by Elton, Ben
Next envelope. Pretty black boy who claimed to sing like Michael Jackson. Not as pretty as the half-dozen other black boys who claimed they could sing like Michael Jackson and who were already on the Blinger pile. Recycling.
Another envelope. Suki. Peroxide hair. Surgically enhanced boobs. Fake tan. Pussy pelmet for a skirt. ‘Hates being judged for her looks alone.’ Emma stared hard at the glossy photograph. Beneath the make-up, the tan and the false eyelashes, Emma thought that Suki looked tired, bitter and was almost certainly a prostitute. A Minger and a Clinger pretending to be a Blinger. Could work, not bad telly. Emma passed it to Trent.
‘Too many Bobbies already,’ he replied.
Bobbies was office slang for Blonde, Big Boobs.
‘It’s our year for the truly sad slappers,’ he lamented. ‘They all think Calvin will want to shag them.’
‘Well, we certainly pushed that idea last series.’
‘And aren’t we paying the price! Every fucking crack whore in Barnsley’s dreaming of a fat fee from the News of the World. Recycle her.’
Emma stared into Suki’s eyes. Here was a woman on the verge of disintegration. Her whole adult life had clearly been built on a tawdry glamour and two-dimensional sexuality that within five years or so she would no longer even be able to fake. No doubt Suki had been pretty at school, pretty enough for her to conceive the dream, the dream that would ruin her life: that she could be like the girls in the magazines.
Hates being judged by her looks alone.
Yes, thought Emma, particularly these days since you look like a sad washed-out old dish rag.
Emma was about to put the application on to the recycling pile but then, noticing that Trent was absorbed in his own research, she decided on a whim to give Suki a shot. If she featured on the show as a three-second Ming Bling it might double her stripping fee for a month or two and, God knows, it looked like she could use the money. Emma slipped Suki on to the Blingers pile and picked up another envelope.
Inside it was an application from yet another enormous West Indian mother of six with an ‘infectious laugh’ whose friends had told her to apply. Recycling.
Three more, all Theatre Arts students. Recycling. Recycling. Recycling. Seventeen more. All recycling. All those hopes, all those dreams, all those desperate pleas from desperate people asking to be saved from the lives they were leading and which they hated so much. All recycled.
Emma poured herself another cup of coffee and wondered about going outside for a cigarette. You had to stay focused, couldn’t afford to drift off, any envelope could be the one. Calvin’s rule was that every envelope must be opened as if it was the very first of the day.
For a moment Emma found her thoughts fixing on Calvin. He was such a clever man. Of course he knew it too but there was nothing wrong with that, within reason. Confidence was sexy.
Emma sipped her coffee, stretched wearily and took another envelope from the pile. Even before she had finished reading the form she knew that Graham and Millicent would receive an invitation to audition. Emma did not even bother referring the application to Trent before putting it on the Minger pile. Time was precious, the team had certain rules and Graham of the singing duo Graham and Millicent definitely had what it took.
Graham and Millicent
‘I’ll leave you two to it then,’ said Graham’s mum as she closed the bedroom door behind her. It was the bedroom of a music-mad lad: piles of CDs were stacked along the walls, while on the desk an iPod stood in its dock, connected to two enormous speakers on either side of the bed. There was a vinyl deck too and a decent-sized collection of old-fashioned LPs all lovingly catalogued. There were electric guitars, bongo drums, tuning forks, an iMac and the usual Pro Tools paraphernalia. The only difference between this bedroom and that of the majority of other music-mad young men who dreamed of pop superstardom was that there was absolutely no mess. This room was perfectly ordered, with everything in its proper place, where it could be located instantly. And there was nothing on the walls. No posters, no pictures, no framed drumskins signed by members of heavy metal bands, in fact nothing at all.
Millicent sat down beside Graham on the bed. Graham had his acoustic guitar on his lap but Millicent reached out to take it from him.
‘Come on,’ she said firmly. ‘We have to sing unaccompanied, you know that.’
