How to Get Ahead in Television

by Sophie Cousens

  Rhidian, Arnold and Chris were all nodding.

  ‘Don’t worry, Pam, you’ll pick it up once we get going,’ JR said to me.

  Someone dimmed the lights and the production team all sat down to watch and take notes. Magnus started reading from his cue cards in that distinctive booming voice of his.

  ‘Good evening, and welcome to What Do They Know?, the new game show for BBC2 that isn’t all about you! Now, most people know if they can answer a question or not, but this game isn’t just about knowing the answers yourself, it’s about predicting what your teammate knows. Let’s meet the teams.’

  Magnus walked over to Rhidian and Arnold’s podium.

  ‘Hello, Rhidian, hello, Arnold. So how do you two know each other?’

  ‘We play bridge together,’ Rhidian improvised.

  Magnus launched into a conversation about whether their knowledge of each other’s bridge-playing techniques was going to help them win the game.

  ‘What shall we say?’ Chris whispered to me, the smell of cheese and onion crisps lingering in the air as he spoke. I noticed he had very dry skin, that type of flaky red eczema that looks raw and painful.

  ‘I don’t know. Do we have to make something up?’ I whispered.

  ‘Let’s say we’re married?’ Chris whispered back.

  ‘No, no, let’s say we’re tennis partners or something…’ I hissed back, but I was too late. Magnus was already standing next to our podium, asking how Chris and I knew each other.

  ‘Pam’s my wife,’ said Chris.

  The production team all laughed at the idea (Chris being a good thirty years older than me) and Chris puffed his chest out, pleased at having made a good joke.

  ‘Ah, a spousal team,’ said Magnus. ‘Well, let’s see if your intimate knowledge of each other as a couple will help you in the quiz show arena. Now, without further ado, let’s get on with the game.’

  Magnus turned over the first page on the flip chart to reveal the words ‘Round One – The Middle East’. I started to feel hot under the bright studio lights. I hadn’t considered what this quiz might entail and I was starting to worry that this run-through might not go well for me. General knowledge was not my strong point. Current affairs were definitely not my strong point.

  ‘For control of the first round: which city is the capital of Lebanon?’ Magnus asked.

  Chris’s hand shot up.

  ‘Chris,’ said Magnus.

  ‘Beirut.’

  ‘Correct.’

  Oh, thank god Chris knew what he was doing. Hopefully I could just stand here and let him win this for us.

  ‘Which means your team has won control of the round.’ Magnus went on, ‘I’ll now ask five questions on the Middle East, but only Pam will be able to answer.’

  Oh crap.

  ‘Pam, who is the prime minister of Israel?’ asked Magnus. His huge grey eyebrows directed towards me, pressuring me with their bushiness.

  ‘Um…’

  I have absolutely no idea.

  ‘Just take a guess,’ Magnus prompted me.

  ‘Um…’

  ‘I need some kind of answer,’ said Magnus. ‘I’m afraid you can’t pass.’

  I really have no idea. I search my brain for a foreign-sounding name…

  ‘Salman Rushdie?’

  There were peals of laughter from the crew.

  ‘I’m afraid that’s not right, Pam, it’s Benjamin Netanyahu. That’s one point to Arnold and Rhidian’s team. Question two: name one of the key disputed territories in the Israel–Palestine dispute.’

  I wondered if I could fake a sudden illness or fainting fit? I had never wanted to be somewhere less in my life. Everyone would think I was an idiot for not knowing this stuff and I’d never work in TV again. It’s not that I’m really ill-informed, I’m just hopeless under pressure with anything involving fact retention.

  ‘Um…’

  ‘I’m going to need a guess, Pam, just one area…’

  I racked my brain for things I’d heard on the news. I was sure I must know this.

  ‘Er, the South Bank?’

  There were more gleeful giggles from the crew.

  ‘I think that would put the conflict quite close to home, Pam.’ Magnus looked at me as though I was a moronic child inhabiting a grown-up’s body.

  ‘You could have had the Gaza Strip or the West Bank. That’s another point for Arnold and Rhidian’s team. Question three: name two of the five countries that currently share a border with Jordan?’

  Please, world, swallow me. Or just send a power-cut to help me. I’d be happy to accept a very minor heart attack to get me out of this.

