then it will be between you and the public. Your public. Your people. This is about the soul of the nation, sir. It’s 1940 and the barbarians are at the gate. Britain is holding out for a hero. Will you accept the challenge, sir? Will you be that hero?’

  Shaiana

  For the hundredth time she began the sentence anew.

  How could she do it? Put down in ten words her hopes, her dreams. Her hunger to be a singer.

  I want it so much, she wrote.

  Even as she set down the words, she knew that they were hollow and uninspiring. Why would anybody care that she wanted it? Everybody wanted it. What was not to want? But did they want it like she wanted it? Did they want it so much? That was why they had to choose her, because of how much she wanted it. They simply had to recognize her ferocious desire to show the world that she was not a nothing, a joke, a nobody. That was what made her different. That was why she could be a star. Because her performance would be fuelled by the passion of a thousand slights and sneers.

  I want it so much – five words.

  That left her with five more to write. Perhaps she could redeem her application with those. Come up with some brilliant, sparkling, seductive little sentence that would hide her pain and show her to be the brilliant, sparkling, seductive young woman she so wished herself to be.

  Instead, once more she wrote I want it so much.

  Now she had ten words. Or rather she had five words, twice.

  Shaiana reached for her pills and swallowed three. The bottle was nearly empty but she knew that she could get more. There had always been drugs in her life, drugs and booze. Even as a little girl she had never known a time when those bittersweet panaceas had not been part of the furniture in her family home.

  The pills helped but Shaiana craved a much stronger drug. She was certain that if she could just prove herself as a singer, if she could be a star and in so doing distance herself from the demeaning life that had created and defined her, then she would no longer need to find comfort and escape in those pills.

  Once more she tried to focus her tired eyes on the application form, as if hoping to find inspiration from the cold hard commands that she already knew by heart.

  I want it so much. I want it so much.

  With a start Shaiana realized she had written the words on the form itself. Up until that point she had been writing her sentences out in rough on a big block of ruled A4 that had once been intended to contain her schoolwork. Now, suddenly, she had committed herself.

  Not really, of course. She could download another form easily enough, she could download a hundred. But she didn’t. Perhaps this was a sign. Perhaps the truth was what she was meant to write. Shaiana took up the form, filled in her details, signed it, attached her photograph and slipped it into an envelope.

  Emma and the Clingers, Blingers and Mingers

  Two weeks later the envelope was being opened at the offices of Chart Throb in London. The person opening it was called Emma, a researcher on the show. Emma was good at her job and destined for advancement. On the last series three of her initial picks had actually been chosen as finalists, which was, of course, every researcher’s dream. Born with a naturally sympathetic personality, Emma had always been alert to people’s anxieties and dreams, understanding when they were unhappy and required support. This gave her a real edge in sensing the neediness that was such an essential element in the emotional make-up of the successful Chart Throb applicant.

  Shaiana’s form struck Emma immediately. Of course they all wanted it, in fact the very phrase I want it so much had become something of a Chart Throb mantra, but to write it twice? That was interesting; Emma had never seen that before. It was so inelegant, so raw, it smacked of real desperation and Emma knew that Calvin loved real desperation. She looked down at the section where Shaiana had been asked to describe herself. It was a small box with three blank lines in it, just twenty-five centimetres in which to write. These boxes were usually very full; most applicants managed to fit in as many as twenty words and the record was forty-four.

  Shaiana had written only three: I am me.

  Emma looked at the photograph which, as instructed, had been stapled to the top right-hand corner of the application form. A tense, forceful-looking face, not beautiful but pretty enough, in a plain Jane sort of way. The eyes were big and Emma thought that the girl was holding them unnaturally open. Look at me! those eyes seemed to be saying. Can’t you see I want this so much?

  ‘I think we should see this one,’ Emma said, handing the form across the table to Trent. Trent, the most senior researcher on the show, made all the final decisions at first-round stage and answered directly to Calvin.

