Chart Throb (35 page)

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Authors: Ben Elton

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‘Fuck!’ said Barry. ‘Calvin really wants this. What are we going to do?’
‘I just assumed they’d know it,’ wailed Gary.
At this point Chelsie arrived with Keely.
‘Haven’t you recorded the bloody singalong yet?’ she demanded.
‘They don’t know the words,’ Gary explained.
‘Go back to the edit truck,’ Chelsie commanded one of the runners. ‘They have wireless internet. Ask the production secretary to go online, Google the lyrics and bring them back as soon as possible.’
The runner scuttled off.
‘Right,’ said Chelsie. ‘We’ll do Keely’s bit while we’re waiting.’
Keely was given a shamrock and instructed to stand in front of the Irish crowd.
‘Well, here we are in Dublin’s fair city where the girls are so pretty,’ she shouted. ‘And this mad crazy lot have prepared a little musical surprise for Calvin!’
‘OK,’ Chelsie shouted. ‘Then we drop in the song once we’ve recorded it. Now Keely, do your outro.’
‘Wow!’ Keely shrieked. ‘That was
brilliant.
Calvin’s eyes will be smiling when he hears that! Well done, everybody! How good was that?’
After which she and Chelsie hurried back into the building, leaving the Irish posse to await the lyrics of their spontaneous gift to Calvin.
An Auditions Day: Mean and Moody
By this time the three judges had recorded their various arrival shots and it was time for some generic footage of the three of them looking tough and moody. Each had been taken back to Costume and Make-up and dressed head to foot in black. Then they were set against a white background and shot looking as grim and hard as possible. Like killers in a spaghetti western.
There were two camera crews at work here, which made the situation more complex than it might otherwise have been for the director. One crew was recording the moody stuff which would form part of the credit sequence and the other crew was filming the process of filming the moody stuff. The director of the first crew, who wanted to concentrate on his shots, had complained about the presence of the second crew.
‘You’re new to this show, aren’t you, mate?’ Calvin said.
The director admitted it.
‘Well, let me tell you something,’ Calvin continued, speaking through the make-up brush that was fluttering around his face. ‘We waste
nothing.
Have you any idea just how little usable stuff we might end up getting today? Fuck all, that’s how little, and why? Because people are basically boring.
That
is our challenge as makers of “people TV”. It is our job to shoot hours of material, days of the stuff, in order to get a few usable seconds of genuine entertainment. My God,
Paris Hilton
is a star.
That’s
how low the fucking bar is set! Why do you think that half of each of our shows is just a repeat of the other half? Because usually
half
a show is all we’ve fucking got! We audition thousands of people and we
still
end up repeating the same shots of about a dozen of them.
Anything
we have that’s even remotely good we must repeat over and over again. We’ll show it before the break, after the break, during the fucking break.
Chart Throb
is the only show on TV that’s repeated three times during its initial run! I’m very proud of that. That is why, if we’re going to have a load of shots of the judges looking moody, we should also get a load of shots of us being shot looking moody. Let the audience in on the process because we’ve fuck all else to show them most of the time.’
After the generic shots had been taken it was time for the three judges to change once more, back into their ‘Birmingham One’ outfits, and begin the real meat of the day, the thing that had made all three so very famous. It was time to record those familiar scenes of the three of them sitting in fresh, unbiased judgement on whoever might happen to put their heads round the door.
The auditions.
An Auditions Day: Destroying Vicky
The three of them took their seats in the ‘audition’ room and submitted themselves to the last-minute attentions of Hair and Make-up. Then, as planned, they shot the three foreign girls with the amusing accents, each of whom was laughed at and then rejected and led weeping from the room.
Then they made good progress gunning through twenty or so In and Out fillers, alternating yeses and noes in strict order. Around mid-morning they arrived at Vicky, the first major story of the day.
The girl and her mother were outside with Keely, Chelsie, Trent and the production crew. Trent was just about to begin recording Vicky’s pre-show interview when Chelsie spoke up.
‘Trent, I think we have make-up issues here. Are you happy with Vicky?’
‘She looks all right to me.’
Chelsie did not discuss it further. Instead she went into the audition room and asked if Calvin could possibly join them for a moment. Chelsie had spent the morning dealing with other people’s mistakes and Calvin had been a witness to none of it. As far as her own career advancement was concerned, she might as well have been as shit as the rest of the team. But on this occasion she was going to ensure that her light emerged from under the bushel.
Calvin, who was waiting for Beryl’s copious paint job to be retouched, joined the party assembled around Vicky and her mother.
‘Oh my God!’ they said in star-struck unison as the great man emerged. ‘We
love
you, Calvin!’
Calvin nodded a greeting and turned to Chelsie.
‘Babes?’ he enquired. ‘What’s up?’
Chelsie asked a runner to take the auditionees discreetly aside before explaining herself.
‘Trent is happy with Vicky’s hair and make-up.’
Trent tried to take command.
‘Look, I didn’t say—’
Calvin cut him short.
‘What’s your point, babes?’
‘Yes,
babes
. . .’ said Make-up rather aggressively. ‘What’s your point?’
‘My point is, look at her,’ said Chelsie. ‘She’s been fully made up, slap, powder, they’ve done her hair,
covered her pimples
, for God’s sake.’
‘Well, yes, she’s a featured story, isn’t she?’ said Make-up.
‘
Yes
, she’s a featured story but have you
read
your character notes?’ Chelsie snapped. ‘You’ve made her up as a Blinger and she’s a Minger.’
‘No, Chelsie,’ Make-up protested. ‘She’s a Blinger.’
