by Elton, Ben
‘Exactly. Every day I got better at it. I got used to looking at people from a predatory point of view, wondering how we could use them, what we could do with them. And the funny thing was the more I did it, the more I believed that it was OK to do it. I know you’re not a wicked man, Calvin, I just think you’ve managed to persuade yourself that standards and principles don’t count. The end justifies the means. You have all this power, all this influence, all this talent, and what do you do with it? You make the most vapid and forgettable entertainment show in history.’
‘Is there anything wrong with entertainment being vapid and forgettable?’
‘I don’t know. No, not really. I mean, it’s great telly, I admit it. But also maybe yes. It’s corrosive, isn’t it? It undermines standards. I mean it used to be possible to be hugely entertaining without being crap as well, look at The Beatles.’
‘That was genius, Emma. I have never claimed to be a genius or to be looking for genius. If you judge people by that sort of standard nobody would make anything.’
‘Yes, but there were lots of great bands around in the sixties, too many to count. It was almost as if The Beatles were leading by example, as if their example raised everybody’s game. Now you’re the biggest thing. You are the example. People are following you. Your talent has made you powerful. I think that brings with it responsibility.’
‘So what do you think I should do about it?’
‘I don’t know. I’m not the clever one. I just feel . . . you know that term “dumbed down”?’
‘Of course. Hear it all the time. Fucking snobbery.’
‘Well yes, I expect often it is but whenever they go on about how more kids vote in your shows than in general elections you can’t help wondering if there isn’t some truth in it. I mean nothing is about anything any more, nothing means anything. Everything’s a laugh, every-thing’s disposable. You’re the richest, cleverest man in TV and yet everything you create is gone like a puff of smoke.’
‘A good soufflé doesn’t last beyond the eating, does that make it any less valid?’
‘Not everything in life should be a soufflé, Calvin. For instance, what about the royal thing? What about the Prince of Wales?’
‘Keep your voice down, Emma,’ Calvin said gently. ‘Public place and all that.’
‘You’re going to make a fool of him.’
‘We may allow him to make a fool of himself.’
‘Oh, come on, Calvin, don’t try that one. Don’t forget I’ve been in the team. I’m a professional. You will make a fool of him. He thinks he can find an audience through you. Poor bastard, I can’t believe he’s so naïve as to think he can use you. We know what will happen. You’ll lure him in, select the edits that make him look a complete fool, chew him up and spit him out. That’s what you do.’
‘Look, I didn’t come here to talk about the Prince of Wales or the show. I came to talk about you. You and me. My therapist says that I’ve fallen in love with you . . .’
‘Your therapist?’
‘Yes. I never had one before. See what you’ve driven me to? That’s how serious my feelings are.’
‘How romantic.’
‘Yes, well, let me assure you that personally I feel a fool even uttering the word “therapist” but there you are. It is what it is and somehow or other I’ve got to get beyond this. I don’t know how or where it will lead but somehow I’ve got to get this knot out of my stomach and this confusion out of my head . . . Now you won’t sleep with me . . .’
‘No.’
‘And you won’t come back to work for me?’
‘No.’
‘Then tell me what I can do to make you see me at least. Not sleep with me, let’s leave that aside, just . . . see me.’
‘Do you mean you want to “go out” with me, you want me to be your girlfriend?’
‘Yes. I think that’s what I’m saying. I want to start again. Forget everything that’s happened and just . . . see each other. I don’t know. Find out where it leads. I suppose that’s what people do, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, it is, Calvin. But we can’t forget what’s happened. At least I can’t. I just don’t trust you.’
‘Well, somehow or other you have to find a way to trust me. Think about it. Concentrate. Tell me how. Tell me what I can do to make you trust me.’
Emma sat for a little while in silence. Then a thought struck her. It wasn’t an idea that she had come prepared with but suddenly it seemed obvious. ‘I’ll tell you what you can do,’ she said, ‘if you really want to prove yourself.’
‘Yes?’
‘Deselect HRH.’
‘Deselect him?’
