Chart Throb

by Elton, Ben

  ‘Right,’ Emma replied hurriedly, glancing down at her storyboard notes. ‘After that Rodney and Calvin exchange amused but guilty glances . . .’

  ‘Shot that as well. Emma, can we please cut to the chase,’ Trent snapped.

  Once more Emma seemed confused and risked a glance at Calvin, a glance that could only be interpreted as an appeal for his support. Then her face hardened, as if she was angry with herself for being so weak. If she had been hoping for sympathy she would have been disappointed, for Calvin merely raised a questioning eyebrow.

  ‘Well, then Rodney’s phone rings,’ she said hurriedly. ‘He answers it and when Calvin and Beryl hear him greet the Blinger they crack up laughing . . .’

  ‘Ah!’ Rodney butted in eagerly. ‘How can we do that? We don’t know her name yet.’

  Once more Emma checked her notes.

  ‘Calvin will have called her Tina Lite at the audition and that’s how she’ll introduce herself.’

  ‘You’re going to coach her?’

  ‘Well, yes . . . obviously,’ Emma replied, nervous at having to spoonfeed one of the famous judges. ‘We always do.’

  ‘Can we please get on with this?’ Beryl shouted. ‘I have a flight scheduled back to LA tonight. My stepdaughter is in rehab and dealing with enormous new breasts, if anybody cares.’

  And so the fiction was arranged. Emma handed Rodney the mobile phone that was to double as his and dialled the number. It rang and Rodney was about to pick it up, but then he hesitated.

  ‘Hang on. I shouldn’t have my phone on, should I? I mean I’m on a plane, that’s irresponsible . . . Come to think of it, you shouldn’t have your phone on now. We might crash.’

  ‘Please, Rodney,’ Calvin said. ‘I thought you wanted to be tougher on this series? Isn’t keeping your phone on during a flight being tough? Playing by your own rules?’

  ‘You think it would make me look tough?’

  ‘Of course, the naughty boy, the rule breaker.’

  ‘Well, all right then . . . But I don’t want to actually do it . . . I mean, I don’t mind pretending my phone rings but I don’t want it to actually ring. It’s dangerous.’

  ‘You want Emma to turn off her phone and speak the ring?’

  ‘Yes, of course. These rules are made for a purpose. Don’t you listen to the safety announcements? Mobile phones may interfere with the aircraft’s navigation system.’

  ‘No, no. You’re absolutely right,’ Calvin replied. ‘Emma, please speak the ring.’

  Just then Beryl’s mobile phone rang.

  ‘I have to take this, it’s my US agent.’

  ‘Beryl, it’s dangerous.’

  ‘Fuck off, Rodney.’

  For the next few minutes everyone was forced to sit through Beryl’s half of a discussion regarding the timing of the new season of The Blenheims, which Beryl was anxious to postpone because she was planning further surgery on the clitoris that she was having built out of the remains of her penis.

  ‘And tell them to put some fucking thinner in the Botox,’ she ordered. ‘My face hasn’t fucking moved since the last injections.’

  When the conversation was finally over the team went back to work.

  ‘Ring ring. Ring ring,’ said Emma.

  Rodney feigned surprise.

  ‘Should have turned this off, I suppose,’ he said, playing his role. ‘But what the hell, I make my own rules. Live fast and leave a beautiful corpse, eh?’

  ‘Ring ring. Ring ring,’ Emma repeated insistently, knowing full well there would be no time to use Rodney’s part-building in the final edit.

  Rodney pretended to answer his phone.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hello, is that Rodney Root?’ Emma enquired from inside the toilet cubicle, keeping her voice as flat and toneless as possible so as to make it clear that she was not attempting in any way to adopt a character.

  ‘Yes, this is Rodney.’

  ‘It’s Tina Lite here, darling. Ha ha. Ha ha. Calvin told me to call. Ha ha.’

  ‘Oh, hello there, Tina Lite,’ Rodney replied and Calvin and Beryl both pretended to splutter with laughter. Trent had wanted them both to choke on their drinks but Beryl feared for her lip gloss so only Calvin actually spat water.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ Rodney enquired, improvising gamely.