‘Look at your
notes
! What is the point of me and the continuity team writing them if nobody ever reads them? She’s a Blinger personality but
physically
and
talent-wise
she’s a Minger. That’s the point of the story. She’s a classic Ming Bling! She thinks she’s great and she’s just about to find out that she’s not. That’s why we’ve set her up! So that Rodney can brutalize her and Beryl can go all mumsy and defensive. But for Beryl’s mumsiness to work, the girl’s got to look pathetic. Deluded, naïve, totally out of her depth, and here’s you lot trying to make her look like Rita Hayworth.’
‘We just—’
‘Surely the crapper she looks, the sillier and sadder her pretensions become.
We need her acne!
It’s her best feature!’
Keely asked if she could be excused from the conversation at this point.
‘Sorry, I just can’t hear this. I’ve been to drama school,’ she explained, ‘and as an artist I feel strongly that I have to
believe
in my performance. Honesty is the first rule of acting, I think Olivier said that, or Pacino, and if I’m to convincingly interview Vicky as Bling I simply cannot be a part of a conversation in which the entire production team condemn her as Ming.’
Keely then stood apart while Chelsie referred everybody to the character notes.
‘We’ve got our key quote down here, that this girl thinks she could be
a better mover than Britney and a better singer than Céline.
Surely this has got to be a no make-up, greasy hair and spots job?’
Calvin looked over Chelsie’s shoulder at Vicky. Then he looked at his watch: seconds were, as always, ticking away. On the other hand, if they were going to do it they had to do it properly.
‘Chelsie’s right,’ he said, turning to Make-up. ‘No slap, greasy hair, and if there’s time accentuate the acne.’
With that, Calvin returned to the audition room leaving Chelsie a very unpopular victor.
‘You didn’t have to go running to Calvin,’ said Trent.
‘I asked you what you thought,’ Chelsie replied. ‘You said you were happy with her.’
Hair and Make-up removed their previous efforts from Vicky’s face and hair. ‘You’re so young, dear,’ they assured her and her mother. ‘You don’t
need
make-up. Calvin wants to accentuate your youth and freshness. Might as well, eh? It doesn’t last for ever, does it?’
Then it was time for Keely to record her ‘before’ interview.
‘Bet you’re really nervous, aren’t you?’ said Keely once the cameras were rolling.
‘Well . . .’ the mother answered. ‘She would be nervous but she’s worked so hard and everyone she knows thinks she’s a real talent. She really believes she’s ready for this.’
Keely glanced down at her notes.
‘Are you going to be a star, Vicky?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ said Vicky, ‘I’m going to be a star.’
‘It’s her dream,’ her mother added.
‘Then you go, girl!’ said Keely, giving Vicky a hug.
Vicky then made her way through the hessian-backed door which separated Conference Room B in the Bullring Complex from Conference Room A, its adjoining, slightly larger twin.
After Vicky had left, Trent directed Keely and Vicky’s mum to ‘listen’ at the door as if they could hear what was going on within, which in fact of course they couldn’t.
Inside the Cumbrian Room the auditions had finally begun.
‘Hello, hello,’ Beryl shouted out as Vicky emerged and presented herself. ‘Who are you then?’
‘I’m Vicky.’
‘Vicky!’ Beryl gushed as if the name alone was evidence of something special. ‘Vicky, Vicky,
Vicky
, you’re so young! You’re a
baby
!’
‘I’m sixteen, Beryl.’
‘Oooooooh,’ croaked Beryl, contorting her stiffly Botoxed features into a drippingly mumsy expression as if she’d just been presented with her own newborn infant. ‘Sweet
sixteen
! My little girls are only seventeen. God, I miss them. As a mum I really miss them. You could be their kid sister. You’re a
baby
! God, I miss my kids.’
Sitting next to Beryl, Calvin smiled. For all that he loathed her, he could not deny that she was quite brilliant at her job. A real find, in a class of her own. Beryl was a star independent of him, booking her had been a stroke of genius and it was worth putting up with her for that.
Rodney was fidgeting. Only twenty seconds into recording and it was obvious that Rodney was already worrying that Beryl was hogging the limelight.
‘Yes, Vicky’s very young,’ he said, trying to make his presence felt. ‘But can she sing?’
‘Of course you can sing, can’t you, Vicky?’ Beryl cooed. ‘Just you ignore him.’
‘I will ignore him, Beryl, because I can sing and I’m going to prove it to you.’
‘You go, girl. Just you go. Own that song.’
If ever there was a cue for a song this was it, and by rights Vicky should have sung at this point. There were after all a hundred more people in the holding area and once the show was edited it would appear that there was a crowd of at least a thousand outside. The judges had already spent an entirely disproportionate amount of time on this one unimpressive-looking girl who could no more be a pop star than a heavyweight boxer. If this had been a genuine audition the judges could not possibly have spent more than a moment with Vicky. But this was not a genuine audition, this was
entertainment
, and most of the people waiting outside in the holding area were merely fillers. Vicky was a
story
and the groundwork had to be laid.
‘So who do you admire, Vicky?’ Calvin asked, paying out the rope with which Vicky was expected to hang herself.
‘I really like Britney and Céline Dion,’ Vicky replied.
‘Good choices,’ Rodney said, nodding wisely as if this represented encouraging evidence of Vicky’s critical and intellectual faculties. ‘Great artists, both of them. Those are very good choices for role modelling.’
‘Do you think you could ever be like them?’ Calvin enquired, paying out a little more rope.
‘I think I could be bigger than them, Calvin.’
Chelsie had prepared the girl well. Vainly self-deluded though she was, she would never have been quite so aggressively arrogant in front of three famous people had Chelsie not assured her that this was what the judges
loved to hear.
‘They really respect confidence,’ Chelsie had said, ‘so totally big yourself up.’

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