‘But it’s so stupid,’ Graham replied. ‘We’re so much better with the guitar.’
‘It’s the same rules for everyone, Graham. You know how much you hate special treatment.’
‘I only hate it when it’s an excuse for denying me normal treatment,’ he replied. ‘I don’t mind cheating.’
‘I wrote and asked them. They said we can use instruments later, if we get through the opening rounds.’
‘Of course we’ll get through. I mean how good are we?’ Graham posed this question in the modern, rhetorical sense, meaning that he was quite certain in his own mind that they were very good indeed.
Millicent took hold of the guitar and as she did so her hand touched his and for a moment each of them exerted a tiny pressure.
‘We shouldn’t really be skiving off college, you know,’ she said.
‘You don’t get an audition for Chart Throb every day of the week, Milly, and anyway we won’t need qualifications when we’re stars,’ Graham replied.
‘Don’t get your hopes too high, Graham.’
‘We’re good, Milly. Everybody says so.’
‘Yes, and everybody who goes on that show says that everybody says they’re good. Come on, I thought we were going to rehearse.’
They began to sing, warming up as always with ‘Just Like A Woman’ by Bob Dylan. Milly loved the way Graham put the little croak into his voice even though she knew he only did it to cover up the inadequacies in his pitching. It was Milly who had the stronger. voice. Graham’s real passion was his instruments.
After ‘Just Like A Woman’ they did Woody Guthrie’s ‘This Land Is My Land’, and after that Graham suggested a cup of tea.
‘We’ve only sung two songs, Graham. You’re not concentrating.’
It was true, Graham did not seem to feel much like singing. He had something on his mind.
‘Milly?’
‘Yes?’
There was a pause. Whatever it was that Graham wanted to say was not coming easily.
‘What do I look like?’ he said finally.
Millicent was quite taken aback. She had known Graham for many years and yet he had never asked her that question before.
‘What do you look like?’ she repeated, feeling foolish.
‘Yes. I mean I know I have brown hair and Mum says I’m handsome . . . whatever that means, because mums always think their sons are handsome.’
‘Well . . . you are handsome.’
‘No, come on. What do I look like?’
Millicent was bright red. She wondered if Graham could sense it; she felt suddenly so hot that she imagined he must be able to feel the throbbing heat rising off her.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Why are you asking now? We’re supposed to be rehearsing.’
‘Well, if we do well at our audition, millions of people will end up seeing me, won’t they? And yet I’ve never seen myself. That’s kind of weird, isn’t it? I want to know what they’ll see.’
‘Graham, it’s only an audition.’
‘I know what you look like, Milly.’
‘Oh, do you? And what do I look like then?’
‘You look beautiful.’
And Graham reached up, found her face and drew it towards his. The kiss lasted a very long time, as first kisses often do.
And for Graham it really was his first kiss. Not just between him and Millicent but between him and anyone, and as he lashed about with his tongue inside her mouth he never wanted it to end. Millicent also entered wholeheartedly into the spirit of things. She was not entirely without experience but she was hardly practised and the two of them made up in pressure and energ
y for what they lacked in style and finesse.
Eventually they parted, Millicent having declined for the time being to allow Graham to put his hand up her jumper.
‘Your mum’s downstairs,’ she whispered.
‘Who cares?’
‘I do, Graham. Besides, this is all, well . . . I just want to get my breath, that’s all.’
‘What do I look like, Milly?’ he asked.
His sunglasses had been knocked off during the lengthy face-wrestling in which they had indulged and now Graham was sitting there with those strange, dark unseeing hollows that she so rarely saw and which when she did she felt she would never get used to. Except now, suddenly she felt that she was used to them. Perhaps interpreting her silence for embarrassment or even revulsion, Graham began to feel about for his shades.
‘Don’t put them back on, Graham. Nobody except rock stars is allowed to wear sunglasses indoors. And you’re not a rock star yet. Oh, by the way . . . you look beautiful too.’
