by Elton, Ben
‘Listen up, people!’ Trent said. ‘Hey, you all love Chart Throb or else you wouldn’t be here. You know that we are a great entertainment show and each year we make dreams come true. Now of course, like with any telly show, not everything you see on screen reflects exactly what happens off screen – that’s showbiz. And what we don’t need is any killjoys and spoilsports pissing on the parade, OK? Every magician has his tricks and yes, we have a few up our sleeve, but that doesn’t make our show any less true or real. We DO make stars. We DO find talent and if this year it wasn’t you, hey, watch the show, enjoy the dream and better luck next year. And always remember, that contract you signed is a legal document. Anyone who breaks it breaks the law and believe me, the full weight of the law will be brought to bear upon them. Calvin Simms will take your house! He will bankrupt you! He will close you down! Read the contract again before you leave. Don’t forget, you may not talk to anybody, about anything that happens here today. OK? That’s it. There’s coffee and biscuits coming, enjoy the rest of your day.’
Emma always thought that Trent laid it on a bit thick about Calvin closing people down. She believed it was more of an act with Calvin.
Chelsie came bouncing up to her. ‘We’re ready for Peroxide. Where are they?’
‘Peroxide please,’ Emma called out. ‘I need Georgie and Michelle.’
‘Meanwhile in the holding area,’ Keely would explain when the episode was edited, ‘two old friends of the show have turned up unexpectedly. Who could forget Georgie and ‘Chelle, better known as Peroxide!’
The truth was that meanwhile, in the toilet, one of the old friends of the show was throwing up. The other one was standing outside the door, waving at Emma.
‘She’s all nerves,’ the older member of Peroxide said as Emma and the crew scuttled over. ‘Come on, Georgie. Emma wants to do a piece to camera.’
As an old Chart Throb hand, Michelle knew exactly what was expected of her. She also knew how busy the production team were and was anxious not to miss her slot.
‘I’ll only be a minute,’ Georgie called from her cubicle, her voice sounding harsh and rasping.
Emma transmitted the news to Trent in vision control.
‘Move on to Blossom,’ Trent barked back. ‘We’ll try to hoover up the slappers later.’
Emma winced at the casual contempt with which her colleagues referred to the contestants, although looking at Michelle she could not deny that ‘slapper’ did rather sum things up. The girl was wearing nothing but erotic lingerie, stiletto heels plus lacy knickers and bra. The only mild concession she had made towards costume was a short and entirely transparent sarong knotted on her hips. She had a coat but she was carrying it, being of the opinion that if it was worth flaunting at all then it was worth flaunting all the time.
‘We’ll get back to you,’ Emma said to Michelle, then she shouted: ‘I need Blossom Rochester.’
Turning on her heel, Michelle Peroxide disappeared into the toilet, screaming blue murder and instructing her younger partner to get her fucking fingers out of her throat and mind not to get any puke on the sarong because the silver sheen would certainly not stand the stomach acid.
‘Meanwhile, in Birmingham,’ Keely would later explain, ‘life may be about to take an unexpected turn for Blossom, a singing cleaning lady, who had no idea the auditions were taking place at the exhibition centre but has decided to have a punt.’ It was true that Blossom was a cleaning lady, but not at the exhibition centre. She worked up the road at the Birmingham Symphony Hall, but when her application came in it struck Trent as too good an opportunity to miss.
‘We’re not actually lying,’ he had told Emma. ‘She is a cleaning lady and she didn’t know where the auditions were being held. The fact that she’s turned up in a nylon housecoat with a mop and bucket is her business, and if the audience choose to infer that she has been cleaning the exhibition centre then that’s theirs.’
So Emma dutifully set up the shot with Blossom, a big jolly lady, standing over her mop and bucket and shrieking with laughter at the end of every sentence she uttered.
‘Yes, I’m just a cleaner,’ she cackled. ‘But under this coat maybe there’s a star! So when I saw they was auditioning for that Chart Throb I thought why not. Now I’m going to put away my mop and go in there and rock their socks!’