‘Yes, turn him down for further audition. Dump him, don’t bring him in. You threw out plenty of others at final selection. Chuck him out too. Do the decent thing. You know he’s completely out of his depth. Protect him from making a fool of himself.’
‘But . . . but he’s already been notified,’ Calvin stammered. ‘He’s been offered an audition.’
‘Denotify him. You’ve read the rules, you wrote them, and the main one is that you can change them at any time. Tell him you’ve changed your mind.’
‘But he’s fantastic telly.’
‘Exactly. That’s the point. Show me you can give something up. Show me you can do something for reasons other than profit, just because it’s the right thing to do, something like preventing a middle-aged man from making a mockery of his life’s work, degrading his position and all the principles he’s stood for and which may even have inspired other people. If you do that, then maybe I could be your girlfriend . . . and . . . well, we’ll see how it goes.’
Calvin did not answer for a moment. Instead he poured himself another cup of coffee. It was clear that he was struggling with something. His usual easy smile had gone and the spout of the coffee pot rattled against the edge of his cup as he poured.
Emma saw his hesitation and it made her sad.
‘You see,’ she said, ‘you can’t do it, can you? You can’t give up a single puppet in your show. Not for me and not, I think, for any girl. Remember what I said to you the last time we had this conversation, Calvin? One day you’re going to be a very lonely old man. Goodbye.’
‘Not HRH!’ Calvin pleaded. ‘Ask me to drop any of the others . . .’
‘Why should I, what’s the difference?’
‘I have my reasons . . . Reasons outside the show. Please.’
‘No, Calvin. You said you loved me and I asked you to do one thing for me and you won’t. You don’t need the Prince. Yes, it’s an amazing thing to get him but you don’t need him. You can’t get any more successful than you are, and besides people are so punch-drunk with royal and political compromises that nothing surprises anybody much any more. How can the poor bloke’s stock get any lower? You’ll get one good bunch of headlines out of him then chuck him out. But you won’t even give up that, will you? Not even for the woman you say you can’t stop thinking about. This really is goodbye, Calvin. Please don’t call me again.’
‘Wait! No! Hang on, you’re wrong,’ Calvin said. ‘Of course I’ll dump him if you want, I’ll dump any of them, but I can do better. I can do more for you than that.’
Emma had been halfway out of her chair. She hovered for a moment before resuming her seat for the third time. She raised her brows as if to say ‘go on’.
‘You say that I was going to use him. Chew him up and spit him out.’
‘Well, weren’t you?’
‘Yes, of course I was. Because we don’t deal in ideas or substance. We deal in personalities and disposable emotions. In fact, along the way we’ve actually made ideas and substance look boring and stupid. Chucking the heir to the throne off our show will be the ultimate proof of that.’
‘That’s right, which is why I don’t want you to have him on in the first place. Surely something should be left that’s worthy of respect? If not the man, at least his position.’
‘How about this? We don’
t use him. We let him use us.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ll tell you what I mean,’ said Calvin, suddenly becoming excited. Excited, it seemed, by a fresh idea. ‘Not only do I let him on to the show but . . . I let him win?’
Calvin allowed this to hang in the air for a moment before pressing on.
‘How about I don’t chew him up and spit him out? How about instead we have him back week after week? We give him time to talk. We edit him sympathetically; we bring the public on to his side. We show that he was right to put himself and his ideas and principles on a new and democratic platform, to reach out to his people in a modern way. And then I find a way for him to win.’
‘The Prince of Wales? The fox-hunting, tax-absorbing, plant-chatting, seed-nibbling, “doesn’t know when to shut up” Prince of Wales win Chart Throb?’
‘Yes. Wouldn’t that be proof of me using my skills for something of substance? Preserving something, not destroying it? You’re a posh bird, you went to a private school, you respect the monarchy, surely you have to accept that that would be a good thing?’
Suddenly it was Emma who was excited.
‘I think it would be amazing. It would be a cultural watershed . . . Do you really think you could do it? I mean getting His Royal Highness into the finals of a pop contest would strain credibility enough, but once the public start voting? How could you possibly manipulate that?’