The Four-Z
After Graham and Millicent, Emma had opened another thirty or so envelopes before deciding upon The Four-Z.
Michael, the leader of The Four-Z, had written down his full name as instructed. Michael Robert Harley. Age nineteen.
Next Michael was asked for an address. Michael had considered applying for a PO box number because the postman did not always venture all the way along the corridor on the vast low-rise development in Birmingham where he lived with his mother and sisters. The name of Michael’s estate had at one point been Aneurin Bevan, then briefly Nelson Mandela. Now it was Collingbrook, so called because of the stream that had once bubbled and gurgled across the land upon which the estate was built and which now formed part of the sewage system beneath it. Michael called it hell.
When he was growing up, there had been only two ways whereby a boy (particularly a black boy) might reasonably expect to get out of Collingbrook: crime (mainly dealing drugs) or sport. Now there was a third, Chart Throb. To Michael, forming a boy band certainly seemed a more attractive proposition than buying a gun or training as a boxer and so The Four-Z was born, and it was going to get him and his family out of hell.
There had of course been endless debate about the naming of the group and the name was still not considered entirely satisfactory. The problem was that people kept referring to the boys as The Four Zed when it seemed obvious to Michael that what they wanted to be called was The Force.
‘Why don’t you spell it The Force then?’ Michael’s mother asked.
‘Because then people would miss the pun,’ Michael replied. ‘There’s four of us see, The Four-se.’
‘Yes but if you spell it with a Z that makes it fourz like in paws, not force like in Morse. A Z isn’t an S.’
‘Yeah, I know, Mum, but a Z looks cool. Look . . .’ Michael took a piece of paper and wrote down Four-Z and beside it Four-S. ‘I mean come on, which looks cooler?’
‘People aren’t going to be reading it, they’re going to be hearing it,’ his mum pointed out.
‘Not on this form, Mum. They’ll be reading this form and I need to give it the best shot I have.’
So Michael wrote down The Four-Z, and when Emma sent the boys an invitation to attend the Birmingham audition she believed she was booking a group called The Four Zed.
Next on the form came the instruction to describe yourself or your group in ten words. Michael and his fellow group members had imagined that listing ten adjectives instead of forming a sentence was an original approach.
They wrote Bitchin’, Blingin’, Badass, Beautiful, Bodacious, Ball bustin’ Boy Band. Emma had read many such exhortations but she did not think the worse of The Four-Z for it. When thousands of people are asked the same question and given only ten words with which to answer it even Shakespeare would be hard put to come up with something unique.
The final question was Why should we pick you? In answer to this, Michael wrote, This is our dream. It is all we ever wanted. We will work hard. We will learn and we will grow. We will make you proud and we will rock your arse!
Just like tens of thousands of others who, like Michael, had learned Chart Throb-speak from the previous series.
Having agonized for so long over the band’s name, its description and the question Why should we pick you? Michael would have been surprised to discover that the thing which interested Emma most about what he had written on the entry form was his address. It is probable that if Michael had done as he had considered doing and used a PO box for his correspondence The Four-Z would never have been sent an invitation to audition at all. Nineteen other entirely similar-sounding black boy bands from the Midlands had already emerged from their envelopes, one even called The Fource, but none came from such a notoriously hopeless place as the Collingbrook Estate. Collingbrook was a byword for everything that had gone wrong in post-war town planning, a drug-saturated war zone into which the police were fearful to venture. Emma knew that the contrast between the lives these boys must currently be leading and the ‘celebrity lifestyle’ of which they dreamed was what Calvin would definitely call good telly.
Emma placed The Four-Z on the Blinger pile.
Like buses, successful application letters seemed to come in groups and the very next envelope that Emma opened after The Four-Z was from Peroxide. Another nod-through, which Emma placed directly on to the Blingers pile without even reading it or referring its contents to Trent. Emma had been expecting to hear from Peroxide; it had, after all, been her who had encouraged them to re-apply.