Blossom had in fact auditioned earlier in the day, when she had turned out to have a pretty useful voice, and that and her ‘story’ now ensured her passage through to sing for the real judges.
Having got Blossom out of the way Emma returned to the ladies’ toilet, where Georgie was just emerging. She looked different from last year, Emma thought, more drawn, her cheekbones more prominent. On the other hand she was a year older, girls did change at that age.
‘Hi, girls!’ Emma said. ‘We don’t have long so let’s get straight over to the queue.’
Emma led the two girls across the hall to where, with some difficulty, Gary and Barry had managed to assemble a small group of ‘contestants’, all of whom had been given extra biscuits and promised ‘fun bags’ that would contain Chart Throb merchandising.
Having placed the girls in the middle of the group, Emma made ready to shoot.
‘Hang on,’ cried Michelle. ‘Get your coat off, Georgie.’
Georgie took off her coat and Emma could not help gasping. She was so thin. All her ribs showed beneath the bra, which was obviously padded. Her collar bone stood out from her shoulders and the hips upon which hung her silver-sheened sarong came to two little bony points.
‘Well, hello!’ she heard Trent exclaim over the radio. ‘God, she looks fantastic!’ Glancing down at the television monitor in her hand, Emma had to admit that Georgie did look good on screen. The camera always added a few pounds and by the standards expected of young female entertainers today Georgie filled the bill. In real life, standing only ten feet away from her, an almost naked eighteen-year-old with not an ounce of fat on her, she looked distinctly worrying. Once more Emma felt that she was looking at a victim but, unlike Shaiana, this was a victim upon whom the assault had already begun. Georgie had been attacking herself.
First Time
On the drive home to Leamington Spa, Millicent and Graham struggled to get over their mutual feelings of anticlimax.
‘I suppose it was pretty stupid to imagine that we’d get up in front of Calvin and Beryl, first shot,’ Graham said.
‘It wasn’t stupid. That’s what they make you think is going to happen,’ Millicent replied grumpily.
‘Yes, but if you think about it, it’s obvious it can’t,’ said Graham. ‘I mean you only have to do the maths.’
Conversation lapsed for a while. Graham turned on the radio, tried a number of stations and then turned it off again.
‘Milly,’ he said, ‘let’s get a room.’
‘Oh my goodness, Graham!’ Millicent could feel herself reddening as she said it. Whatever it was that she would have liked to say to such a suggestion, ‘Oh my goodness, Graham’ was not it. But it was such a surprise. The truth was that neither of them had referred to the kiss they had shared since the day it had happened. They had both wanted to but failed to do so when they next met, so the opportunity had been missed. As the days went by, it had become more and more difficult to think of a way of raising the subject, until both of them had begun to wonder if it had ever happened at all.
‘Because when we kissed . . .’ Graham continued. ‘We did kiss, didn’t we? I didn’t make it up?’
‘No, Graham,’ Millicent said. ‘We definitely kissed.’
‘Well, when we kissed, I liked it . . . and I thought you liked it too. Did you like it?’
‘Yes. I liked it.’
Conversation lapsed once more. Graham could think of nothing to add and Millicent could find nothing to say in reply. After a while Graham felt the car slowing and pulling off the road.
‘It’s a service station,’ Millicent said. ‘I expect they’ll have some machines in the t
oilets. They usually do. Have you got some pound coins?’
Graham searched in his pockets and, having found his change, felt for Millicent’s outstretched hand. Briefly he touched her and she was gone.
When she came back, they drove on in silence until once more he felt the car slowing.
‘Travelodge,’ he heard her say. ‘Not very romantic.’
‘You make your own romance,’ he replied and they both laughed.
They went inside, booked a room, bought two Bacardi and Cokes from the vending machine and made their way upstairs.
Afterwards, lying peacefully together, they spoke once more of their audition.
‘If only they’d let me play my guitar,’ Graham said. ‘You know I can’t sing.’
‘They won’t, not until the later rounds. We just have to get that far. You can sing a bit.’