  ‘Well, darling, ha ha. Ha ha,’ Emma replied woodenly. ‘Maybe you should think about what I can do for you, ha ha. Ha ha. Because if you make me a star like you said you would, you gonna find out! That’s for sure! Ha ha. Ha ha!’

  ‘Well now, listen, Tina, it’s lovely to speak to you. I have to rush now, thanks for calling. Bye.’ Rodney pretended to hang up his phone.

  ‘There,’ said Calvin, staying in the scene. ‘You said keeping your phone on during a flight was dangerous!’

  ‘Great punchline, Calvin!’ Trent gushed. ‘Everybody covered?’

  When all departments had agreed the material was in the bag they moved on. Beryl disappeared behind a coat once more to change her costume, and there was a new shirt each for the men. They moved seats, they stared moodily at each other, they stared moodily out of the window and they all sat together to show what great mates they really were.

  Finally Trent and Emma had no more shots left on their storyboard lists.

  ‘That’s a wrap, guvnor,’ Trent announced.

  ‘Thank fuck for that,’ said Beryl. ‘Can this thing take me straight to Heathrow?’

  ‘Just one more shot,’ Calvin insisted. ‘A new one.’

  ‘What’s that, chief?’ Trent enquired.

  ‘Leaving Glasgow. Rodney sitting alone.’

  ‘Fine, chief,’ Trent replied. ‘Any storyline? Any attitude?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Let’s just take the shot.’

  Rodney duly sat in the seat that Emma’s storyboard said was his for leaving Glasgow and the camera was pointed at him.

  ‘Right,’ said Calvin. ‘So, Rodney, we want you a little bit tense, a little bit shocked, OK?’

  Rodney knew exactly what he was supposed to be shocked about.

  ‘Calvin,’ he said, trying to sound unconcerned, ‘you know what, mate? I’ve been thinking about this one and I’m not sure it’s such a great idea.’

  ‘Look, we may not even use it, mate. I just want to be covered.’

  ‘What’s all this about?’ Beryl asked rudely. ‘I thought we were finished?’

  ‘It’s just a wicked little thought of Calvin’s,’ said Rodney, still trying to make light of it but clearly slightly worried. ‘He wants to bring Iona back.’

  ‘No!’ Beryl gasped. ‘Not Iona of the awful Shetland Mist, who you fucked?’

  ‘Yes, although I thought they were . . .’

  ‘And having fucked her you then fucked off!’

  ‘Well, our relationship ended by mutual . . .’

  ‘The ones you publicly prophesied would be big stars and that you would make it so?’

  ‘Yes, well, I . . .’

  Beryl roared with laughter. ‘Oh, this is brilliant, Calvin. One of your best yet.’

  ‘I must say I thought it had potential,’ Calvin agreed, smiling.

  ‘Potential! It’s better than that. Come on, Rodney, you dug yourself into this one. Leaving aside the fact that you shagged the ass off that poor little Scottish Minger then dumped her, you said you’d make her crap band into stars and you didn’t. You’re always saying some zero or other could be a star and they never are. It’s about time you explained yourself.’

  Rodney sat, biting his lip, his eyes half furious, half confused.

  Calvin winked at the cameraman, who understood exactly what was expected of him and swung his lens round to cover Rodney.

  ‘Got it?’ Calvin enquired quietly.

  ‘Got it,’ the cameraman replied.

  ‘OK, Trent,’ said Calvin. ‘That’s a wrap, let’s get Beryl to Heathrow.’

  Rodney was surprised. ‘Aren’t we going to take the shot then?’ he asked, relie
ved.

  ‘No, don’t worry about it.’

  Who’s That Girl?

  Trent accompanied Calvin back to London in Calvin’s huge Rolls-Royce. Driving through the car park they passed the coach upon which Emma was about to embark with the rest of the crew. She was standing by its front door, struggling with a large bag containing the various files from which she had been working, her broken glasses perched on her nose. There was a goodish breeze blowing and it filled out her hair most attractively.

  ‘That girl,’ Calvin said, staring at her through the blacked-out window. ‘The blonde one who was stuck in the toilet on the plane. I remember her from the last series. She did well, didn’t she?’

  ‘Yo, boss,’ Trent replied. ‘She’s a good kid. Got some prospects into the finals. We made her a senior.’