Calvin stared straight into her big blue eyes. He spoke quietly, sincerely. Like a father.
‘I don’t know. It’s a whole new idea for me. I’m acting on impulse here but hey, that’s what I like to do . . . busking, improvising, dancing on the edge. When I get given a challenge by someone I admire, I like to double it and then some . . . It would of course be incredibly hard, I don’t know if I could even start to pull it off and I’d certainly be risking the credibility of my show . . . risking my whole career. But I’d do it for . . .’
‘For me?’ Emma whispered.
‘Yes. For you, Emma. If I prove to you that I’m not just in this for myself, if I show the world that our programme has substance, that it’s not just a tawdry showbiz money-making machine which is all about phone-line revenues, if I turn the Prince of Wales into the nation’s Chart Throb . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘If I do that, will you sleep with me?’
‘Yes.’
Shetland Mist Prepare to Rock Dundee
For a pub that was licensed to provide entertainment for as many as two hundred and fifty punters they really should have put in a dressing room.
‘The toilets!’ Iona exclaimed in disgust to the enormous ginger-haired man who had greeted them in the car park. ‘You want us to change in the toilets?’
‘I don’t care where you fockin’ change, darlin’, but it’s the toilet or on stage which I’m sure would make a lot of fellahs very happy but we don’t have a licence for the lewd stuff.’
‘But it’s the public toilets,’ Mary, the bass player, protested. ‘We can’t change in front of the fans!’
The big man just smiled at that. The girls had of course put on their stage gear in the toilets many times in their careers but usually there was at least a staff toilet in which to do it. There was something considerably more demeaning about having to don their little glittery hotpants and boob tubes in front of the crowd before whom they would shortly be appearing.
‘It’ll take away all our mystery,’ Mary lamented.
‘Come on,’ said Iona. ‘Let’s do it now before the pub fills up. We certainly won’t be bothering with the second cossies so leave them in the van, Billy.’
Billy, Shetland Mist’s roadie and sound mixer, had been in the process of pulling the ‘second half’ trunk from the van. Now he nodded and returned it.
‘But if there’s no back-stage area, where are we to wait once we’ve got our gear on?’ asked Fleur, the keyboard player. ‘I can’t sit at the bar with my tummy out, it’s bad enough having it out on stage.’
‘You have a coat, don’t you?’ Douglas, the fiddle player, replied.
‘No. I thought we’d have a dressing room. It’s all very well for you and Jamie. You boys don’t even bother to change.’
The girls trooped into the barn of a pub and made their way to the ladies, leaving Billy and the boys to set up the gear on the stacked rostrum which had been erected as a stage.
There was at least a mirror and the floor was moderately clean but it was nonetheless a depressing way to begin an evening’s work.
‘Let’s ring our manager,’ said Mary. This comment was greeted with hollow laughs, for their manager was none other than the elusive Rodney Root.
‘He doesn’t even bother phoning back any more, the bastard,’ Iona reflected bitterly. ‘I’m off to get a chair to stand on while I take my jeans off, I don’t want them touching this floor.’
Iona returned to the main room, where Billy called out from the stage.
‘You girls had best keep your trainers on!’ he said. ‘This stage is just boxes, like a kettle drum. With heels you’ll sound like a herd of elephants every time you move.’
Iona nodded. They were used to this. Solid stages were something of a luxury and often the girls were forced to perform in trainers, which looked pretty good with the hotpants but terrible with the gowns. Iona was glad they would not be bothering with the long dresses that evening.
She gathered up a wooden stool from beside one of the tables and headed back into the toilet. Fleur had commandeered the mirror. She always claimed most mirror time because, at nearly forty, she said she needed the most make-up.
‘I don’t know, Iona,’ Fleur said, blowing on her mascara and rubbing it between her hands in an effort to warm it up. ‘I’m beginning to think it’s time you shopped that bastard to the News of the World. Once the show comes back on, I bet you could get a packet for the inside story of how he wooed you, promised to wed you then weed all over you.’
