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Authors: Ben Elton

BOOK: Chart Throb
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‘Iona’s a gorgeous, gorgeous girl,’ he had said with tears in his eyes. ‘And she deserves to be a big, big star. She
will
be a big, big star. She should have a contract, she
will
get a contract. The whole band will have a contract and Iona will be a big, big star.’
‘And you’re going to make that happen, are you, Rodders?’ Calvin had teased wickedly in the time-honoured manner of judges’ banter.
‘I shall make it so,’ Rodney had replied pompously. ‘These kids deserve better than you and Beryl have given them and I intend to see that they get it.’
Iona had been absolutely thrilled with Rodney’s gushing attention to her and also of course his passionate and highly public commitment to her band. After all Rodney had once been a big recording star, one half of The Root and The Branch, an early-eighties techno pop outfit which had scored a respectable number of hits and had even charted once in the States. Admittedly Rodney had been the less celebrated member of the team. In those days techno duos had often been made up of one nerdy instrumentalist who stood almost motionless behind an assortment of keyboards occasionally depressing a key, and a flamboyantly homosexual vocalist who strutted about in various PVC outfits grabbing all the limelight. Rodney, as the songwriter, had ended up behind the keyboards while The Branch, who was, in fact, a heterosexual lorry driver from Aberystwyth (whom Rodney had recruited via an advert in
Time Out
), pulled on the pink plastic hotpants.
Rodney’s virtual anonymity within his own band had been a source of massive irritation to him for nearly twenty-five years but nonetheless he had once been a star of sorts, and he had gone on to write a number of identikit hits for various boy bands before sinking into complete obscurity in the mid-nineties. His career had been given a second lease of life when Calvin asked him to become a judge on
Chart Throb.
Calvin had hoped to find a genuine pop manager who had actually developed real recording careers, but unfortunately all the real players in the industry had got wise to the dissatisfactions of playing second fiddle to a charismatic bully and Calvin had had to settle for Rodney.
Rodney and Iona had embarked on a very public affair which in the early weeks went as far as an
OK!
magazine cover shoot with heavy hints of an engagement to follow. Rodney’s ardour, however, had soon evaporated. What was Iona, after all? A struggling part-time singer who worked in a shop. During the brief explosion of publicity that had surrounded Shetland Mist’s appearance as
Chart Throb
finalists she had seemed glamorous and fresh, a real star and a fitting consort for an important man such as Rodney. But the life of an instant celebrity is short indeed, and within weeks Rodney found himself attached to a woman who added nothing to his equation but herself, which he was quickly tiring of. Apart from anything else, she was not half so cute without the
Chart Throb
costume and make-up department’s constant attentions. During the white heat of the
Chart Throb
finals Rodney had scarcely seen the object of his passion apart from when she was performing with her band or being filmed for the inserts. It was this television creation that he had fallen in love with. Poor Iona looked very different when dressing herself in the bedroom of Rodney’s penthouse flat while he lay in bed staring at her critically over the dome of his middle-aged spread. Suddenly Rodney noticed the tricky legs, the slightly asymmetrical boobs and the droopy bottom. Suddenly the Scottish accent that he had briefly found so musical and charming was saying things he didn’t want to hear.
‘My ma and da are coming to London, can we take them to dinner? The band has a gig at the Islay Folk Festival, everybody’s really hoping you can make it.’
The Islay fucking
Folk Festival
! Islay was
six
hundred miles away.
Love had quickly died and irritation set in, irritation that this rather ordinary girl, with an ordinary life and an ordinary family, had gatecrashed his important and busy existence. Rodney quickly concluded that he did not want her in his life and he most certainly did not want her in his bed. She was suddenly turning him off as violently as she had briefly turned him on. So he dumped her.
‘I just think we were both a little mad there for a while,’ he told her. ‘This was never truly meant to be.’
Iona had taken it with dignity, although she was devastated, having imagined that she loved him.
‘Will I still see you?’ she asked. ‘Will you still be helping us out with the band?’
‘Of course,’ Rodney assured her. ‘Of course, of course, of course. I
believe
in you guys . . . although sadly I can’t make Islay.’
All that had been last year and was now for Rodney a deeply embarrassing memory. He had done nothing for Shetland Mist and probably couldn’t have done much even if he had tried. Contrary to the
Chart Throb
myth, Rodney was not the ‘hitmaker of pop’ and with the best will in the world success is not something that can simply be invented. Iona still occasionally tried to contact him – after all, he was still technically their manager, a job he had announced for himself during the
OK!
magazine interview – but Rodney never took her calls.
‘Nothing else?’ he enquired airily.
‘Well,’ Maureen replied, ‘I had an email from the agency dealing with the marketing for Tesco. They are interested in using you in an advertising campaign.’
Rodney lit up like he’d swallowed a light bulb.
‘Tesco? The supermarket?’
‘Yes but . . .’
‘The
biggest supermarket chain
in Britain? Thirty per cent of UK retail? Currently masterminding an audacious attack on Wal-Mart’s supremacy in the USA?’
‘Well, yes but . . .’
‘For God’s sake, woman, why didn’t you say so before? I would
love
to work with them. I’m
exactly
what they need, I’m loved, trusted, down to earth, instantly recognizable. Tesco and I would be a terrific combination . . .’
‘Rodney, it isn’t just you that they want.’
Instantly the light inside Rodney dimmed. He should have known, of course. Had it been genuinely good news Maureen would have called him the moment she had got it; instead she had buried the message behind his dress suit and a call from Iona. And why? Because Maureen was well aware that an offer where they did not want just him was worse than no offer at all.
‘They want the three of us?’ he said, unable to conceal his disappointment.
