Sweet Surrender (7 page)

Like all migrant populations, the newcomers tend to cluster together for companionship. In one local restaurant there is a large gathering every Wednesday night, with a floating population of between eight and fifteen English-speaking locals. It can get quite wild and woolly in there
as they talk and laugh loudly while eating pizza and gulping the local cheap red wine. They often finish with round after round of Irish coffee or strong liqueurs like Armagnac or Grand Marnier. Individually, they are all very lovable people, but en masse they can be quite daunting. I have joined them quite a few times but don't feel totally comfortable in their midst. I can't quite put my finger on it.

The locals I have come to know remain as delightful as ever. My neighbour Madame Thomas always stops for a chat on her way to the
boulangerie
, and Christian and Christianne, who run the corner bar and the small cafe at the lake, always welcome me with open arms. I feel totally comfortable when I am living in my little house, but I'm aware that no matter how hard I might try, I will always be a foreigner. I remain
étrange
– strange – to the people here. I'm a married woman who comes to her house but doesn't bring her husband. I'm an author who has written a book about a local restaurant and also made a documentary on the same subject (which few of them have seen). Yet I don't drive a flashy car or live in a chateau, which I think is also viewed with some curiosity.
Ton Ton
Raymond (Uncle Raymond), one of the characters in my documentary about Madame Murat's restaurant, expressed dismay that I was living in such a modest cottage, slap bang on the main road, in the middle of my rather down-at-heel village. I fear he pictured me in some charming
grande maison
in an idyllic pastoral setting.
Ton Ton
didn't understand that, for me, even the most modest cottage in France was a grand extravagance that I could only maintain by working very, very hard. I have such a different attitude to these things than my husband. He's much more inclined to work towards squirrelling resources away for a rainy day, but I need to live my life and enjoy the fruits of my labours. France is an extravagance that I can barely justify but I will continue to try to make it work so that I can keep dipping my toe into my other life, even if only for a few weeks at a time.

Second time lucky. I returned home from France to find that, this time, the TV show was definitely going ahead. We were each appointed our own personal producer as a minder, and a fashion stylist was commissioned – style was going to be a vital element of the show. Back at the farm I was getting organised – dashing around trying to get the garden in order – in preparation for being away from home five days a week. The producers found me a small apartment in Milsons Point, just under the Harbour Bridge.

There were constant calls on our time from the production office. My producer, Cathy, and the stylist, Talia, together with a cameraman and sound recordist, came up to the farm for a day to ‘look through my wardrobe' and to shoot a quick ‘snapshot of my life' that would be screened during our first week to air – to give the audience a bit of an idea about who I was, where I lived, my personality. The other cast members were put through the same experience.

The following week I was asked to fly to Sydney to have my eyebrows plucked by Nathan, who was described as ‘the eyebrow whisperer'. By now the process was beginning to feel a bit weird to me. Not only had a film crew been sticking a camera inside my disorganised walk-in
wardrobe, with the stylist poring over my skirts, blouses and shoes, but now my eyebrows were about to be given a makeover. I have indistinct blonde eyebrows and lashes, and have never, ever attacked them with a pair of tweezers. I was assured it was essential to achieve ‘the look' that was required. Bemused, then seduced, I surrendered.

We were primped and preened. Our faces were exfoliated with a beauty treatment called ‘dermabrasion'; our hair was coloured, cut and styled; we were given underwear to pull in our tummies, and stockings, shoes and fantastic accessories. We were assigned not one but two make-up artists to transform us into daytime TV stars. It was totally unreal, but in some ways also a lot of fun. I was asked to ditch my glasses and use contact lenses, which I knew would be problematic. It also seemed a bit of a contradiction, as we were constantly encouraged to ‘be ourselves' as much as possible and I had been wearing glasses for nearly twenty years.

For many women, I imagine the whole experience would be a dream come true. Having expensive new clothes to try on, being treated to a new hairstyle and professional make-up. Being pampered. These beauty sessions were aimed at making us feel special, but they also gave us a chance to get to know each other a little and to develop, rather desperately, like a group of speed-daters, some sort of chemistry that might later translate onto a TV screen for our prospective audience. Bonding, we were told, was essential.

We performed a full-day photo shoot in dozens of different outfits. One minute all in black, next all in white, then in bold primary colours. We shot promotional videos which would run as ads to promote the show and also in the opening credits for the program, dancing, twirling, laughing, uttering throwaway lines that would be then edited together to produce a glossy, pacy introduction.

We spent a week in Sydney rehearsing. Instead of throwing us cold to the audience on day one, it was wisely decided to warm us up by doing some live pilots, complete with interview guests and direct crosses to Pete Timms in the
Woman's Day
office.