  Clingers, Blingers and Mingers were the three types of entrant that Chart Throb researchers looked for.

  ‘The Clingers are the desperate ones,’ Trent had explained on Emma’s first day at work.

  ‘Aren’t they all desperate?’ Emma had enquired.

  ‘Of course not. They’re all hopeful but they’re not all desperate. Clingers are desperate. They have just enough talent to be utterly self-deluded . . . actually, sometimes they manage to be self-deluded without having any talent at all, which is really good telly. Calvin loves that. Clingers cry and plead and beg. God gave them their dream, you see. It’s that important. Personally I hope that if there is a God he’s got better things to do than arrange the recording career of some barmaid from Solihull.’

  ‘So Clingers are women?’ Emma had asked.

  ‘Normally, but they can be male. Middle-aged guys who just want to give their kids a better life than they’ve had. Club singers who’ve done their time and paid their dues and want one last shot at the dream. You’ll start to spot them easily enough.’

  ‘What about Blingers?’

  ‘Blingers are the extroverts. The show-offs. The type of weirdly self-confident lunatics whose unshakeable faith in their own powers to fascinate actually makes them sort of fascinating, in a kamikaze kind of a way. They say things like Hey, what’s wrong with being a little crazy? They strike poses. They flirt with Beryl. They think they’re sexy. Women Blingers tend to be plumpers but they’re comfy being curvy and invariably turn up half naked.’

  ‘And Mingers?’

  ‘Ah, now that’s entertainment. The life’s blood of Chart Throb, the most essential element. Without the Mingers Chart Throb would be nothing.’

  ‘And who are they?’

  ‘The true casualties, the saddos, the uglies, the comically short-sighted, the cleft-palated, the misshapen, the obese, the educationally challenged, the emotionally stunted and the spotty nerds. The most vulnerable and inadequate members of society.’

  ‘It all sounds rather exploitative,’ Emma had said.

  ‘Hello!’ Trent sneered in reply. ‘Duh! Do you think we run a charity? Of course it’s exploitative. It’s a business. McDonald’s for the senses. What truly successful business doesn’t exploit its customers by pandering to their desires? We’ve turned the whole country into one vast medieval village so that we can all stand in the market square and laugh at
the idiots.’

  ‘The Mingers.’

  ‘Exactly. Quasimodo time. They sing their little song and do their little dance, desperate for the laughter of the mob because at least it means somebody has noticed them.’

  ‘And what about singers, aren’t we looking for them too?’

  ‘Good question.’

  ‘Well, it is a singing competition.’

  ‘Yes, a lot of people make the mistake of thinking that. Actually singers are by far the least interesting group. Singers enter in their tens of thousands but we select very few for real consideration. Being a singer, no matter how good, is simply not enough. To be considered as a singer you have to fit into one of the other categories too. We’ll take Clingers, Blingers and Mingers who aren’t singers and give them a good run too, might even put one in the finals, but we would never even consider a singer who was not also a Clinger, a Blinger or a Minger.’

  That conversation had taken place the year before. Now Emma was as practised at spotting the categories as any researcher on the Chart Throb team.

  ‘This girl’s a Clinger,’ said Trent, referring to Shaiana’s entry form. ‘Shame she’s not fatter. We’re still a bit short of SOPs.’

  Emma winced. SOP was office shorthand for Sad Old Plumper. She had never quite got used to the casual cruelty with which her colleagues discussed the applicants.

  ‘You know Calvin likes the heavier ones,’ Trent went on. ‘They’re more real.’

  ‘This girl’s got Clinger eyes,’ Emma insisted. ‘They put pounds on her.’

  Trent shrugged and for a moment Shaiana’s application hovered between the recycling pile and three much smaller ‘first audition’ piles. Finally Trent made his decision and the form was placed on the pile marked ‘Clingers’.

  Emma opened another envelope.

  Two ugly girls who thought they were ‘different’. Not different enough, not ugly enough. Recycling.