‘Well, that’s certainly their base-line position . . .’
‘Do they want me to approach Beryl and Calvin?’
‘They have written to them separately but . . .’
‘They’ve received no response and so they’ve decided to try going through me?’
‘Sort of . . . Reading between the lines I think that’s the position.’
Why? Rodney simply could not understand it. He was one of the three judges. He got as much air time as the others, he was in all the promotional clips and press releases. Yet Beryl was advertising everything from toilet cleaner to haute couture, Calvin was too busy but could probably get himself elected Pope if he wanted to, while he, Rodney Root, hitmaker of pop, Svengali of Denmark Street, was offered nothing.
‘Do not flatter them with a reply,’ Rodney said, summoning up all his dignity. ‘I shall be in my office.’
HRH
The heir to the throne sat over his solitary breakfast and contemplated the morning’s newspapers. They made for depressing reading. He was currently enduring one of those periods of media frenzy in which he was used to being engulfed. He had once thought that he might one day get used to the casual brutality with which the most extraordinarily cruel accusations were regularly hurled at him but he had finally come to understand that he never would.
Today had been intended to be rather a special and important day for him, for the youth charity to which he had devoted a large part of his life was to be honoured by the United Nations. However, this exciting piece of news was nowhere to be found because the ongoing scandal of his ‘crown jewels’ was still dominating the popular agenda. He was being accused by a disgruntled ex-employee (who had been dismissed for stealing teaspoons) of requiring members of his staff to attend to him during the performance of his bodily functions. The more aggressive tabloids were enjoying themselves hugely, painting lurid pictures of liveried footmen standing to attention while nervous chambermaids scurried about with silken napkins that bore his personal monogram.
‘They’ll have me selling tickets next,’ the Prince lamented to his long-suffering aspidistra, ‘like Louis XIV.’
The Prince was of course famous for speaking to his plants. Many people considered this evidence of an eccentricity bordering on madness but in fact it was merely that he could be reasonably sure that an aspidistra would not allow itself to be corrupted by chequebook journalism.
‘Ignore it, darling,’ he muttered, playing for a moment the role of the plant.
‘I can’t. I bloody can’t,’ he protested back at himself.
Possibly he
might
have been able to laugh off lavatorial madness but the more sinister accusations he had to endure were getting out of hand. Rumours had suddenly emerged that he was plotting to kill his mother out of impatience for the throne.
‘If only people knew the
real
me,’ His Royal Highness lamented, marmalading another slice of oatmeal bread cut from a loaf he had baked himself, with flour ground from oats that he grew in the window boxes of his Scottish estate.
‘If only they knew the
real me.
’
Just then the telephone rang.
Priscilla Blenheim
After her consultation with the best arse man in West Hollywood, Beryl Blenheim hurried down to the Virgin Megastore on Rodeo Drive, where her stepdaughter was already midway through an album signing.
It should have been such an exciting afternoon for Priscilla Blenheim. After all, how many seventeen-year-olds get to cut their own album? How many teenage kids get to stand on their own little podium in a top record store while hundreds of other kids call out their name and thrust CDs towards them for their signature? That was the position Priscilla was in. Of course it would have been a lot more fun if some of the CDs that Priscilla was being called upon to sign had actually been hers rather than her stepmother’s, in the days when she had been a man. And if most of the kids standing in line had actually bought a CD for her to sign, any CD instead of the crumpled collection of library tickets, student cards, Burger King cartons and till receipts that had been hastily produced. The majority of the kids were not fans at all but merely curious shoppers who had been drawn towards Priscilla’s signing table simply because someone famous was in the store.
Then the shop manager had made it worse by announcing to the line that Priscilla would only be signing copies of her album. Instantly there had been boos and catcalls. The crowd was furious. This was not the Priscilla they knew from the TV. Priscilla was meant to be one of the kids, her whole pose on TV was that of a straight-talking teen, as yet uncorrupted by all the bullshit.
‘Hey, Priscilla!’ a voice called out, dripping with contempt. ‘Why don’t you
sell
autographs like some fucking baseball player?’
‘Doesn’t your
mommy
give you enough fucking bread, Priscilla?’ cried another.
Suddenly kids were screwing up the pieces of paper they had been holding into little balls, flicking them at her and turning away.
‘Why did you
say
that, you dick?’ said Priscilla, turning on the hapless manager.
In fact he had said it because Priscilla had spent the previous half-hour bitching about how she was only signing bus tickets, but he did not point this out. Instead he called out to the diminishing crowd, ‘Priscilla is happy to sign whatever.’
Unfortunately this apparent capitulation impressed nobody. ‘Then fucking sign this!’ a young man called out, pulling down his trousers, and Priscilla found herself facing a pimply adolescent backside spread aggressively and graphically wide. ‘Kiss my chocolate starfish!’ the youth shouted through his parted legs before being bundled out of the store by the security guards. Beryl, who had arrived just in time to witness the debacle, brought the embarrassment to a close and the celebrated mother and daughter took refuge in the stock room until what was left of the crowd dispersed.
‘They booed me, Dad!’
Priscilla knew how much Beryl hated being referred to as ‘Dad’.
‘Don’t call me Dad! I’m a mum. I’ve won awards!’
‘That jerk showed me his butt,’ Priscilla replied, almost in tears. ‘And they hardly bought any albums.’
‘We sold some, darling. I have a stock report.’
‘Eight, Mom! We sold eight and I was here an hour
and
that includes two checkout chicks. Which, by the way, is also
so
pathetic: they have like thirty kids working in this store and I am here,
in the store
, signing and even most of the fucking staff don’t want to buy my record.’

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