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Authors: Ben Elton

BOOK: Chart Throb
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And this was her.
During her university days Emma had been a volunteer trauma counsellor for the Student Union. Her distressing duty had been to lend a sympathetic ear to the victims of assaults, burglaries, harassment and occasionally rapes. Emma had looked into the eyes of many victims in her time and she knew the signs. But in her counselling days Emma had met victims
after
the trauma. Shaiana looked like a victim already, even though so far nothing had happened. She was a victim
waiting
to be assaulted.
Emma felt like a mugger but what could she do? Shaiana was television gold. She just wanted it
so
much. So much that she wrote it twice.
Gulping hard and feeling once more for the comfort of the cigarettes clamped to the spray-tanned flesh at her hip, Emma led Shaiana away.
Really, Truthfully, How Much DO You Want It?
‘Back in the holding area,’ the gorgeous Keely would say the following day when she arrived to film her links, ‘every hopeful has a song to sing, and lawks! We just can’t stop them singing it!’
Shaiana, who had been placed amid another group of hopefuls, sang ‘I Am Woman’ just as Emma had asked her to do. When it was over, the people around her applauded as they had also been instructed to do.
When the carefully staged impromptu performance was over, Emma took her place once more behind the camera to shout her questions.
‘How much does this mean to you, Shaiana?’ she asked.
‘It means everything to me, Emma,’ Shaiana replied.
‘Not “Emma”, Shaiana. Don’t say “Emma”.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I’m not here.’
A shadow of confusion fell across Shaiana’s face. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘I’m not here. Keely’s here.’
‘Is Keely here?’
A sudden excitement gripped everybody standing nearby. Was Keely here? The real blonde beautiful Keely off the telly? So far the crowd had been bitterly disappointed not to have seen anybody from the show, not even Rodney, and now it seemed that the gorgeous presenter was in the building.
‘Keely’s here!!’ The rumour had crossed the floor of Hall E3 in a moment.
‘No!’ shouted Emma. ‘Keely’s not here.’
‘You said she was,’ an aggrieved voice shouted back.
‘Yes,’ Shaiana agreed, ‘you said it to me.’
‘Look, I’m just saying that I won’t be asking the questions on the actual show. Keely will be asking you the questions.’
‘So she is here?’
‘NO! No, she’s not . . . It’s just that we’ll record her later and . . .’ Once more Trent shouted into her ear-piece that time was slipping away. ‘Look, Shaiana, just say what I tell you to say, OK? Repeat after me, can you do that?’
‘Of course.’
‘Good, let’s go . . . “I want this so much.”’
‘I want this so much.’
‘Louder, “I want this SO much!”’
‘I want this SO much!’
‘Brilliant. Now in your own words. Come on, tell me,
really tell me.
Bearing in mind just how much store the judges set by passion and commitment, come on, really, truthfully, how much DO you want this?’
And so Shaiana told the world how much she wanted it. How it was all she had ever wanted. How it was what God had made her for and that it meant just everything. Absolutely everything. It was her dream. Shaiana needed little prompting. With a gentle push from Emma, tears welled up in her eyes.
‘Everyone thinks I’m a nobody,’ Shaiana said. ‘I’m going to prove to them all that I’m a somebody.’
‘Yes. Yes, I’m sure you are, Shaiana,’ Emma said, her hand holding tight to the cigarettes at her hip as if fearful that if she once let go of them she might let go altogether and shout: No you’re not, Shaiana, you’re
really, really not
, with your desperate face and your not bad voice. You’re
not
a somebody, you’re just any old somebody, we all are. So run, babes! Run, before we break your heart.
More Maths
Quasar took the seat beside the Prince that Shaiana had vacated.
‘Quasar, geeza,’ Quasar said cheerfully.
‘The Prince of Wales,’ His Royal Highness replied.
‘The fresh Prince of Wales. Wicked! You Welsh then?’