‘You carry me, we both know that. I’m a musician, a songwriter.’
‘Yes, and if we can just do well enough to get through the early stages then maybe people will listen to your songs.’
‘You’re the singer. You should have entered on your own.’
‘Graham, I only want to do it if it’s with you.’
‘Supposing they try to break us up? They do that sometimes, when they think one of a group is better than the other.’
‘Graham, I would never leave you . . .’
‘Why not? I mean if it was one of us or none of us. You’re a great singer, you love to sing.’
‘Because . . . because I love you.’
There, she had said it. It was out at last.
‘I love you too,’ Graham replied, and he reached for her again.
I Will Survive
Beryl and Serenity were working on story ideas for the upcoming series of The Blenheims.
‘How about we get a sit-on lawn mower?’ Beryl suggested.
‘Don’t we have a sit-on lawn mower, sweetness?’ Serenity mumbled through her massively inflated lips, like two glossily painted draught excluders. ‘Isn’t that what Juan mows the lawns with?’
Once more Beryl attempted to explain to her wife the realities of ‘reality’ television.
‘I know we’ve got a sit-on lawn mower that Juan mows the lawns with, babes,’ she said gently, helping her to open the can of Diet Coke with which Serenity, with her talon-like false fingernails, had been struggling for the previous few minutes. ‘But in our show we don’t have Juan, do we? We don’t have any servants because we’re just a good old ordinary family, aren’t we? So who do you think mows the lawn, babes?’
‘Uhm . . .’
‘You mow the lawn, babes.’
‘I’ve never mown a lawn in my fucking life, cherry ripe. I don’t even wax my own legs!’
‘Exactly. Which is why it will be so funny when we decide that the lawn needs mowing and we get you a sit-on mower and you run over a dog and drive it into the swimming pool!’
Serenity pushed a straw between her semi-lifeless lips and sipped her Coke thoughtfully.
‘OK, honey. Whatever you want me to do.’
At that moment a burst of Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I Will Survive’ interrupted their conversation.
It was Beryl’s phone.
Beryl loved ‘I Will Survive’, believing that if ever three words were required to sum her up those three would do it. She had thought about asking in her will for them to be written on her gravestone, until Priscilla had pointed out that this might present something of a contradiction in terms.
Nonetheless ‘I Will Survive’ was Beryl’s motto and her theme tune because Beryl Blenheim saw herself as a fighter, a survivor, a battler, a martyr to the shit that happens. She never tired of assuring people that she had had it tough, she had taken the knocks, hard knocks. The crap that she had had to deal with would have defeated a lesser woman. It would have defeated anyone. But Beryl Blenheim was not a lesser woman, nor was she just anyone.
I am a strong woman and I have survived was the opening line of her celebrated autobiography. I even survived being a man.
The fact that she was enormously rich and had never wanted for anything in her entire life only seemed to add to the mystique of her fabulous gutsiness. The fact that the majority of what shit she had had to deal with had been self-inflicted, brought about by her own greed, jealous ambition, hedonism and relentless self-promotion, never seemed to occur to her, nor did it to the numerous interviewers who nodded knowingly as Beryl, with tight-lipped sincerity, catalogued her tough life as a businesswoman and working mum. It was simply and uncritically accepted that Beryl’s education at the University of Hard Knocks had actually been further complicated by all the weirdness and heavy shit that inevitably accompany wealth, power and fame. That it was these things which had in fact created the tough lady with the big heart that the world loved so dearly.
Beryl retrieved ‘I Will Survive’ from the depths of a handbag that would have cost her two thousand pounds had she not got it for nothing from the goody bag at Elton John’s post-Oscar party.
‘It’s Priscilla,’ Beryl said, glancing at her mobile’s display.
Beryl stuck the Bluetooth in her ear.
‘Mom, you fucking bitch,’ her daughter shouted down the phone without even giving Beryl a chance to greet her. ‘We debuted at forty-eight, you swore we’d be top forty on pre-orders alone!’
‘What are you doing with a fucking phone? They don’t allow you a phone!’