Same Time Last Year
Peroxide’s story had begun the year before. They had been a promising prospect plucked from the stands during one of the stadium audition days. Stadium days very rarely bore fruit, it being pretty much impossible to form a useful opinion about anything when twelve thousand people were all trying to grab your attention. The stadium days were little more than stunts, set up partly to get the biggest of the crowd shots for the opening credits and partly to lend a whisper of credibility to the central Chart Throb fiction, that thousands of people were genuinely considered for inclusion. These were entirely open calls, where anyone who felt like it could turn up and wait in the stands while teams of researchers hurried along the lines picking out anybody who caught their eye, seeing as many of them as possible in conveyor-belt manner at twenty- to thirty-second intervals. Of necessity snap decisions were made and the harassed and sweating teams could do little more than go by appearance. Peroxide, two near-naked blonde teenagers, had been selected and had thereafter done a surprisingly good audition before the three judges. It turned out that their embarrassingly inept attempts at sexuality were not their only promising feature. They could actually sing and suddenly everybody had got rather excited about them.
Emma could still remember the production meeting that had taken place the previous year when Calvin had announced his plan for them.
‘We’ll chuck them out after the next round,’ he explained, to everyone’s surprise. ‘You have to play the long game.’
‘I thought you might put them in the final,’ Beryl remarked. ‘Thought they were just your type. They can sing at least as well as half the other finalists, they’re cute and they’re absolutely fucking desperate. What could be better? I mean, did you see the way they cried when we put them through?’
‘Exactly, these are Alpha Clingers, particularly the younger one,’ Calvin agreed. ‘They cry even better than they sing. If they cry like that when they win, imagine what’s going to happen when they lose.’
‘Why not give them a bit of a run then, so they can lose big time?’ Beryl had persisted. ‘They’re lovely-looking girls and quite frankly we’re way over quota on Fatties and Dogs.’
‘The long game, darling, the long game. You have to ask yourself, what’s the story?’
‘And what is it?’
‘Well, we could certainly give these birds a run, as you say, and I’ve no doubt they’d be good TV.’
‘Plus all the cunty ex-b
oyfriends crawling out of the woodwork to talk about the girls’ insatiable man-hungry needs and eight-times-a-night marathon sex sessions,’ Beryl chipped in.
‘That’s right,’ Calvin replied. ‘It’s all there for the taking and I’m sure you all think we should grab it with both hands. But how about this? We build them up on the first round, big stuff, give them the whole “You two are the best thing to come through that door all day” and “Thank God for some real talent” bit. Then, shockingly, we dump them almost immediately, straight after round two. Nobody’s expecting it, least of all them. You’re horrified, Beryl, the girls weep, you hug them, shout at me, throw water over Rodney, but I am immovable and of course Rodney votes with me because he does what he’s fucking told. Just kidding, Rodney.’
‘Ha ha.’ Rodney grinned, as if he loved nothing more than this gentle joshing from his great mate and equal.
‘Outside with Keely in the holding area,’ Calvin continued, developing his theme enthusiastically, ‘it all gets even more hysterical. Peroxide’s hearts are broken. Keely can’t believe they’ve been dumped, she wants to walk straight in there and give me a piece of her mind. Beryl is now threatening to quit . . . Lots of shots of Rodney looking grim, knowing Beryl’s right and that he’s made the wrong fucking decision again.’
‘Ha ha,’ Rodney laughed woodenly.
‘Even I’m suddenly looking doubtful,’ said Calvin, barging on. ‘Did I make the right choice? The girls certainly know the answer to that! They go to the Bite Back Box and shout into the camera that they will be stars, breasts heaving, mascara running, belly-button jewellery jiggling with emotion. “Just you wait, Calvin Simms!” they shout. “We’ll be huge and then you’ll be sorry.” We milk it for a week, debate it over and over again on ITV2, try and tease the papers into running a “Support Peroxide” campaign. Feature the whole thing heavily on the Christmas DVD . . . Then,’ and Calvin grinned triumphantly at his own cleverness, ‘we bring them back next year. Now that’s a story that has what it takes.’