  ‘I’m going to have to hurry you,’ Magnus prompted me.

  ‘Um, Iran?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Afghanistan?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Morocco?’

  More yelps of delight from the crew.

  ‘Yemen?’

  Magnus sighed and turned to ask JR a question.

  ‘In this kind of situation would we have a limit on how many guesses the contestant would get? I don’t think this kind of open-ended question really works.’

  JR was pacing up and down the studio, rubbing his stubble between thumb and forefinger.

  ‘Yes, I agree,’ he said. ‘Take that as an incorrect answer and we’ll have to relook at any questions with multiple answers.’

  JR clicked his fingers at Jude, who started scribbling on a notepad. Chris groaned in frustration that I was losing our team so many points.

  ‘I’m sorry, this isn’t really my topic,’ I whispered. ‘As soon as Hollyoaks comes up, I am all set.’ I gave Chris a weak smile.

  Unfortunately for me, Hollyoaks did not come up. It transpired that the whole quiz was incredibly high-brow and I was saddled with answering questions on: ‘The Policies of Margaret Thatcher’, ‘American Presidents’ and ‘The EU, 1993 – present’. Suffice to say, the game did not go well for Chris and me.

  The final scores stood at fifty-one points to Arnold and Rhidian’s team, five points to ours (all won by Chris for gaining control of the board). I was a nervous wreck by the time the game was over and Chris had lost a large quantity of skin in the scratch-inducing stress of defeat.

  ‘Thanks to both our teams for their sterling efforts,’ said Magnus, finally putting an end to the torture. With proceedings concluded, the production team huddled around for a debrief with Magnus and JR, while we contestants were left standing awkwardly at our podiums.

  ‘All right, Pam?’ said Rhidian, walking over to our podium and raising an eyebrow at me. ‘Well played there.’

  ‘Hardly,’ I muttered. ‘I had no idea it was going to be so… so, well, niche.’

  ‘Didn’t you do a history degree?’ asked Rhidian.

  ‘Yes, but, well, but I didn’t study those bits.’

  The crew dispersed and Jude ushered Arnold and Chris out. Rhidian received a hearty handshake and back slap from Arnold, while Chris purposely ignored me.

  ‘Well played, guys,’ said JR on his way out. ‘Thanks for helping out.’

  ‘No problem,’ said Rhidian.

  ‘Oh, and it’s Poppy, right, not Pam?’ JR smiled at me. ‘Great call on playing it dumb – it really helped expose a few structural issues with the game. Really funny too!’ He laughed. ‘Salman Rushdie. Ha ha. Brilliant.’

  I smiled weakly. ‘Um, any time.’

  ‘So fifty-one to five,’ gloated Rhidian, once JR had left. ‘Do you think we should keep tabs on this kind of thing, you know, for the final job reckoning? It might be these little things that swing it.’ Rhidian brushed a hand through his blond hair and looked down at me, a small dimple pulsing in his left cheek. I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.

  ‘I hardly think knowing a few stupid answers in a ridiculous quiz qualifies you as a better runner,’ I said, a little too tartly.

  ‘Maybe not.’ Rhidian looked thoughtful. ‘Still, I think I might make a cha
rt… Something to put up in the post room to keep track of our respective victories.’

  He winked at me. Infuriating man.

  ‘Well, if you need a chart to reassure yourself you’re doing a good job, you knock yourself out, buddy,’ I said, marching back upstairs in a manner that I hope conveyed an ‘I’ve got far more important things to do than verbally spar with you’ attitude.

  STEP 10 – REMIND YOURSELF WHY YOU ARE DOING THIS

  I LAY AWAKE that night, in Natalie’s parents’ basement, fretting. All summer I’d been so focused on trying to get a foot in the TV industry door, I hadn’t really thought beyond that first step. To continue the analogy, once I’d got my foot in, how was I going to wedge the rest of my body through, announce I’d arrived and make sure nobody said, ‘Oi, what are you doing in here? You aren’t supposed to be in here’?

