by Elton, Ben
‘Prospective Singers, Clingers, Blingers and Mingers,’ Calvin corrected. ‘Don’t get ahead of yourself, the only one who’s through for sure is his royal nibs but we’ll discuss him separately.’
A shiver of anticipation rippled across the crowded room. Of course everybody on the team was aware of the exciting news about the Prince but they had all been ordered not to discuss it. If at all possible, Calvin wished for the penny to drop live on air. His plans for a royal victory partly depended on creating the impression that the supposedly pampered and dilettante Prince was doing things the hard way.
‘Yo, boss,’ Trent replied, taking a DVD from the top of the Mingers pile and slipping it into his computer. There followed a brief pause while the machine opened its programme.
‘Might have helped to have had this prepared,’ Calvin said, drumming the table.
‘Yo,’ said Trent.
‘And stop saying “Yo” all the time. You’re not black and you don’t come from LA!’
‘Y . . . yes, boss,’ said Trent, laughing and trying not to look like he had just been punched in the face.
People in the room shifted nervously. Off screen, Calvin was normally an easy-going sort of person and not prone to ostentatious displays of bullying.
After a few seconds an image appeared on the plasma screen, an image of a plump but personable young woman frozen in the act of drawing breath.
‘Glasgow girl,’ Trent said. ‘Can sing. Sweet laugh. Cling, with Bling rising.’ He pressed play and the woman leaped into life.
‘Hi, Calvin,’ she said. ‘Hi, Beryl, hi, Rodney. My name’s Molly Townsend and I’m going to rock your ass!’
Then, screwing up her face, she launched into the opening bars of ‘The Greatest Love Of All’, explaining with a fearsome passion that in her opinion children were the future.
‘Fine, we’ll see her,’ Calvin snapped after the girl had sung a dozen words. ‘Pretty anonymous but could be a useful filler. Next.’
The girl up next also sang ‘The Greatest Love Of All’, if anything with an even more fervent commitment to the sugary lyric, attempting to put at least three notes (sometimes three octaves) into each word she uttered in the manner made famous by Mariah Carey.
‘Fine. Bring her in,’ Calvin barked angrily.
Many hopefuls followed in quick succession. Some were selected, others were equally quickly rejected, every decision taken within a verse and a chorus. There was no other way to do it. Calvin was well aware that he was almost certainly missing the odd potential winner, but even after the massive winnowing process that had preceded his arrival he still had an impossibly large number of prospects to consider.
‘Darth Death Raider,’ said Trent as a black-cloaked figure appeared. ‘Comical Minger, claims to be an alien born in a separate dimension to ours.’
Trent pressed play and on screen Darth Death Raider began to sing ‘Dead Babies’ by Alice Cooper.
‘How many Goth Mingers have you got for consideration?’ Calvin asked over the noise.
‘Not as many as we’d have liked,’ Trent replied. ‘I think this one could be quite useful. Very, very full of himself, genuinely thinks he’s scary and he’s got a pierced penis.’
‘Fine, we’ll take Darth. Next.’
Next up were Graham and Millicent.
‘Why’s he wearing the shades?’ Calvin enquired, viewing the nervous-looking boy and girl on the screen. ‘Wanker?’
‘Blind,’ Trent replied proudly.
‘Good.’
Whenever Calvin saw kids auditioning in sunglasses he dared to hope they might be blind but ninety-nine times out of a hundred they were just wankers trying to look like Bono. Wankers were OK of course, wankers could be very good telly, wankers were the backbone of the Christmas Greatest Auditions Ever DVD. But in the long run wankers were rarely anything more than one-gag wonders. Blind, on the other hand, if properly developed, could be TV gold. Blind was a story.
‘She’s not blind too though, is she?’ Calvin asked, suddenly looking worried. ‘A sightless couple would be way too much for Saturday evening prime time. I mean that’s just weird. Too many issues. Too many questions. Way too many worms in that box.’
Trent glanced down, trying to find the appropriate notes. Graham and Millicent had been Emma’s prospects.
‘Uhm . . .’
