Chart Throb

by Elton, Ben

  A phalanx of security guards whom Claude had dispatched to the scene held the press back while mother and daughter clambered into the long black Humvee. Priscilla was not happy.

  ‘You might have let me say something, Dad,’ she griped.

  ‘Mum!’

  ‘It was my fucking bust after all.’

  ‘Oh, shut up. You’ve done quite enough already today, young lady, and what is with the new tits?’

  ‘At least I didn’t get a new dick.’

  ‘I am a transsexual. You are just a screwed-up teen.’

  ‘I needed something to give me back my confidence after my album.’

  ‘If you’re going to get a job done every time an album flops you’ll end up with the tits of a sperm whale.’

  Beryl scrolled through the radio news stations. They all carried the story.

  ‘Priscilla Blenheim, stepdaughter of legendary British satanic rocker and transsexual Beryl née Blaster Blenheim, and star of Fox Network’s hit Osbournes-style reality show The Blenheims . . .’

  ‘Osbournes-style!’ Beryl shrieked. ‘We shit all over those lightweights. They don’t know what dysfunctional is!’

  ‘C’mon, Mom. We stole the idea from them.’

  ‘What? Like jerking off on the TV is something new? You think turning your life into a show is original? Did Jessica Simpson steal from The Osbournes? Did Tommy Lee? Did Britney? Everybody puts their life on TV, baby. We are so not the Osbournes.’

  ‘Yeah, maybe you’re right, Mom. For one thing, the Osbournes survived, they loved each other, they stayed together. I’m gonna divorce you the first chance I get.’

  The radio reports continued to pump out the bad news.

  ‘Priscilla Blenheim caught on camera openly purchasing . . .’

  ‘You fucking idiot, Priscilla,’ Beryl snapped.

  ‘C’mon, Mom. One wrap of coke. What’s the big deal? You used to get your groupies to blow more than that up your ass with a straw.’

  ‘Now listen here! Firstly, it was different in the eighties. Secondly, when I was a man nobody expected me to act like a lady. But thirdly and most importantly, you are a member of a family. You have responsibilities.’

  ‘I just can’t believe you’re trying to kick my ass here, Dad!’

  ‘Mum!’

  ‘You and Mom get up at meetings every week and talk about how much shit you’ve done and you ain’t telling me you never bought off a street dealer.’

  ‘It is one thing buying coke in the street, it is quite another getting yourself caught on camera doing it.’

  ‘Everything I do is caught on camera. Maybe you forgot that.’

  ‘Don’t be a smart arse with me. You’re not too old to slap.’

  ‘Oh yeah, like I wouldn’t sue your fucking ass.’

  ‘Don’t mention my arse, it’s had quite enough to deal with recently and now you drag it into a mess like this. I am working! I am supposed to be on a plane to England.’

  ‘Nobody asked you to come and get me.’

  ‘You think I could let you handle this on your own?’

  ‘Mom’s here.’

  ‘Oh yeah. That would be great, wouldn’t it? Her wandering round saying a skip full of coke a day for thirty years never hurt her! I don’t think so. We have a new season upcoming!’

  ‘Everybody takes drugs.’

  ‘Exactly, Priscilla! It is not as if cocaine is hard to find in this town, yet you decide to buy it off some sleazoid in a parking lot.’

  ‘I wanted to find out what it felt like to be a normal kid.’

  ‘Oh, very funny. Well, let me tell you now, Priscilla. You are going straight into rehab to spend an entire fortnight getting in touch with yourself, growing, learning, taking time to heal and facing up to your issues.’

  ‘Two weeks! But Dad!’

  ‘MUM! Please do me the courtesy of respecting my gender change.’

  ‘All right, Mom. But I am not going back into rehab. I just got out.’

  ‘You are going back in . . . And when you come out you are going to volunteer for a downtown youth programme working with deprived kids!’

  ‘Mom!’

  ‘Priscilla, you have been busted. The cops have to decide whether to prosecute. You could be sent to Juvenile! Did I not just remind you we have a new season upcoming?’

  ‘You’ll get me off. Frank will get me off.’