  As the car passed, Calvin eyed her in silence. He did not know why he had asked about Emma; he employed any number of pretty girls and he never asked about any of them. Emma was not even his type. Far too short. His soon-to-be-ex wife was six foot four.

  ‘Her name’s Emma,’ Trent continued after a pause. ‘Emma Lee-Murray. Still happy with her? Did she fuck up today? Anything you want me to say?’

  ‘No. Nothing. Forget it.’

  He remembered her clearly now. She had come to his attention towards the end of the previous season, working on the studio finals. Very little had passed between them but he did remember that he had noticed her. She was very . . . very . . .

  Sitting back in his car Calvin wondered what she had been. Why had he noticed her then? Why was he thinking about her now? What was she very . . . ?

  Was the word ‘nice’?

  Calvin rather thought that it was. The girl was nice.

  He had noticed her being nice to the crew. He had noticed her being nice to the contestants. Not professionally nice. Not ‘I need you to do what I tell you so I’m going to be nice’ nice, but genuinely nice. God knows, he had even noticed her being nice to the studio audience and that was a hard thing to do in the complex mayhem of a finals night when five hundred lunatics had been whipped up into a gladiatorial frenzy.

  She had even been nice to him in a funny sort of way.

  Not that there had been many opportunities for pleasantries between the busiest and most successful man in show business and one of his army of employees, but nonetheless he remembered that he had felt her warmth. She was honest, which he liked, and her smile was real.

  Yes, he had certainly noticed her. And now he had noticed her again.

  Funny, that. He had not given her a thought in the intervening nine months. How could he? He had made an entire series of Chart Throb USA while also developing any number of new additions to his worldwide entertainment empire. And he had got married. Yet here he was, noticing her again.

  Of course she was pretty in a small, cute-ish sort of way. But definitely not his type.

  Not his type at all. She was too . . . nice.

  Birmingham

  ‘It’s show two and the search has taken our intrepid judges to Birmingham, where enormous crowds of hopefuls have gathered.’

  Whatever Keely might have claimed in her breathless introduction to episode two, on the day on which the enormous crowds had gathered in Birmingham our three intrepid judges were nowhere near that city. It would look like they had been in Birmingham on the same day as the crowds of hopefuls because the footage taken of that crowd, when broadcast, would be preceded by the footage taken in the private jet of Calvin, Beryl and Rodney looking moody high over RAF Brize Norton.

  The deceit was not absolute. As Emma often said to her friends when taxed on the subject, it wasn’t really a lie at all, the three intrepid judges would eventually go to Birmingham, on another day, a day much further on in the selection process when the ‘crowds’ had been reduced to a more manageable few dozen. But they would go. Of course, when they did, they travelled separately up from London by car.

  Shaiana had arrived an hour before her appointed time and then queued for another two hours while she and those around her were invited to grin and wave for the ever-present cameras. Shaiana had dutifully done as she was told but she hadn’t enjoyed herself as much as she was pretending to. She was a serious singer after all, not like these other gurning fools.

  When she finally edged her way to the registration table, Shaiana was directed to go and sit among a group of about sixty people who had been separated from the main crowd.

  An oldish man sitting in the seat next to hers turned and smiled.

  ‘Hello,’ said the Prince, offering Shaiana his hand. ‘How are you?’

  When Calvin had been ‘surprised’ to hear the extraordinary news that the heir to the throne had applied to be on Chart Throb he had given strict instructions to Trent and his team that the early auditions for His Royal Highness were to be handled as much as possible like any other element of a Chart Throb day. Calvin knew that he had a huge mountain to climb if he was to turn the nation’s favourite whipping boy into its number-one pop star and he reasoned that the best way to start was to make it plain that the Prince must be seen to receive no special treatment. The Prince himself had also been very clear on this point.

  ‘If I play, I play fair,’ he said. ‘Dartmouth rules. When I went into the navy I got no special treatment and that’s how I wish to play this too.’

  ‘But isn’t him turning up going to cause a terrible stir?’ Trent had said to Calvin.

