by Elton, Ben
‘It is,’ Trent replied eagerly. ‘Because when . . .’ He glanced at his notes.
‘Vicky,’ Chelsie managed to say before he could find the name.
‘Yes. Vicky starts to cry . . .’
‘She’ll do more than cry,’ Chelsie added. ‘She’ll protest, she’s a right cocky little madam, the mum’s brainwashed her. She truly believes.’
‘Right, so when Vicky cries and protests,’ continued Trent, trying not to look too annoyed at his pushy subordinate, ‘you, Beryl, leap to her defence, right? We can see you know she’s crap but she’s brought out your mothering instincts . . .’
‘This is good,’ said Beryl, pleased. ‘You know I want a lot of that this time, Calvin. Lots and lots of “everybody’s favourite mum” stuff from Keely, it’s one of my strongest features. Half my advertising revenue comes from it.’
‘We’re on it, Beryl,’ said Trent. ‘What’s Keely’s voiceover script here?’
A young man, one of seven scriptwriters present, spoke up from the back of the room.
‘“Meanwhile it looks like Rodney has gone too far,”’ the writer quoted, ‘“and big-hearted supermum Beryl has gone all clucky over Vicky.”’
‘Good. Excellent,’ said Beryl, beaming. ‘Loving “big-hearted supermum”, more of that, please. Maybe I should have some mugs made up?’
‘Glad you like it, Beryl,’ said Trent, beaming also. ‘So you tell Rodney to stop and he won’t, he repeats his haemorrhoids gag and you go and hug Vicky and tell her that she has every right to follow her dream if she wants and Rodney laughs and—’
‘I throw the water over him!’
‘Yes!’ said Trent. ‘You throw the water over him.’
‘Love it!’ said Beryl. ‘I’m going out for a fag.’
Sat Nav
Rodney had returned to reception.
‘I need the postcode.’
‘Pardon, sir?’
‘The postcode for the summer house. My driver has to key it into his sat nav.’
‘I can give you directions, sir.’
‘I don’t need your directions, miss, that’s why we have sat nav, to eliminate human error.’
‘They’re very simple.’
‘Exactly. Unlike the sat nav in my Merc, which is rather complex and sophisticated and uses the same software as the American military. Could you get a missile through a window in Baghdad?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Well, the US military can and my sat nav has access to the same satellite information as they have. Not simple. Not human. Incapable of errors. Please give me the postcode immediately.’
‘I’ll just get you a letterhead, sir.’
The receptionist followed Rodney out into the car park and handed Rodney’s driver a comp slip with the information printed on it.
‘I don’t believe this,’ Rodney commented.
He was then forced to wait while his driver keyed the postcode into the dashboard computer of the car.
‘Route being calculated,’ the sat nav voice assured Rodney, and his driver steered the car out of the manor’s imposing gates and on to the A34.
‘Where possible make a legal U-turn,’ the voice added shortly afterwards.
That section of the road was a dual carriageway, so it was not possible to turn immediately. The driver was forced to continue for some miles up the road before the next exit provided an opportunity to turn back.
‘Continue on to the next exit,’ said the voice.
Rodney tutted impatiently as he watched the hotel pass by on the other side of the carriageway.
‘At the next roundabout,’ said the sat nav, ‘take the third exit.’
‘Bollocks!’ said the driver as he turned back down the dual carriageway once more.
‘Exit left at the slip road. You have arrived at your destination.’
And the driver drove back through the gates of the hotel.
When they had once more arrived, Rodney tore open the door and strode back into reception.
‘Miss. Is the postcode for the summer house the same as the one for the hotel itself?’ he enquired angrily.
‘Yes, sir,’ the receptionist replied. ‘It’s a part of the hotel. It doesn’t have its own postal address.’
Rodney knew when he was beaten.
‘Where are the fucking golf buggies?’
Summit in the Vestibule
Beryl was smoking in the summer house vestibule when Rodney arrived, hurrying red-faced through the front door.
‘Morning, Rodney,’ she said. ‘Nice of you to join us. Are you late for this series or early for the next one?’