  ‘Not without your cooperation, young lady. You’ll do your time and like it and thank your lucky stars you’re at Betty Ford getting carrot juice and a shiatsu massage instead of in prison having your muff munched by some giant lezzer whore who’s doing life for cutting the dicks off her tricks.’

  ‘You are so gross.’

  Having deposited a very angry and reluctant Priscilla at the Betty Ford Clinic, Beryl returned to LA to continue to deal with what was a surprisingly negative media reaction. She had not expected this, for the Blenheims had made a career out of cheerful dysfunction. Both Serenity and Beryl openly confessed to decades of alcohol and drug abuse and the children made no secret of their pointless, slobbish, dilettante existence.

  It was the reason people liked them.

  ‘I guess it’s kids and the drug thing,’ Larry King opined to Beryl when she and Serenity appeared on his cable chat show that night. ‘You know, Priscilla’s still very young and . . .’

  ‘Look, Larry,’ said a tearful Beryl, ‘I’ve had enough, I’ve really had enough. We do not deserve this and we do not have to take it. What normal family doesn’t have to deal with crap like this? But their daughters don’t get treated like criminals. And don’t forget, Larry, we are a normal family, just four people who love each other very much trying to get through all the crap families have to get through and we will be strong and positive, we will help Priscilla and we will learn and grow and heal together. In the meantime, I am appealing to the media to just back off and give us some space. Priscilla’s just a kid, for God’s sake. I’m just a mum. Serenity’s just a mum. We’re not perfect . . . who is? But we have a right to privacy just like anyone else. Don’t forget, Priscilla is also dealing with new breasts right now. It’s always an emotional time for a teenage girl to develop breasts and, well, our daughter is going through that for the second time.’

  Larry looked as if he was about to cry. He turned to the camera. ‘So how about it, guys?’ he said, eyeing the lens sternly. ‘You all have kids. You know what it’s like, kids do dumb stuff and it’s Mom and Dad who have to pick up the pieces. So how about cutting Beryl and Serenity some slack here. Let’s back off and leave these people to learn and to grow and to heal, huh?’

  After this appeal for privacy, the channel cut to a break featuring a trailer for the repeat run of The Blenheims, airing weeknights at ten.

  Friend and Acquaintance

  On the evening Beryl finally arrived in the UK, Rodney arrived in London also, having returned from a month’s golfing in Portugal. The following day all three judges were booked to do a pre-record day for the new season of Chart Throb and so, for the first time since the end of the previous series, they were all not only in the same country but in the same city. While Beryl went from studio to studio in her ongoing damage limitation exercise, Rodney dined with Calvin. The dinner had been booked at Rodney’s extremely heavy-handed insistence.

  ‘Just to map out some parameters for the new series,’ he had said over the phone.

  ‘What parameters?’ Calvin enquired when he could no longer avoid taking Rodney’s call and was trying to think how to get out of actually having to meet him.

  ‘The ones for the new series.’

  ‘But they’re the same as the last series.’

  ‘That may be the case but either way I should like to map them out.’

  In the end even Calvin’s legendarily thick skin was not thick enough to withstand Rodney’s anguished entreaties. He was forced to sacrifice a precious evening he had hoped to spend with his wine merchant selecting purchases for a massive new cellar he had
built on his Sussex estate, in order to meet up with his fellow judge.

  ‘Good to see you, mate,’ Rodney said as Calvin bustled in very late.

  ‘My driver couldn’t find the place,’ Calvin replied testily. ‘How, incidentally, did you?’

  ‘Oh, I always come here. My little secret. Avoids all that media shit. What I say is if you can’t find it then nor can the press, eh?’

  Rodney had indeed deliberately booked a small and anonymous Soho restaurant for very good personal reasons. He’d had plenty of experience of being caught in media scrums with Calvin in which he had been virtually ignored and even elbowed out of the way as the press pursued his world-famous colleague. He was not going to put himself in that position by booking them a table at Nobu or the Ivy.

  ‘Whatever,’ Calvin replied. ‘Let’s order, shall we, lot of prep still to do for tomorrow.’

  ‘Of course, of course. Me too, very busy, tons of stuff going on.’

