So I was rightly rumbled and had to confess all, but the thing about Emma is that she’s not just a showbiz pal, she’s a genuine pal. In all the years I’ve known her, there are two things I’ve never, ever seen her do; repeat gossip or eat chocolate. As discreet as a nun in a silent order about her own private life and yet the only woman I know who’s honest enough to admit to Botox. Bless her, when I came clean about my money woes, she even offered me a cash loan to tide me over. So now, whenever anyone asks me when I’m getting a new car, lovely, loyal Emma laughs and waves it aside and tells me it’s nearly cheaper for me to get cabs all the time.
Whereas the actual truth is, the way things are going, I’ll probably end up walking everywhere from now on. Barefoot. In the lashing rain. With newspaper tied with twine around my feet and bloodhounds baying at my heels. Singing the orphans’ chorus from Annie, ‘It’s the Hard Knock Life.’
Worse, though, I think, as a fresh wash of anxiety comes over me, is that there doesn’t seem to be any end to my money troubles. Ever. You see, with myself and Sam, there’s always the next night out, the next weekend away, the next trip abroad. Easter is only round the corner and we’ve already booked to go down to Marbella which I can’t afford and yet at the same time, can’t get out of.
Honest to God, I sometimes feel like I’m stuck on a never-ending financial hamster wheel where I’m constantly stretching my almost-melted credit cards just to keep pace with him. I’m not even certain how it happened, but somehow I’ve got sucked into a world where appearances are everything and it’s like I’ve no choice but to spend big just to hold my own against all my new, posher, wealthier friends.
This house being the perfect example. The logical part of my brain, which let’s face it, I don’t hear from all that often, tells me that it’s completely mental; the place is ridiculously expensive and way too big for me, but when it first came on the market…hard to put into words, but it was like all my childhood fantasies finally coming true. I just had to have it, simple as that. So now I’m a lone, single person renting a five-bedroomed mansion which I can’t even afford to get the downstairs toilet unblocked in. Christ alive, let it be engraved on my tombstone. ‘Here lies Jessie Woods. Fur coat and no knickers.’
On the plus side though, I really have made a heroic effort to economise this month. In fact, I distinctly remember suggesting to Sam last weekend that there was no need for us to bother eating out in Shanahan’s on the Green, where the starters are so tiny, they’d leave a fruit fly gagging for more. Instead, let’s stay in and I’ll cook, I gamely volunteered. Well, the man nearly had to pick himself up off the floor he was laughing so hard. Honest to God, he was still sniggering two full days later. I’m the world’s worst cook and have the burn tissue to prove it. And for some unfathomable reason, no matter what I do to food, it always ends up tasting like wood. Wood, or else feet.
But the point is that I’m trying.
Take last month’s New York trip for instance. It wasn’t even my fault. Well, not really. You see, Sam and I are really matey with this other couple, Nathaniel and Eva, who are old buddies of his, dating back to his school days, and we always pal around in a foursome with them. They’re lovely, gorgeous people, but…the thing is, they just have so much more money at their disposal than I have. Nathaniel is chief executive of his family’s recession-proof beef export business and basically keeps himself on a Premiership footballer’s salary. He and Eva have been married for years and have two perfect twin boys, with an army of nannies to take care of them, leaving Eva with a lot of free time on her hands for weekends away, charity lunches and shopping trips abroad. Which is actually how that New York trip came about in the first place; it was their wedding anniversary and nothing would do them but to organise this lavish trip to stay at the Plaza, where they got married. And of course, Sam and I, as their closest friends, were invited along. Now I know Sam would gladly have offered to pay for me if I’d asked, but he knows me well and knows I’d die rather than do that; I’m so much happier paying my own way. OK, I may be up to my armpits in debt, but at least I have my independence.
There’s a fair chance I could end up in the bankruptcy courts, but I have my pride, which as my dear departed dad always used to say, is beyond price. Poor darling Dad. The best friend I ever had. There’s not a day that goes by where I don’t think of him and miss him so much that it physically hurts. But at the same time, half of me is glad he’s not around to see the insolvent, overstretched financial disaster that I’ve become. ‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be,’ he always used to say and every time I hear his soft voice repeating those wise words in my head, honest to God, the guilt feels like heartburn.