  ‘I honestly don’t think so. Everyone at our auditions is concentrating on just one thing, themselves. They’re not interested in anybody else. Why would they give some sad elderly man in a tweed jacket a second glance? After all, he certainly won’t be the only eccentric-looking old bloke hanging around, will he? If people do spot him, what will they think? They’ll think that bloke looks a bit like the Prince of Wales. They’re not going to think it is his nibs, are they? Not unless we start making a fuss of him, which we won’t. How many David Beckham lookalikes turned up last year?’

  ‘Eight. And eleven Poshes.’

  ‘And some of them were pretty good, weren’t they? But nobody thought it was them, did they?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And there you’re talking about serious celebrities. Not some fucking prince. Just let him turn up and treat him like the rest and we’ll see how we go, eh?’

  The Prince of Wales had duly been sent an acceptance form and instructions to attend Hall E3 of the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham. He was instructed to be prepared to sing, unaccompanied, one verse and a chorus of a song of his choice. He had therefore rescheduled visits to two primary schools, a regimental dinner and a mosque, and his plans had been entered into the court circular as ‘cultural’.

  He arrived on the appointed morning in the first of two black Daimlers. This had caused many heads to turn, but only because people had imagined for a moment that Calvin Simms himself was arriving. When only a stooped, sombre-looking figure in a big old-fashioned overcoat got out, all interest was lost. The only obvious thing of note about the man who then made his way nervously into the crowded audition hall was that he was accompanied by two serious-looking persons in cheap suits that bulged at the armpit.

  ‘Look, an old boy band,’ someone had quipped as they made their way as directed to where Shaiana was already sitting.

  ‘Hi,’ Shaiana replied to the Prince’s greeting, but she scarcely looked up. She did not really want to talk to anybody. Today was about her and her alone.

  She had to stay focused because she just wanted it so much.

  ‘What song have you prepared?’ the Prince enquired. ‘I’m doing “Jerusalem”, which I do hope won’t offend anybody. People often make the mistake of thinking that it’s a Socialist song but I disagree. I’m quite sure that when Blake penned his towering lyric he had humanism in mind. It’s a song about love of one’s fellow man and of one’s country, and I do think that’s important, don’t you?’

  Shaiana, like many of the contestants assemb
led in Birmingham that day, had selected ‘The Greatest Love Of All’, which is about love for oneself.

  The Prince’s number, 8,900, was written in felt-tip pen on a big white label that had been stuck to his chest. Shaiana’s number was 16,367. Despite the fact that there were scarcely five hundred auditionees present in the hall, all the numbers displayed on the entrants’ chests ran to at least four figures, commonly five.

  ‘I am not a number!’ the Prince joked loudly, glancing about in a comradely fashion. ‘I am a human being.’

  Neither Shaiana nor any of the others nearby paid any attention. They were all lost in their own thoughts, running through in their heads the verses and choruses which might just change their lives for ever.

  The Prince’s further efforts at integration with his future subjects petered out when an already familiar amplified voice boomed from across the hall. ‘OK, people! It’s Gary again,’ the voice shouted. ‘Say “Hi, Gary!”’

  ‘Hi, Gary!’ the crowd responded but with little enthusiasm.

  ‘Oh goodness, not this fool again!’ the Prince muttered. ‘He really is the most prize buffoon.’

  ‘Say, “Hi, Barry!”’ boomed a second voice.

  ‘Hi, Barry,’ they echoed.

  ‘Come ON,’ Gary shouted. ‘That was TERRIBLE! Say, “Hi, Gary and Barry!”’

  The crowd dutifully replied with slightly more animation this time.

  ‘Hi, Gary and Barry!’

  In fact it was not just the Prince who was heartily sick of Gary and Barry; by now everybody was. It was their job to cajole the crowd into supplying the production crew with the hysterically excited mob shots that made up the opening montage of the programme.

  ‘Ninety-five thousand people. Three judges. Twelve finalists. Just one Chart Throb!!’

  Somebody had to make those crowds shout and clap and wave and it was Gary and Barry, two amiable ex-drama students who wanted to be comedians, who had got the job.

  ‘OK, people, listen up! If you want to be a Chart Throb you gotta ACT like a Chart Throb! You gotta live it, breathe it, OWN it and owning it starts right now. Calvin is watching you! He is the Dark Lord of Rock and he is everywhere! So you have to put everything you’ve got into this! Let me hear you say, “YO-OH!”’