‘No. She’s not blind,’ Chelsie chipped in from the back of the room.
‘Thank you.’
‘Good,’ said Calvin. ‘A blind boy and a sighted girl is human drama. A blind couple is a freak show.’
‘Yes, well, the girl is definitely sighted,’ Trent added unnecessarily, trying to draw the focus back from Chelsie, at whom he had noticed Calvin smiling.
‘Can they sing?’
It wasn’t the first question that the assembled employees expected Calvin to ask. On Chart Throb an ability to sing was not the central issue.
‘I spend my life trying to avoid singers,’ Calvin never tired of reminding them. ‘They accost me in the street, push tapes on me when I’m trying to eat my dinner! Break into song when I’m shagging them, for God’s sake! I am stalked by singers. Loads of people can fucking sing. If we wanted the best singers we could go and see fucking Chicago or My Fair fucking Lady or The fucking Lion King. London is full of sexy kids who can sing, they’re all queuing to get into the chorus of Mamma Mia and we don’t want ’em!’
What really mattered to Calvin was backstory and personality. But the one time singing really mattered to him was when real talent was combined with a great backstory; that was gold, that was his dream, to combine a heartbreaking family history with real talent. Such a thing would validate the entire series and silence for ever those carping critics who claimed that his great achievement was just a tawdry, manipulative pile of old schlock.
If these kids could sing, the entire Righteous Brothers back catalogue beckoned.
‘So can they?’ Calvin asked once more.
Once again Trent did not know the answer. Once more Chelsie did.
‘Yeah, they have really sweet voices and they’re lovely kids.’
‘Trent?’
‘Don’t get excited, boss. They can both hold a tune but the harmonies are thin, mate, very thin.’
For a moment Calvin seemed distracted, his mind elsewhere, and wherever that was was not a happy place. His mood remained dark.
‘Trent,’ said Calvin, ‘this is Chart Throb, not the Royal College of Music. If they can hold a tune and sing a harmony, no matter how fucking thin, this kid and his girlfriend can sing.’
‘She’s not really his girlfriend, I’m afraid.’
‘They’re just friends,’ Chelsie added.
‘Has she ever been his girlfriend?’ Calvin asked.
Trent leaped in once more. ‘Possibly,’ he said. ‘They spend a lot of time together, rehearsing their act.’
‘Trent,’ Calvin snapped, ‘read my lips. Has – he – ever – shagged – her?’
‘Uhm, well, I don’t know,’ Trent stuttered, coming to regret forcing his way back into the centre of Calvin’s focus. ‘We don’t normally go into their sex lives, do we, boss?’
Whatever it was that had dented Calvin’s normal good humour was still on his mind, for he responded ferociously.
‘There is no normal, Trent!’ he said, raising his voice despite the pin-drop silence all around. ‘I had thought that perhaps, after three years working with me, you might have worked that out. If there was a NORMAL I could get the IT department to write a selection program and we could run the applications through that. Then I would not have to spend vast amounts of money employing hordes of dimwits like you to turn up at final selection meetings with no fucking clue about the prospects they have chosen. Every case is different, sex matters sometimes! Does it matter with game old grannies singing “Daisy, Daisy”? No, I don’t think so. Does it matter with a single mum struggling to bring up three gorgeous little kids who are SO proud of her? Probably not, although
maybe. Male Mingers trying to rap? No. Dwarf breakdancers singing “Eye Of The Tiger”? Not on my show. Cute boy bands that we drop at round three? No. But does sex matter with blind young men and their devoted, pretty female accomplices? Yes! Yes! Fucking YES! How are we supposed to plan a story for these two if we don’t know if they’re sleeping together?’
‘But . . . but . . .’ Trent began.
‘Now listen up, ALL of you.’ Calvin surveyed the room as every senior researcher, junior researcher, production assistant and secretary attempted to exude alertness so that the great man might be assured that they at least were giving him their most rapt attention.
‘What is this show not?’
The answer would have surprised the show’s legions of fans but everyone in the room knew it.
‘A talent show,’ they all said in virtual unison.
‘That’s right. We are not a talent show. What are we?’