  Calvin took up his menu and began to study it. Rodney, who had arrived about as early as Calvin had arrived late, had had ample time to read the menu some twenty or thirty times and so had made his choice. He was now forced to wait while Calvin read the entire menu carefully and then proceeded to try to negotiate with the waitress. In Calvin’s mind anything was better than talking to Rodney.

  ‘I want to order off-menu,’ he said.

  ‘Uhm. Off-menu?’

  ‘Ask Chef to do me some oysters.’

  ‘We have oysters Kilpatrick.’

  ‘Yes, I can see that. I want them au naturel with a little lemon and a drop or two of Tabasco. OK?’

  Of course it was not OK, this after all was England. Living in LA, Calvin had developed the local power habit of ordering off-menu and, like many other returning expats, found it difficult to get used to the agonizing slowness with which the British were adopting American habits and manners.

  ‘We have oysters Kilpatrick,’ the waitress repeated. ‘They’re very nice. Chef serves them with grilled bacon, chopped chives and Worcester sauce.’

  ‘I know what oysters Kilpatrick is, darling.’

  ‘Well . . . Would you like them?’

  ‘I would like oysters sans Kilpatrick.’

  ‘Umm . . .’

  ‘Here’s what Chef does, my love, OK? Chef takes the oysters, Chef doesn’t add the bacon, Chef doesn’t add the chopped chives, Chef doesn’t add the Worcester sauce and Chef sends them to me. Meanwhile you, my darling, pop over to the bar and grab me a couple of wedges of lemon and the Tabasco sauce. How’s that?’

  The poor girl was not paid to operate on her own initiative; all she could think of was the nightmare of trying to reprogram the computerized billing system which had all the dishes and prices pre-set.

  ‘I think we’ll have to charge you for the Kilpatrick bit, sir. I mean, we won’t be able to deduct the price of the bacon from the overall price.’

  ‘That will be fine,’ Calvin said. He seemed to feel that the fact that he could afford to buy the restaurant entitled him to act as if he had actually bought it.

  The minutes ticked by and Rodney squirmed with impatience as, slowly but surely, Calvin plodded through the ordering of his main meal and then, having summoned the wine waiter, insisted on discussing with him the virtues of almost every wine on the list including the stickies. Eventually, however, even Calvin’s considerable powers of procrastination were exhausted and he was forced to enquire as to what might be on Rodney’s mind.

  Rodney took a deep breath and prepared to deliver the arguments he had so often rehearsed.

  Then Calvin’s phone rang.

  ‘Sorry, Rodney, better take this,’ Calvin said, without bothering to conceal the fact that he had not yet checked the digital display to find out who it was. Rodney was left to conclude that Calvin would talk to anybody else in the world rather than him. In fact the frown that passed across Calvin’s face as he did now glance at his Nokia seemed to suggest that Calvin now regretted committing himself to take the call.

  ‘Damn,’ he said, ‘Christian.’

  ‘Ahh,’ Rodney replied, nodding in a knowing manner. He knew very well why Calvin might wish to avoid conversing with Christian, it had been all over the Bizarre page in that morning’s Sun. Christian’s contract was not to be renewed.

  ‘Hi, Chris,’ Calvin said with a grimace but attempting a light, airy tone, hoping to imply that this was just another call. Calvin might have built a reputation as a pitiless Rottweiler, TV’s answer to Richard III, the man who made Simon Cowell look like a pussycat, but he was in fact nothing of the sort. He was tough certainly and horribly corrupted by his immense power, but he still had feelings and like any other person he disliked confrontations and scenes. He disliked having to tell a perfectly decent young man that his dream was absolutely and irrevocably over.

  Rodney felt the sadness too, for he had also liked Christian. On the other hand he was deeply annoyed. He had had Calvin’s attention, Calvin had actually invited him to speak his mind, and now he, Rodney, a major figure in the industry, a player, would have to hover on the sidelines, nursing his Campari while Calvin wasted his time talking to somebody whose second (and final) album had stalled at forty-eight.

  ‘Yes, Christian, it’s true. We won’t be renewing,’ Calvin was saying. ‘Of course I was going to call you myself, I’ve no idea how the Sun got hold of it . . . Christian, please, keep it together. It’s an album deal, nobody died.’