Rodney and Beryl, ‘genuinely great mates’ according to the Chart Throb website, had not laid eyes on each other for nine months and neither of them showed any signs of regretting a moment of their separation.
‘Did you arrive here by buggy?’ Rodney enquired.
‘Rodney, I don’t do walking.’
‘Yes, but did you come here by golf buggy?’
‘No, I got Captain Picard to transport me via the Enterprise. Of course I came here by buggy, this place is in the middle of a golf course.’
Rodney relaxed ever so slightly. This assurance that the indignity of being driven to a highly important meeting in what was little better than an electric shoe-box had been visited upon his colleagues as well as him went some way to soothing his offended soul.
‘Quite a good service, I thought,’ Beryl continued. ‘They picked me up at my front door.’
‘At your front door?’ Dark clouds of suspicion gathered once more in the raw and tender wound that was Rodney Root’s ego. ‘They drove the buggy along a hotel corridor?’
‘No, of course they didn’t, you fucking ass. I’m in a chalet.’
It was a hammer blow.
‘I thought you were in a suite?’
‘I am, the suite is a chalet. Suite? Chalet? So what! Why are we having this fucking conversation?’
‘A detached chalet?’
‘Yes, a detached chalet. There’s two of them down by the lake.’
‘Is Calvin in the other one?’
‘I don’t fucking know. I suppose so. I think I could hear him on the phone when I was having breakfast on my upstairs balcony.’
‘Upstairs balcony! Your chalet has two storeys?’
‘Yes.’
‘And a balcony?’
‘Look, Rodney, I am not going to spend the rest of my life discussing my accommodation with—’
‘I’m in a room.’
Rodney was so agitated he could hardly continue. There was a pause, and despite her obvious lack of interest in anything that Rodney might have to say, Beryl finally felt obliged to speak.
‘And?’ she queried impatiently.
‘It is an executive room but it’s still a room.’
‘Rodney, please. Why would I give a fuck?’
Rodney might have explained that the whole premise of the Chart Throb judging panel was that the three of them were equals. He might have pointed out that he in fact had a contractual guarantee to absolute parity on travel, perks, catering and accommodation. He might have mentioned that he was fed up with being treated like a second-class judge and that they would one day push him too far. But he said none of these things because at that point Beryl’s phone rang.
She did not spare Rodney so much as a cursory nod of apology as, curtailing their conversation, she popped open the little diamond-encrusted handset and turned away, leaving him to hover aimlessly for a second or two before slinking into the morning room to join the conference.
‘Mom, you fucking bitch!’ said Priscilla so loudly into Beryl’s phone that the retreating Rodney heard it. ‘Did you really invite Helmut to my party?’
‘Hello, darling, how is everything? Settling into London, not too jet-lagged?’
‘Did you invite Helmut to my fucking party?’
‘Helmut’s gorgeous, darling. He’s a babe.’
‘My eighteenth, Mom! It’
s like fuck, does everything have to be a photo op with you?’
‘I like Helmut.’
‘He’s trash and so are you! You are not inviting Helmut the Helmet to my birthday party!’
Helmut had been a finalist in the previous year’s series of Chart Throb, during which he and Beryl had conducted a famously flirtatious relationship. Helmut had been previously employed as a male stripper, a heroically well-endowed male stripper according to the papers (a piece of information originally leaked by the Chart Throb press office). It was hinted that not only was Helmut’s penis huge but that it was top heavy, like a sledgehammer, hence his nickname, Helmut the Helmet. Helmut had not won the competition but to Calvin’s beautifully acted ‘surprise’ and ‘horror’ he had come very close. He had gone on to score a novelty hit covering Peter Gabriel’s song ‘Sledgehammer’ and now presented a cable holiday game show called Bikini Beach. Helmut was certainly the only member of the previous year’s final twelve who still had a contract pertaining to any area of show business.
‘Are you balling him, Mom?’ Priscilla asked.
‘Don’t be disgusting. You’re talking to your step-mother! Of course I’m not balling him. Apart from anything else, my vagina isn’t finished yet. He’s cute, that’s all, and he’s buff. I like a man with muscles.’