But can I just add this? In my defence, on said New York trip I did suggest we stay in a cheaper hotel, or even rent an apartment between us all, but Sam just laughed at me and I didn’t want everyone to think I was some tight-fisted ol’ cheapskate, so, instead, I did what I always do. Put it on the Visa card and decided to worry about it later. Because the very, very worst brush you could possibly tar any Irish person with is to inflict them with the Curse of the Meany. You know, someone who doesn’t stand their round. Who goes out with no cash, then expects everyone else to subsidise them. Or, worst of all, someone who hangs around with rich people and automatically assumes they’ll just bankroll evenings out and expensive dinners and weekends away, etc. And correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that why credit cards were invented? To help people like me who may have…cash flow issues. In fact, now that I’m thinking about it a bit more logically, if my accountant is going to get arsy about this month’s Visa bill, then I’ll just remind her that I have a job. My lovely, lovely job, that I adore so much that I actually look forward to going into work. A really good, well-paid, telly job too. And these days, sure that’s like the Holy Grail.
Come to think of it, I don’t even know what the big deal is. I mean, it’s not like the bubble is about to burst or anything, now is it?
I just need a new accountant, that’s all.
Chapter Two
Twenty minutes, one strong Americano, two Solpadene and three Berocca tablets later and I’m standing beside Katie, feeling an awful lot sparkier and up-for-it. More like myself. Even if on days like this, I almost feel like my nickname could be Solpachina.
‘Oooh, look at you! You look fabulous!’ Katie squeals in my ear. Which we both know is just a well-meant but polite lie. However, I will say this, the make-up girl deserves a BAFTA for at least managing to make me look like I didn’t sleep the night up a tree, before being savaged by werewolves on the way home; the only thing which might possibly account for the nesty, Russell Brand-esque state of my hair when I first opened the door to the camera crew earlier this morning.
‘Right then,’ says Katie, lining herself up in front of the camera, with a load of framed photos strategically dotted on the piano between us. ‘Ready to go?’
‘I’ve been ready for the last two hours, actually,’ the cameraman growls impatiently back at us, coughing and spluttering like a Lada.
Lovely. It’s going to be one of those days.
‘Well, as you can imagine, we’re all so excited about this very special edition of A Day in the Life and here’s the reason why…Presenting our fabulous hostess, Jessie Woods herself!’
So off Katie riffs in the air-hostess voice and I find myself wondering if anyone’s ever told her that there are, in fact, other adjectives than fabulous.
‘Oooh, isn’t she just like a little girl’s idea of what a princess should be?’ she says straight to camera and not actually looking at me. ‘With her beautiful, blonde hair and fabulous, trim, toned figure! It’s like skinny jeans were designed especially with this woman in mind!’
She giggles and I resist the urge to a) vomit, b) remind her that this is, in fact, TV, not radio, so viewers presumably can see for themselves and besides, you should never ever, EVER talk down to an audience. Instead, I just grin inanely and do a false TV laugh back.
You know, head thrown back, jaw fish-wired into a grin: ha, ha, HA!
‘So, Jessie, we’re loving, loving, LOVING your fabulous home, but maybe you could tell us a little about some of the photos you have on display here?’
The camera does an obliging panning shot of some recent pics and just for a split second, I get to see my own life from the outside. It’s weird but somehow every single snap manages to look like a posed photo opportunity. Sam and I at the Derby with Nathaniel and Eva; me wearing what appears to be three table napkins strategically sewn together to cover up my girlie bits. The four of us on a ski trip, me in the centre; laughing, messing around, having great craic, the life and soul of the party. Two things strike me. One is that Sam is on his mobile in every single shot. The other is, our lives look so stunningly, dazzlingly perfect…Christ alive, no wonder we piss people off.
‘Ooh, here’s a terrific one!’ Katie sing-songs. ‘Just look at you! Like a classier version of Paris Hilton! What a stunning dress! So, tell us, where was this taken?’