  But of course somebody had died. Christian Appleyard, pop star, had departed this earth and what was left was a pathetic creature indeed. Christian Appleyard, sad act, loser, joke. The distance between fame and notoriety, between adulation and derision, cannot be measured in feet and inches; the tipping point is merely a moment, a moment when suddenly the consciousness of the public changes. Crowds are fickle in a way that individuals can never be. An individual has a conscience, while a crowd can afford to follow its rawest, basest instincts and its instincts were clearly that Christian’s fifteen minutes were well and truly up.

  ‘Screw ’em,’ Calvin was saying. ‘So some builders laughed at you. So what? Did they ever get a number-one album? You did, mate. Nobody can take that away from you.’

  It was true, nobody ever could take that away, not even Christian himself, although he would come to wish he could.

  ‘Look, Christian mate,’ Calvin continued. ‘You’ve had a lot of fun, we’ve all had fun but, you know, parties come to an end . . . Brad’s still selling albums, Christian, you’re not, that’s why he still has a deal, that’s the reality of the business.’

  Bradley Vine, runner-up to Christian’s winner on the first ever Chart Throb two years before. Apparently he still had it, Christian did not.

  ‘The mums like him, mate, what can I tell you?’ Calvin explained. ‘You had the kids, he had the mums. Mums have more loyalty than kids and that’s life.’

  Calvin looked at his watch. He should not be having this conversation. He should never have given that lad his number, but it had all been so exciting that first time around. They had all felt like a team, judges and contestants together. Even Calvin had got carried away a little. For a moment even he had half believed that what was being created was real.

  ‘Look, I have to go, Christian. We’ll talk again, OK . . . I don’t know when, but we’ll talk.’ Calvin pressed red and put his phone down.

  ‘Wants to know why you’ve dumped him?’ Rodney enquired.

  ‘I didn’t dump him, the public did,’ Calvin replied.

  ‘So . . .’ said Rodney, anxious to return to his interrupted agenda.

  Calvin’s phone rang again. Both men glanced down at the display and saw the word ‘Christian’. Calvin let it ring.

  ‘So, you were saying?’ Calvin enquired. ‘There was something you wanted to discuss?’

  But Calvin was still not really listening because when the statutory four rings were over he took up his phone, pressed ‘names’ and scrolled down to the C’s. Christian was nest
ling between Christina Aguilera and Christian (Coldplay), two steps up from Chris Evans. Elevated company indeed, the sort of company among whom, one year before, Christian Appleyard might almost have expected to be in reality, but now those days were gone. Calvin pressed delete, the gap between Christina Aguilera and Christian (Coldplay) closed and Christian Appleyard was gone.

  No More Mr Nice Guy, Please

  Finally Rodney was able to make his point.

  ‘I feel I need to show the public more of the real me,’ he said.

  ‘The real you?’ Calvin enquired.

  ‘Yes. I think the public’s ready for it.’

  ‘Ready for it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The real you?’

  ‘That’s right. I get a lot of comments. You know, feedback.’

  ‘Asking to see the real you?’

  ‘Well, more of it. You know, people say that they want to see me really, really . . . show them, to really show them . . .’

  ‘The real you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Calvin squeezed his lemon wedge over his oysters. ‘Oh . . . Sorry, mate. Never could aim a lemon.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Rodney, wiping juice from his eye.

  Calvin chewed an oyster and quaffed deeply at his wine, letting Rodney stew for a while.

  ‘So, Rodney,’ he said finally. ‘Exactly which bit of the real you do you think the public’s missing out on?’

  ‘The tough bit. The two-fisted, straight-talking hard man with the rapier-sharp putdowns bit.’

  ‘Wow. Big bit.’

  ‘I feel I’ve become bland.’

  ‘You’ve become bland?’

  Whatever Calvin might have meant by his heavy intonation, Rodney chose to ignore it.

  ‘Yes, always being so nice. I think it’s getting boring,’ he said, developing his argument.

  ‘Isn’t it nice to be nice?’

  ‘Well, you certainly don’t seem to think so, Calvin, with your worldwide Mr Nasty franchise.’