  While I was at Bristol, a film crew visited the university to film a TV show called Single and Ready to Mingle. I had been neither single nor ready to mingle at the time, but I’d gone to watch them filming at the student union. I got talking to one of the researchers who worked on the show and it had struck me what a fun job she had, being paid to travel around the country talking to people about their love lives. Most of the grown-ups I knew had really boring-sounding jobs, like urban planning (my dad), accounting (my uncle) or banking (Lorraine-next-door’s-son-Ian), so I had little idea that such a fun way of earning a living was even an option.

  My dad sometimes worked from home, and when I asked him what he was working on, he’d say something along the lines of: ‘I’m writing a proposal on how to revitalize the physical facilities of Swindon. I’ll present my findings to the council, where they’ll be universally ignored on account of a lack of funds. I tell you, Poppy, it’s a bloody waste of my time.’ He’d then shut himself in his study until all hours to finish said proposal and emerge in the morning looking haggard and world-wearied. This made me depressed on my dad’s behalf. Imagine spending your life working on things that not only sounded mind-numbingly dull, but would probably never happen anyway.

  A lot of parents must clash with their children over the ‘secure, money-making career’ versus ‘creative calling’ debate. However, in my family there were reasons why this debate was a particular source of contention: namely, Aunt Josephine. When I’d first mentioned the TV idea to my parents, my mother had cried, ‘Oh no, Harold! It’s Josephine all over again!’

  Aunt Josephine was my mother’s older sister. In the seventies she’d been a highly regarded, rather controversial modern artist who, the way Aunt Josephine tells it, ‘invented graffiti as a modern art form’. In her mid-twenties, she became a sensation when she created an illegal mural made out of honey-glazed ham on the side of a police station on the Edgware Road. She’d called the piece Pigs. Question Mark. Ham. Question Mark and was hailed by people in the art world as a maverick visionary. The mural was removed after just twenty-four hours, but you can find photos of it even now in books on the history of modern art.

  After her mural success, Aunt Josephine got invited to all the cool parties, and galleries wanted to exhibit her hamthemed work. Suffice to say, being catapulted to fame and fortune rather soured her relationship with my mother, who was working as a rather lowly legal secretary at the time. Family legend has it that at this point, riding high on her mural success, Aunt Josephine got in the with ‘the wrong crowd’. ‘She got too big for her boots is what happened,’ said my mother. The details are rather hazy, but Clemmie and I have deduced that Aunt Josephine indulged in a few too many psychedelic drugs.

  Anyway, one thing led to another, and before anyone really realized what had happened, Aunt Josephine had squandered her ham fortune, started making murals out of cat hair, which no one liked half as much as the ham art, gone a bit ‘doolally’ – my father’s words – and moved to Wales to live on a vegan commune.

  We do see her once or twice a year as my mum feels a sisterly obligation to keep in touch, plus I think my parents believe that seeing Aunt Josephine serves as a warning to us girls about what happens if you ‘live an unconventional lifestyle’ and end up with no money. In reality, the only lessons I take away from the Aunt Josephine parable are that taking too many drugs is not a good idea, and if you’re making a shedload of money out of ham art, don’t diversify.

  If I could only get a steady income and show my parents that television was a viable career, I might win them around. But if I didn’t get the job and had to start all over again doing unpaid work experience, I feared my parents would not support me.

  Today’s quiz had been humiliating and I pledged to myself that I would watch Newsnight every night for the rest of my life to try and plug the evidently huge holes in my basic general knowledge. In addition to my general intellectual ineptitude, I was also worried about Rhidian. He was my competition, all that was standing between me and my perfect job. I needed to stop getting distracted and start focusing on how I could be a better runner than him.

  All of this raced around and around in my mind, which was why I found myself lying awake at three in the morning in Natalie’s parents’ basement, thinking about Aunt Josephine’s ham art and plotting ways to outdo Rhidian.

  STEP 11 – SAY YES TO EVERYTHING

  FROM: UNKNOWN

  TO: POPPY

  Hi Poppy, Ian Griffith here, (Dorset neighbour). My mother said you were expecting a call from me and wanted advice on getting into banking? Happy to help if I can, though I’m no expert. Let me know a good time and we can chat over the phone or meet for a drink if that suits? Ian

  I HAD WOKEN up this morning full of resolve to be more professional. For starters, I decided to dress in a more ‘media’ way, taking inspiration from what I’d seen the girls around the office wear. This morning I’d pinned my hair into a quiff and high ponytail and added a splash of orangey-red lipstick to my lips. I’d put on a fitted black shirt and green midi skirt that cinched in my waist. As I glanced in the hall mirror on my way out of the house, it crossed my mind that I looked slightly like a human traffic light (with the hair, lips and skirt colour combo), so I quickly wiped off the lipstick as I raced out of the door.