‘You are so gross. He’s like twenty-five and you’re like one hundred and I do not want that German fucking sleazoid human penis loser at our party.’
‘Well, he’s coming. I have a profile to maintain and me and Helmut will make a very sexy photo.’
‘Mom! This is my fucking party! Mine and Lisa Ma-fucking-rie’s.’
‘And I am your fucking stepmother! And you will do what you are fucking told!’
Rodney Joins the Meeting
Rodney had intended that his would be a grand entrance.
Arriving late is not necessarily a bad thing, particularly if you are a senior member of the team and in a position to make your own rules. Everyone would be there, Calvin would no doubt have begun the meeting and all eyes would be on him but he would have to stop when Rodney walked in. Not to admonish him as he would a tardy employee, but to greet him as he must an equal, a fellow member of the judging panel. Calvin would be obliged to welcome him back, introduce him to those new members of the team who did not know him from the previous series (know him personally that is, for of course everybody knew Rodney Root as a celebrity). Pretty PAs would offer him coffee, comely researchers would leap from their seats in order that he might be given his rightful position at the centre of the action.
The arrival of Rodney Root on the first day of a new series of Chart Throb was undeniably an event and Calvin would feel obliged to treat it as such.
And indeed he would have done had Calvin been his usual self. Normally Calvin was happy to take some small care with Rodney’s delicate ego. Not to the extent of letting him have the best room when only two were available, of course, but within limits he tried not to be rude. It did not take much to make Rodney happy: a curt instruction that Rodney should be brought coffee, a kindly enquiry as to whether Rodney would like biscuits and was he satisfied with his wardrobe selection? These small courtesies Calvin was happy to show. Most of the time, that is, but not today. Today Calvin simply pressed on, and since the king was still holding court no courtier was going to take their eyes or ears off him for a moment. Certainly not for Rodney. Rodney might have been a celebrity judge but no one was under any illusions as to which end of the panel he hailed from. Nobody moved. Nobody offered him a coffee, let alone a seat. Nobody mentioned biscuits. How could they? Calvin was speaking and that was something no employee of CALonic TV could afford to ignore. Rodney was forced to hover by the doorway and wait. The room was too crowded for him to find a place with any dignity, not unless people were prepared to take notice of him and move, which they were not. Every seat was filled, every arm of every sofa and easy chair had a pert youthful bottom perched upon it. The edges of the coffee table were likewise occupied and one or two of the youngest and cutest of the girls were even sitting on the floor. Rodney was trapped at the doorway and Calvin had not even said hello. He had nodded, that was all, nodded mid-flow and pressed right on, and there was nothing Rodney could do.
Calvin wanted to get through the pre-coffee-break agenda as quickly as possible so that he could ring Emma. He wanted to find out how she was, what she was doing, what she was thinking. It had, after all, been nearly two hours since their breakfast conversation. There would be so much to talk about, so much that was new and different about her to discuss and to discover. Calvin was therefore pressing ahead. He did not want to have to cancel the morning coffee break or squeeze the lunch hour as he would normally do when he was behind. Normally he hated coffee breaks and he particularly hated lunch hours. Who took an hour for lunch? He personally would be happy to eat a sandwich on the run and take no break at all, but the fucking unions had their rules. Today was different though. Today Calvin was anxious to preserve every precious second of leisure time available to him. Because he wanted to ring Emma.
‘Right!’ Calvin continued, forcing himself to focus. ‘I have scheduling issues here, Trent.’
‘Issues, boss?’
‘Yes, recapping. We kick off the auditions with the three funny-accent girls, right?’
‘Check, chief, although we’ll have taken some arrival shots and some moodies prior to that. You know how you wanted to get the three of you walking in all in black ready for a shoot-out, like in a spaghetti western?’
‘Yes, yes, yes. But we’re talking about the auditions here. We start with the three foreign birds, then we hoover up In and Outs till the first break.’