OK. The real answer to that question is, Are you kidding me, Katie? The only thing I have in common with Paris Hilton is dyed blonde hair and a credit card. And the dress isn’t a bit stunning; it’s more like a big, flowery shower curtain from a Bed, Bath and Beyond sale bin. Lesson: if you are eejit enough to listen to stylists, then you deserve everything that’s coming to you. As long as these people garner column inches, believe me, they’re not bothered if you end up beaten into a skinny size zero pant suit, looking like a boiler that’s too big for its lagging jacket.
However, I go with the interview answer instead. ‘Why thanks, Katie. That photo was taken at the National TV awards, where Jessie Would was nominated for best TV show, can you believe it, for the second year running?!’ I omit to mention that we lost out to a home video programme where people send in clips of their dogs playing musical instruments, that kind of thing. It sticks in my mind because next day there was a pap shot of me rubbing my eyelid to try and get a bit of fluff out, with a headline, Who Let The Dogs Out? Jessie’s Tears At Being Upstaged By Mutt.
‘Oooh, look at this one, you brave girl, you!’ says Katie, picking up a still shot from the show of me skydiving. ‘Tell me, is that the hardest dare you ever had to do on Jessie Would?’
Real answer: Funnily no. Sure any eejit can skydive; you just hold your breath and jump. What was weird about that one though, was that some pervert actually texted in a suggestion that I do it in a bikini.
Interview answer: ‘Ha, ha, HA. Not at all, Katie. As a matter of fact, I’m often asked that question…’
‘Oooh, or what about the time you had to spend the night alone in a haunted house?’
Real answer: Are you off your head? Best night’s sleep I ever had.
Interview answer: ‘Ha, ha, HA. Yes, that one did put years on me, but by far the most challenging dare I’ve ever had to do on the show was the time I had to work as head chef in a restaurant. Sixty covers in a single night. Nearly killed me.’ I might add that fifty-eight out of the sixty customers demanded their money back after they were kept waiting for almost two hours with nothing but the bread sticks in front of them to nibble at. And that was after I had to announce to the whole, starving dining room that if anyone happened to find my earring inside the fish pie, would they please mind letting me know? Oh and for the record, the two people in the restaurant who didn’t complain were Sam’s parents; God love them, they desperately wanted to be on the show and were just being kind. What people don’t realise though, when they’re texting in all their wacky dare ideas, is that the extreme stuff doesn’t knock a feather out of me. It’s normal everyday, bread-and-butter things that make me want to lie down in a darkened room listening to dolphin music and taking tablets. Like bank statements. Or Visa bills. Or anything with ‘Final Notice’ stamped in red across it.
‘Oooh, and look at this fabulous shot of you and the sexy Sam Hughes! Tell us, Jessie, how did you two first meet?’
I glow a bit, the way I always do whenever I get a chance to talk about Sam. OK, the real answer to this question is:
we met at Channel Six when I first started working there, God, almost nine years ago now. I was just twenty-one years old, straight off a media training course and working as a runner on News Time, which Sam seemed to appear on every other week, talking about GNPs and PPIs and whatever you’re having yourself. ‘Runner’, though, as everyone knows, is a glorified word for ‘dogsbody’, so my job basically involved getting the tea, emptying bins in dressing rooms and on more than one occasion, having to blow-dry under one newsreader’s armpits with a hair dryer, so her couture dress wouldn’t get deodorant stains on it. I’ll never forget it; her name was Diane Daly so all the floor staff, myself included, used to call her Diva Di. A nasty nickname I know, but she’d really earned it; this was a woman who’d regularly ring me at 6 a.m. before work, to order me to the fruit and veg market so I could buy supplies of sprouted beans for her, the time she was doing her whole wheat-free, gluten-free, lactose-intolerant thing. And who would think absolutely nothing of getting me to drop her kids to school, while she skipped off to get her Restylane injections. All of which I did happily, gratefully and without whinging because I was just so overjoyed to be working in TV. This, as far as I was concerned, was It, the Big Break, which could only lead on to bigger and better things.