‘Well, not really, no . . . you don’t really need to be
from
Wales to be prince of it. Isn’t that an
extraordinary
thing? It’s like my mother is Queen of Australia. I always laugh when I think of that, because she’s not a
bit
like any Australians I’ve ever met. Lovely people, of course. So
down to earth
. Don’t you think?’
The Quasar smiled a broad smile.
‘Oh, I gets it, yeah, babes,’ he said. ‘You is doing the whole lookee-likee thing. Wicked! West side! Ouch! Is you with an agency, geeza?’
‘Well, no, I don’t suppose I am really. I sort of bumble along on my own.’
‘Geeza, you is
insane
! There is big bucks in the lookee-likee biz, parties, singing telegrams. I ’as a babe who is a Jennifer Lopez, don’ look a bit lak ’er ’cept for ’er big bum but she makes a shitloada money anyways!’
Clearly the Prince had not the faintest idea what his companion was talking about but decades of experience of one-sided communications through which he had smiled and nodded had taught him to change tack rather than probe too far.
‘One simply has to be
so
careful,’ he often observed to his wife. ‘You only have to ask someone how nylon is actually
made
or what Hip Hop actually
is
and you can be there for
days.’
The Prince looked about him for a moment before observing: ‘That was quite a show you put on there for the camera, young man.’
‘Well, you gotta big it up, geeza, innit?’ Quasar responded with a wide grin. ‘I reckon we is
in
, I mean I reckon we is
through
, which is well ’ard. You know wot I’m saying?’
‘Uhm, not entirely, no.’
‘They’s filming us, right? Like, you know, on our first day, man.’
‘Yes?’ the Prince enquired. ‘But surely that’s the purpose of the exercise, to cover the selection process – or perhaps I’m getting the wrong end of the stick.’
‘Geeza,
check it out.
There is ’undreds of us here, right? An’ we is all here for our auditions, right? But they is only filming a few of us in the queue, innit?’
A few metres away they could see Shaiana. She had been placed in front of a small group of applicants and this time she was singing ‘Will You Love Me Tomorrow’ while the people around her were being encouraged to clap along supportively.
‘Well, I suppose it’s inevitable that they can only film a few of us, Mr Quasar,’ the Prince observed politely. ‘They could not possibly cover everybody, there must be five hundred people here. One presumes they simply get what they can.’
‘You is crazy, geeza! What you talkin’ ’bout?’ Quasar grinned. ‘In’t you seen the show, man?’
‘Uhm, well, actually no . . . I thought I had but that was the
X Factor.’
‘Where ’as you bin, geeza! That is so last year, babe!
Chart Throb
is where it’s at an’ you ain’ sin it?’
‘I
know
, it’s awful of me, isn’t it? I
am
a dunce. Apparently it’s being repeated on UK Gold too. I asked my equerry to tape an episode but he can’t work our Sky Plus any better than I can and the memsahib’s no help because she says she’d ban all television tomorrow if it was up to her.’
‘Well, if you ’ad sin it, geeza, you would be hip to the fac’ that all the people who gets put through to Pop School ’as already bin
seen in the queue
, man! We seen ’em from the start. Like last year, the geeza what
won the fucking final
, man, he was there on the
first show
! He was there in the crowd saying ’e was gonna rock Calvin’s ass, right? Even though he was
still only in the queue for ’is first audition
!’
‘Uhm . . . I’m not sure I follow the point you’re making, Mr Quasar. If there
is
a point? I mean it doesn’t matter at all if there isn’t . . .’
‘That
is
the point, geeza! They ain’t filming
everybody
in the queue, is they? They ain’t even picking out one in fifty. How
could
they, guy? We’d be here till we was dead! But when Calvin an’ Beryl and that other prick choose the people what is goin’ through to the next round they’s always
already been seen in the queue
, right? They’s got shots of them right from the fucking car park, guy! On day one! Think about it, geeza. How would they know to film them if they ’adn’t already chosen ’em? We ’as bin
picked
! We is
looking good
.’