‘We’re an entertainment show,’ his people replied.
‘My job, your job, our job is to entertain. If dumping the best singer is more entertaining than keeping him then that is what we do because the public are not interested in the singing. The singing is a necessary evil. The public are interested in the singers. The people singing the songs. Pop is dead. People think I’m so clever because the winners of our show will be signed to my record company. Oh wow! Look at me! I’m such a Svengali. Big deal. I get to make Joe Nobody’s one and only fucking record. Fuck that! I make more out of five minutes of telephone voting than I will out of the entire recording career of most of this year’s finalists. Yes. Think about it. He, she or they are worth more to me before they win than they ever will be after. Do you know what sort of sales it takes to get a number one these days?’
They did know, for Calvin had told them, often.
‘Some weeks you can get there with twenty-five thousand sales! It used to take half a million in an ordinary week. Twenty-five thousand CDs or fucking downloads, God help us, doesn’t pay for their own marketing! Singles are worthless, they’re meaningless, they’re history. The only reason we need our winner to get a number one is to validate the process, to give the show some semblance of meaning. We are a people show and if I could find a format where we could do without the singing, if I could find a way to attract eight million viewers and two million phone calls a week without having to sit through a bunch of deluded pricks murdering “The Greatest Love Of All” and “Unchained Melody”, believe me, I would. And, my God, haven’t people tried? There’s been cooking, dancing, fucking skating, for Christ’s sake, which sort of worked, but none of them have proved themselves as neat and simple a way of introducing the public to our menagerie of clowns, dysfunctionals, egomaniacs and emotional casualties as singing a song!
‘We are a people show!’ Calvin repeated. ‘And 99 per cent of our job is to find the right people. The Singers. The Clingers. The Blingers and the Mingers! Now most people aren’t very interesting, are they? No. You lot have just spent six months sifting through nearly a hundred thousand of them and I’ll bet you’re bored shitless. I’ll bet that you’re even bored shitless by the few hundred you’ve whittled the final selection group down to. I’ll bet you’re wondering whether out of this tawdry bunch of inadequate fuck-ups we even have the makings of a show. Am I right?’
Once more the group were reluctant to answer but it was clear from the embarrassed manner in which some of the younger ones stared at the carpet that Calvin was right. The research team had indeed been driven nearly mad with boredom searching through the endless similar applications and they had most definitely at times despaired of discovering a sufficiently interesting group of contestants to maintain the high standards that the public had come to expect from Chart Throb.
‘Of course I’m right,’ said Calvin. ‘And that’s because, in spite of the myth which this show was invented to propagate, the world is not teeming with undiscovered Aretha Franklins and Elvis Presleys, nor is the average person who believes themselves to be mad, amusing, charismatic or sexy actually mad, amusing, charismatic or sexy. We’re all the fucking same! Everybody has a dream, everybody wants it all and everybody’s mum is either dead or will at some point die. Our job is to find something, anything, on which to build, on which to hang our stories, to create our characters. If some dick once spent a summer driving a tractor on a dairy farm he’s an ex-cowboy, if some bird was a movie extra she’s an ex-body double. Every cancer scare is a “life and death struggle” to us and two parking fines is a criminal past from which the sinner is struggling to release himself through song. And you, Trent, you come to the final selection meeting, the point at which decisions have to be made and our audition group assembled, and tell me that you have a blind lad and his pretty partner but you don’t know whether they’re having sex!’
‘I don’t think he’s given her one,’ Trent said. ‘Leastways that’s how I read it. No exchange of fluids so far.’
‘Why not?’ Calvin asked. ‘You said you didn’t know.’
Trent’s eyes flicked down once more to Emma’s carefully prepared, neatly handwritten notes.
‘They belong to the same choir.’
‘You think people in choirs don’t have sex? What do you think they join choirs for in the first place? Because they can’t get laid, that’s why.’
‘Well, maybe they’ll get round to it,’ Trent replied, trying to sound confident and knowledgeable. ‘I reckon this singing thing’s a surrogate, gotta be. Two nineteen-year-olds meet in a choir, he’s blind, she’s . . .’ he was reading verbatim now, ‘member of the school council, Duke of Edinburgh Award recipient, first-year theology student.’