Two things came out of that whole experience for me. One is that to this day, I always treat the runners on Jessie Would like royalty: iPods for their birthdays, posh spa treatments at Christmas; toxic debt or no toxic debt, the way I look on it is, they’ve earned it, the hard way. The other thing is…that’s where I first met Sam. Vivid memory; it was just before a live broadcast and there he was, patiently waiting behind the scenes to take part in a panel discussion piece about debt to profit ratios or something equally boring. Radiating confidence, not a nerve in his body. He ordered a coffee from me and I was so petrified, my shaking hands accidentally spilled some of it onto the lap of his good suit, but instead of ranting and raving about it, he couldn’t have been sweeter. Just laughed it off, said it was an accident, that he’d be sitting down behind a desk anyway so he could be naked from the waist down and sure no one would even know the difference. Then he smiled that smile; so dazzling it should nearly come with a ping! sound effect, and I was a complete goner.
Course it turned out every female on News Time fancied him, but he was dating some famous, leggy, modelly one back then, so it went without saying that we all knew none of us had a snowball’s chance in hell of getting near him. But just for a bit of devilment, myself and the make-up girls used to invent all kinds of imaginary sex scenarios about him, like he was the ultimate Prince Charming; utterly unattainable, but great craic to fantasise about.
‘Me and Sam Hughes, on a sun lounger, at sunset, looking out over the Caribbean…’
‘No, I’ve a better one, me and Sam Hughes in a dressing room, just before the show…’
‘No, NO. My go: me and Sam in a log cabin during a power cut with only a king-sized double bed for our entertainment centre…’
…was all you could hear along the corridors of Channel Six on the days we knew he’d be in. We even had a ‘hottie alert’ system, whereby the minute one of us saw his car in the car park, we were duty bound to text the others IMMEDIATELY, so everyone had a fair and equal chance to get their make-up on.
Anyway, whenever I did see Sam after the whole, mortifying coffee-on-the-crotch episode, which was maybe about once a month or so, he always made a point of asking me how I was getting on in the new job. Always friendly, always playfully nicknaming me Woodsie, always encouraging, always respectful and never, ever someone who looked down on me as just a humble gofer with Pot Noodle for brains.
Then, one day about three months later, he found me in the staff canteen, hysterically trying to babysit Diva Di’s bratty eight- and ten-year-old boys, who were running riot around the place and ambushing me with lumpy cartons of strawberry-flav
oured yoghurt. The pair of them had completely doused me in it; clothes, hair, jeans, everything, soaked right through to my knickers. And, of course, life being what it is, at that very moment, in sauntered Sam, as Darcy-licious as ever. He let out a yell at the kids, which did actually manage to shut them up, then sat me down and helped dry me off with a load of paper napkins. I’ll never forget it; he x-rayed me with jet-black eyes, laughed and said, ‘To think they say working in TV is glamorous.’ I gamely managed a grin, suddenly aware that he dated famous models and here I was, stinking of sticky, strawberry yoghurt-y crap.
‘So, tell me. Is this really what you signed up for, Woodsie?’
Now the thing about Sam is that he can be a bit like those motivational speakers you’d normally see on Oprah; you know, the ones who convince you that you can turn your life around in seven days, that kind of thing. It’s like he comes with a double dose of drive and it can be infectious.
So I told him everything. Out it all came; about how I wanted to work for Channel Six so desperately that I really was prepared to do anything without question. Including letting Diva Di take complete and utter advantage of me. I was so terrified of losing my job, I explained, that I just hadn’t the guts to point out that babysitting her horrible children and blow-drying under her armpits with a hair dryer, was well above and beyond my job description.
‘And where do you see yourself in five years’ time?’ I remember him asking, a favourite question of his.
‘In front of the camera,’ I told him without even having to pause for thought. That’s all I’d ever wanted or dreamed about. I can even remember the exact phrase I used, ‘I’d ring the Angelus bell if I had to.’ But then back came all the old insecurities; would someone like me ever be given a shot, would I even be good enough or would I fall flat on my face and make a roaring eejit of myself?
Personally, I Blame my Fairy Godmother Page 2