The Prince of Wales had been privately educated at great expense and had then gone to Cambridge, while Quasar had left school at sixteen without qualifications in order to become an exotic dancer. But it was Quasar who had done the maths.
Graham and Milly in the Car Park
‘The journey to stardom is never easy. But for some it’s much harder than others. Graham and Milly are two young singers with a dream. Nothing special about that, you might say, except for one thing. Graham has been
blind since birth
.’
That was what Keely would be saying, some months later and a hundred miles down the M6, in a sound recording booth in Soho as she voiced the narrative links for episode three.
Meanwhile the accompanying footage had to be shot and that was down to Emma and her little camera crew. Having ticked off Shaiana on her clipboard she had collected Graham and Millicent from the same area as the Prince, Shaiana and the Quasar and asked them to go back into the car park.
‘Why?’ Graham asked.
‘We’d like to see you arriving.’
‘But we have arrived. We’ve been here for three hours.’
‘I know but we didn’t see it . . . I mean
witness
it,’ Emma said, suddenly struck by the strange embarrassment of the sighted who find themselves using the word ‘see’ to a blind person.
Graham and Millicent returned dutifully with Emma and her camera team to the car park of the exhibition centre. The moment she was outside Emma clawed at her cigarette packet, almost tearing the top off in her haste. The whole crew were doing the same; theirs was a high-stress occupation.
‘Right,’ said Emma, trying to speak and inhale at the same time. ‘We’d love to see Millicent leading Graham through the parked cars to join the end of the queue.’
‘What queue?’ Milly enquired.
Emma had been so intent on getting her Marlboro lit that she hadn’t noticed that the car park was now almost empty of people.
‘Where’s the queue?’ she asked a colleague, Chelsie.
‘Inside,’ Chelsie replied. ‘We’ve got them all in.’
‘Well, get them all out again!’ Emma demanded. She was not by nature a bossy or demanding person but Chelsie (who was new) had a rather supercilious manner. It annoyed Emma that she seemed unaffected by the urgency of their task. ‘They can’t turn up to an empty car park, can they? They have to join the queue! Haven’t you watched the programme?’
‘Yes, Emma, I have,’ Chelsie replied. ‘Which is why I tried to get them filmed when they
actually
arrived and we still had a queue out here for them to join, but you were off somewhere having a fag.’
Chelsie turned on her heel so there was no opportunity for Emma to reply even if she had wished to. Shortly thereafter the junior researcher returned leading thirty or so grumpy-looking contestants. Emma took one look at them and sent for Gary and Barry.
‘You’ll have to get them going again,’ she told the two would-be comedians. ‘This lot look like they’ve come for a lynching.’
Leaving Gary and Barry to remind the crowd that Calvin was watching them, that a true Chart Throb was never off duty and that they should see this as just another chance to shine on camera, Emma took Graham and Millicent to the far side of the car park.
‘All right, Millicent,’ Emma explained. ‘So you’ve just arrived in—’
‘But this isn’t our car,’ Millicent interrupted. ‘We parked in the disabled bay right by the front door.’
‘Walked straight in,’ Graham added.
‘Yes, yes,’ Emma said, trying to be patient. ‘But don’t get too hung up on specifics. We’re here to demonstrate a broader truth which is that you’re blind, OK? In fact we might take a shot of the disabled bay with a car in it . . .’
‘My car?’ Millicent enquired.
‘It doesn’t matter which car,’ Emma almost snapped. ‘It’s just to show that the disabled bay is always full when a genuine case requires it.’
‘But it wasn’t, it was empty and we used it!’
‘I KNOW!’ said Emma and this time she did not bother to conceal her irritation. ‘Look, we’ll forget the car bit, OK? It was just a thought. Wait for our signal and then go with Graham towards the queue. Can you do that?’

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