‘For the final time, Fleur, it’s one thing being made a fool of, it’s another telling everyone about it.’
Fleur simply sighed. The girls had spoken many times of how they might avenge themselves on Rodney Root for the way he had promised so much and delivered so little. But Iona refused to buy into it.
‘I’m not making myself the tragic victim. I was a grown-up girl and I thought I loved him and I thought he loved me. That’s all. What would talking to the papers make me look like? All the Chart Throb fans hate us anyway after the last series, when everyone booed us. I’d just look like a sad tart.’
‘Oh well. No sense crying about it, eh?’ Fleur said, finally managing to get some movement into her congealed make-up. ‘We’ll earn three hundred tonight and we’ve two gigs at the weekend so things could be a sight worse.’
Of course three hundred pounds did not go very far between five band members and a roadie, particularly once travel and dry cleaning and other expenses had been deducted. It was certainly a long way from the dreams of wealth and stardom that they had all indulged in the previous year when embarking on their Chart Throb journey. They all had real jobs now but they still loved the music.
‘We don’t do so badly, do we, girls?’ said Mary cheerfully. ‘And the pub’s providing supper, so get your pants on, Iona, and go and grab some menus. Be sure to bat your eyelids and lean well forward over the bar. If you don’t come back with a round of free rum and Cokes you’re a disgrace to Scottish rock chicks!’
Just then Iona’s mobile phone rang. At that point she was standing on the bar stool with one leg out of her jeans.
‘Oh shit. Who’s that?’ she said, crouching down and trying to pull the phone from her scrunched-up pocket.
By the time she retrieved it she had missed the call and she didn’t recognize the number.
Moments later her message service rang.
‘Hi, Iona. You don’t know me, my name’s Chelsie. I’m on Chart Throb. Calvin asked me to call . . .’
The Meeting Fails t
o Start
It was the day before full-scale recording on the new series of Chart Throb was to begin. On the morrow the three celebrity judges would ‘start’ the lengthy process of scouring the country in their obsessive and highly motivated personal quests to discover new talent. The days would be long and draining, and meticulous forward planning was essential. Therefore the entire team had foregathered in the spacious morning room of the summer house at Copton Thorpe Manor, a country house hotel that nestled cosily in a long loop of the M4 motorway some miles north of Newbury. Calvin would brief them fully on how he saw the various storylines developing in the early stages of the ‘audition’ process. There was an enormous amount to get through and everybody was anxious to be off. Unfortunately the meeting had stalled before it could begin, due to the continuing absence of one of the famous judges.
What was even more frustrating was that it wasn’t one of the important ones. It was the one whom nobody gave a shit about.
‘Where the fuck is Rodney?’ Beryl rasped angrily from a corner of the room. She was still suffering somewhat from further massive treatments of liposuction which she had endured as final preparation for her forthcoming TV appearances, and so, despite the old-fashioned soft furnishings in which Copton Thorpe Manor took such pride, she declined to sit.
‘I said where the FUCK is Rodney?’ she repeated, brutally flexing the muscles of her celebrity by swearing loudly in such ostentatiously genteel surroundings. The prim duty manageress and her smartly dressed staff might redden and purse their lips at such an uncouth display, but Beryl had not got to where she was today by playing by other people’s rules. On the contrary, as she was wont to tell people, she was one strong woman (who used to be a man) and she made her own fucking rules and if people didn’t like it they could go fuck themselves.
‘I spoke to him earlier,’ Calvin replied soothingly. ‘He said he’d be here.’ He turned towards a comely production assistant. ‘You did tell him we’re in the morning room, didn’t you, babes?’
The girl’s name was Gretel but she was ‘babes’ to Calvin. Everyone was a ‘babe’ or a ‘darling’ or a ‘mate’ to him. He employed so many people in so many countries that he could not possibly remember anybody’s name and had long since given up trying. In fact he had already fallen completely in love with Emma before he knew her name.