‘Yes, hoping to get through twenty-five or so, and we can pick up more in a separate room from you guys for drop-ins.’
‘Then after the break you wanted to kick off with the appalling sixteen-year-old who Rodney disses and Beryl mothers? Right?’
Standing at the door, Rodney grabbed the moment to make his presence felt.
‘I like that, Calvin. That’s good. Rodney disses the kid, that’s great. So you’ve really been working on my suggestion for a meaner me?’
Calvin scarcely turned towards him.
‘Hi, Rodney. Yeah. We love you mean. So . . .’ He turned back to Trent. ‘Obviously we’re going to want to set up a hospitality-room confrontation over this one. Usual stuff, me inspecting the sandwiches while Beryl threatens to walk out and Rodney sulks, right?’
‘Of course. We love all that, boss.’
‘Plus Rodney’s going to be covered in coffee, which brings in hair and make-up issues . . .’
‘Plus sound,’ said a representative of the sound department. ‘We’ll need to get his tie mike off him before Beryl chucks the coffee.’
‘Excuse me,’ Rodney interjected, looking suddenly concerned.
‘So that’s my scheduling issues right there,’ Calvin pressed on.
‘Excuse me,’ Rodney tried again and was once again ignored.
‘Surely we should set this one up before the first break so that we can go straight into hospitality and shoot the quarrel over the sandwiches with Rodney already soaking wet?’
‘Excuse me . . .’ said Rodney.
‘That way the crew can take their break without us having to move twice and Rodney can dry out then rather than having to bring in Hair and Make-up for ten minutes of faffing about while we’re trying to shoot, plus of course putting his mike back on.’
‘Excuse me . . .’
‘In a MINUTE, Rodney!’ Calvin snapped before turning back to Trent. ‘Surely that’s got to be the time-effective solution?’
‘Well, I suppose it’s an option, boss . . . I was thinking of shooting the audition and Rodney’s dissing the little Minger straight after the break, then holding the story at that point, hoovering up the rest of the morning’s Minger quickies, then picking up the second half of the Rodney and Beryl row plus the coffee-throwing just before lunch, then
we can move the crew into Hospitality with Rodney dripping wet and shoot the catering confrontation at the top of the break. That gives Rodney plenty of time to dry out over lunch and we can start the afternoon with a couple more comedy calls to Rodney on his mobile because we really need to be getting that story moving . . .’
‘Trent?’ Penny, the continuity girl, chipped in. ‘I’m really unhappy about split stories. I make this point at every debrief, split stories are a continuity nightmare.’
‘Hear, hear,’ said Costume.
‘Seconded,’ said Make-up.
‘Thirded with knobs on,’ said Hair.
‘Anything can happen,’ Penny continued, warming to a topic on which she could speak without pause for hours. ‘Remember last year when Rodney got stung on the nose by that wasp when we had just shot the first half of the cute toddler story?’
‘Excuse me . . .’ said Rodney.
‘It was a continuity nightmare! One minute he’s fine, then what was supposed to be two seconds later he’s got a nose the size of an apple. It looked like his nose swelled up mid-sentence.’
‘We did our best,’ said Make-up.
‘So did we,’ said Lighting.
‘Never mind his nose,’ said Costume. ‘What about the Frappuccino he spilt all over his shirt when the wasp stung him? And I had him in darks that day. More fool me.’
‘Excuse me,’ said Rodney.
‘Just a MINUTE, Rodney,’ Calvin snapped. ‘People! We need to focus here. No sense in fighting old battles. We begin recording tomorrow! Now, let us proceed towards a decision here. What costume is Rodney wearing immediately pre-lunch?’
Once more massive files were opened and consulted by all relevant departments.
‘Well, currently we’ve scheduled to go to virtual Dublin at the end of the Minger quickies so that we can knock off the Irish Mingers along with the UK ones, which means he’ll have changed into his St Paddy’s Day rugby shirt. Therefore if we were then to pick up the second half of his row with Beryl we’d have to change him back.’
‘Plus,’ said Props, ‘we’ll have to move the leprechaun gonk and lose the shamrock.’