‘I fucking checked out. Mom, the album is a turkey. I wanna die!’
‘You checked out?’
‘I just said my album is a—’
‘Priscilla, you have a drug bust hanging over your head! I told the media you were working through your problem! Dealing with your issues!’
‘Mom, that was six fucking days ago! Do you think anybody remembers any more? It’s history. You wanna know what’s front page today? Another sleazoid thrash metal singer selling downloads of Paris Hilton sucking his dick. The world moved on.’
‘Well, you’d better be right because we have a new season coming up and you’re in it and we are not allowed to film in state correctional institutions.’
‘Mom, listen to me. Didn’t you hear?’ Priscilla’s voice was suddenly less strident, less confident. ‘My album stiffed. I’m a fucking failure.’
The contrast in accents between the two women was startling: a Swindon battler and a Los Angeles princess. Nobody would ever have picked them for members of the same family had not Beryl arranged for their private lives to be broadcast in weekly instalments on the Fox Channel.
‘You’re not a failure, darling,’ Beryl cooed.
‘I am, I am. I can’t sing. I have no talent.’
‘Of course you have talent, darling. You’re a big star. My God, you should count your blessings. How many magazines have you been on the front of, young lady?’
‘Do you think I can sing, Mom?’
‘Of course I do, darling. I’m one of your mothers.’
‘No, but really?’
‘Yes, yes, yes, dear. You can sing. You can sing. You can sing. Now I’m sorry that the album flopped but it isn’t the end of the world . . .’
‘I’m, like, so embarrassed.’
‘No, darling, don’t be embarrassed. We’ll spin it, buy fifty copies in Albania, get you to number one and say you’re big in Europe. Now did you get me in with your London surgeon?’
‘Yes, yes, yes. He does everybody, he’s the best.’
‘Good, because I want to get in straight after the Chart Throb final and before we start The Blenheims.’
‘Did Fox agree to postpone our start date?’
‘They will. I’m working on them.’
‘Mom?’ Once more Priscilla’s voice softened and the brittle accent could not disguise the yearning. ‘Do you really think I can sing?’
Not in Love
After Birmingham, Emma, Chelsie, Trent and the team visited Glasgow, Newcastle, Manchester, Dublin, Belfast, Bristol and London, reducing the few
thousand people who had been selected from the thousands who had sent in applications or attended the mass audition days to those whom they would offer up to Calvin for selection to feature in the show.
The night before the final selection was scheduled to begin, Emma went out for a curry with friends. She had been intending to stay in and study her character notes but she badly needed a break. The general selection process had been so gruelling, much worse than the previous year, and sometimes beer and chicken tikka masala was the only answer.
‘I think it’s because I understand the workings of the show so much better,’ she explained. ‘I know what these people are getting into.’
‘I thought that was going to make it easier,’ her friend Mel replied. ‘That’s what you said: forewarned, forearmed. I’m sure I remember somebody who looked exactly like you sitting in that exact same chair four months ago swearing that she was going to remain aloof and not get emotionally connected this time.’
‘I know, I know,’ Emma replied unhappily. ‘But it’s hard. There’s this girl Shaiana, she’s so intense . . .’
‘God, where do they get these names?’ Mel’s boyfriend, Tom, butted in. ‘I mean how do their mothers know? It’s as if when they’re born everybody says, twenty years from now she’s going to be making a fool of herself on Chart Throb. Better give her a fucking stupid name.’
‘And there’s a girl who’s coming back from last year who’s anorexic, or at least I think she is.’
‘Look, Em,’ Tom said, ‘you said it was a freak show. They told you that when you started. Clingers, Blingers and Mingers . . .’
‘And some singers,’ Emma protested. ‘It’s not all freaks.’
‘Have it both ways. You always do.’
Emma found it very easy to be critical of her situation while becoming defensive when others agreed with her.
‘Some people really do get something out of the whole thing,’ she said. ‘Last year’s winner sold a lot of records and three or four of the other finalists are still singing professionally.’