‘A theology student? Fucking hell,’ Calvin mused. ‘This is nice. Normally only the black ones go on about God. The show could use a bit of non-ethnic faith.’
‘He’s her project,’ Trent continued. ‘She thinks she’s Helen Keller. Imagine what school was like for this chick. She’s a swot, she’s in a choir, she’s a fucking Christian, for God’s sake! The other chicks must have hated her. Then she meets the blind kid . . .’
‘Graham, his name is,’ Chelsie chipped in. She had, after all, been working with Emma and was anxious to remind Calvin that now Emma was gone this research initiative was not Trent’s, it was hers. ‘Graham and Millicent.’
‘Millicent!’ Calvin barked. ‘This is perfect!’
‘Yes, and actually she’s nineteen and he’s eighteen.’
‘She’s older, better and better. I like it.’
‘That’s my point, boss,’ Trent barged back in. ‘He’s younger than her! She’s colonized him.’ Trent spoke as if he’d been aware of the age disparity all along, indeed he spoke as if he’d planned it. In order to ward off any further attempts by Chelsie to elbow her way on to the agenda he pressed Play and Graham and Millicent leaped into life on the screen.
‘Hi, everybody,’ said Millicent with a little wave. ‘I’m Millicent.’
‘And I’m Graham.’
‘Hi, everybody,’ they said together, waving at the camera. ‘We’re Graham and Millicent.’
‘Loving the décolletage,’ Calvin observed, pressing the pause button. ‘Nothing sexier than girl nerds in glasses trying to work their tits.’
‘Yes,’ said Chelsie with a defiant stare at Trent. ‘She definitely thinks she has nice boobs, I could tell when I interviewed her that she likes to give the boys a little squiz.’
Millicent, although primly dressed in jeans, blouse and pale green cardigan, was obviously proud of her bosom and had deliberately chosen to leave the telltale third button open.
Calvin pressed Play and the voice of the sacked Emma could be heard speaking from behind the camera.
‘Hello, you two,’ Emma said. ‘What are you going to do for us today?’
Calvin scowled but said nothing.
‘We’d like to sing “When Will The Good Apples Fall” by the Seekers,’ said Millicent with the slightly overassertive confidence of someone who had only re
cently been head prefect.
‘Yes, that’s right,’ Graham agreed, with considerably less aplomb.
‘Oh, yes indeed,’ muttered Calvin. ‘The Seekers, I like it!’
Emma had been right, they weren’t bad at all. They could hold down a two-part harmony and still deliver the tune, but Millicent was clearly the stronger singer of the two. Graham did his best to cover his lack of range by affecting some gravelly rock ’n’ roll vocal mannerisms but there was no disguising his failure to reach the high notes and his dodgy pitching. He also stood very awkwardly and his right hand strummed along in a rather offputting manner, as if he would far rather be playing than singing.
Calvin let the two of them complete their entire verse and chorus, the first time he had let anyone get that far all morning. When it was over Emma’s voice could be heard once more congratulating the singers. A flicker of irritation, perhaps even pain, passed across Calvin’s face and once more he cut her short with the pause button.
‘What’s he like behind the sunnies?’ Calvin enquired. ‘Nice blind or weird blind?’
‘Chelsie?’ said Trent quickly.
‘Weird blind, I’m afraid,’ Chelsie replied, making a point of speaking directly to Calvin. ‘I got him to take off the shades, bit distracting to be honest. He’s got really deep hollows with half-closed lids set into the skull. I don’t know much about blindness and didn’t like to ask but I’m not sure if he actually has any eyeballs. You couldn’t really tell.’
‘Doesn’t matter, he can stick with the shades. The Big O never took them off,’ Calvin replied. ‘This is looking very, very tasty, there is so much journey potential here, from nerd to sexy, from friends to lovers, from chaste to horny, from dull, repressed, God-bothering choristers to rock ’n’ roll sluts! AND the kid’s blind! How good is that? I am so loving these two. Next!’