  Mid-morning, Helen and I were in the post room, sorting through all the confidential waste that needed shredding.

  ‘So did you do the runners’ placement yourself?’ I asked her.

  ‘Yup, I did it last year,’ said Helen. ‘They offered us a job on production, but then head o’ post room left, so they offered us this instead.’

  ‘And you’d rather be in here than on Production?’ I asked.

  ‘Not in the long term, but they needed someone who knew the ropes, an’ I don’t know what side o’ TV I wanna work in yet. ’ere, put those in the recycling pile, they don’t need to be shredded,’ said Helen, handing me a pile of old scripts.

  ‘So who was your competition when you were on the placement?’

  Helen smiled. ‘She were someone a bit like you, actually, she were called Jenny.’

  ‘Like me? How?’

  ‘Posh, pretty, prone t’ throwin’ coffee over ’erself,’ Helen said.

  ‘I am not posh,’ I objected.

  ‘Trust us, Poppy, compared to everyone I know back i’ Doncaster, you are posh.’

  ‘What makes me posh?’

  ‘Hmmm.’ Helen looked thoughtful. ‘Well, you say things like “totes”…’

  ‘Totes ironically!’

  ‘Plus you talk about what you gonna ’ave for supper rather than tea.’ She paused for a second. ‘And I bet you ’ave a Waitrose card in your wallet.’

  ‘What? This is the definitive posh test now, is it?’ I was offended but decided not to dwell on the question of the myWaitrose card.

  Helen laughed. ‘It’s not the posh test, Poppy, I’m just sayin’ that in TV terms, you’re posh. It’s not necessarily a bad thing.’

  ‘Except in your case, where you won the runner placement and the posh girl didn’t…’

  ‘Ah, well, I don’t
think me gettin’ the job over ’er ’ad ’owt ta do wi’ that!’ Helen said, in an exaggerated Yorkshire accent.

  ‘So what did it have to do with?’ I pushed.

  This was the perfect opportunity to pick Helen’s brains for inside intel. Rhidian had already been sent to work on a production so was temporarily out of the picture.

  ‘Well, I have two pieces o’ advice for you. One: say yes to everythin’, ’n’ two—’

  But before she could finish, series producer Shannon Long marched into the post room.

  ‘Poppy, right?’ Shannon asked me.

  Shannon was one of the scarier-looking producers at RealiTV. She had limp red hair, an impossibly angular face and the look of someone on a permanent mission to avert some kind of apocalyptic-scale catastrophe. Just looking at her made me feel stressed.

  ‘Yes, hi, Shannon,’ I said.

  ‘Do you have a driving licence?’

  ‘Um, yes.’

  ‘Great. I’m going to need you to drive Valerie Decouz up to Scotland tonight for Last Clan Standing.’

  ‘What? To Scotland?’

  I couldn’t drive to Scotland. I only passed my test last year (fifth time lucky) and I’d barely been in a car since.

  ‘Yes. She’s just announced she’s scared of flying, stupid bitch, and she’s got to be on set presenting the day after tomorrow so it’s the only way we can get her there,’ Shannon said, tugging fingers through her hair. ‘All our production runners are already up there, so Dominic said we could commandeer you for a few days.’

  ‘Um, well, yes, anything I can do to help…’ I stammered. ‘Shannon, the only thing is that I haven’t done that much driving since I passed my test, so I’m not sure…’

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ Shannon said. ‘It’s motorway all the way.’

  Was this the time to say I’d never driven on a motorway?

  ‘Go home quick as you can, pack a bag, then get to the hire car place. You need to pick up a cameraman and his kit en route. Jackie, our production secretary, will give you all the details.’

  ‘Okay.’ I couldn’t think of anything else to say, but in my head I foresaw a lot of potential problems with this plan.