Once again my indifference to celebrity gossip reared its head. I had vaguely heard of Britney Spears but I had no idea who she was, or what she was supposed to be famous for. When Anna Nicole Smith died just before our first show went to air, I had to admit to my fellow cast members in a production meeting that I had never even heard of the woman. I had
no
idea. I figured I would just have to button up during these discussions or somehow bluff my way through.

We all had vastly different areas of interest, which should have been a plus. Libbi had broad areas of knowledge and experience, from music and show business to politics and women's issues, and even sport (another blind spot for me). Lisa was also very up on current affairs, sport and politics, which was a particular passion. She sometimes stunned me with her detailed knowledge. Zoe was obviously very bright but she had made a conscious decision at some point in her life that news – real news – was upsetting and depressing. She avoided the evening TV news programs, and never looked at a newspaper apart from reading her stars and the celebrity gossip. As a result she didn't know the names or faces of many local or international politicians and had no idea about the issues I believed were important to our audience.

Before our rehearsal period we were thrown into a publicity tour – Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane – to introduce us to the media. We were not briefed about how we should behave during these interviews, but were encouraged yet again to ‘be ourselves'. We
were
the show. Our individual personalities were the key to it all, our minders at Nine constantly reminded us.

The interview we did with
Woman's Day
was a shocker. The magazine was a sponsor of the program, and proposed running a full-page feature article every week. We were taken to a restaurant overlooking the ocean at Bondi, subjected to more ‘glam' photographs, and then invited to lunch with the magazine's journalist. She was obviously keen for an ‘off the wall' story and she got it. After two glasses of wine Lisa was in full flight, throwing around quick responses and funny one-liners. I suppose
we were lulled into a false sense of security because the magazine was involved with the program. I assumed they would do a favourable ‘advertorial'. Not so. Instead, they chose to publish some embarrassing banter between Lisa and me. What might have seemed funny at the time didn't appear quite so amusing in print. Our publicist was starting to look very nervous.

There was something about Lisa that was hard to fathom. She was such an intelligent, humorous and beautiful woman. Yet from the beginning she acted out some strange and unpredictable behaviour. She would vomit at the slightest provocation. The first time was in the boardroom when we were delivered coffee, tea and hot chocolate by Mia's assistant, carried from the canteen in paper cups with lids. She sipped her drink, then let out a shriek and ran from the room, retching into her hand. By mistake, she had been given coffee instead of hot chocolate. It seemed she didn't like coffee, or had some violent allergic reaction to it. This episode was the first of many similar puzzling dramas.

We were taken aside one by one and asked to ‘keep an eye on Lisa'. Libbi, in particular, was charged with the role of being Lisa's minder, and I am quite convinced this caused tension between them.

Sometimes I'd feel like pinching myself, as a jolt back to reality. It was an extraordinary opportunity, falling into the world of live daytime television, but so much of what went on was bizarre and false. I sensed it was nothing more than an illusion.

‘The Secret reveals the most powerful law in the universe. The knowledge of this law has run like a golden thread through the lives and the teachings of all the prophets, seers, sages and saviours in the world's history, and through the lives of all truly great men and women. All they have ever accomplished or attained has been done in full accordance with this most powerful law.'

—Rhonda Byrne,
The Secret
.

A week before our show was scheduled to go to air Mia Freedman handed me an unmarked DVD.

‘Do you know about The Secret?' she asked.

‘What secret?' I replied, trying not to look totally stupid.

‘I want you to watch this DVD. It's amazing. It's the reason we are doing this show. You'll understand when you see it – Tara and I totally believe in it.'

I stuck the disc in my bag and caught the plane back to the farm for the weekend. I had family visiting, and lots of lunches and dinners to cook, and it was late on Sunday afternoon before I suddenly remembered the disc and pushed it into the DVD player.

After fifteen minutes I called out to David: ‘I think I'm in trouble here. Come and look at this. Mia and Tara think this is for real – they believe in it. I think I'm heading for big trouble.'

David sat with me for a few minutes and watched the film. We were in agreement that it was a load of new-age rubbish and totally implausible, but he advised me just to ignore it and get on with the job. He could see no point in making a fuss about something he perceived as being ‘silly and trivial'. I couldn't help feeling that it was a bit more worrying.

The Secret began life as a self-help video and became an international success in March 2006 with a book, a CD, and a desk calendar. The creation of an Australian TV producer, Rhonda Byrne, it is based on a theory known as ‘the law of attraction' or ‘like attracts like'. According to Byrne, each individual has the potential to become wealthy and successful – it's just a matter of ‘asking the universe to provide'. The mantra is Ask. Believe. Receive. When Oprah Winfrey featured The Secret on her television show, she interviewed people who believed that it had changed their lives. They claimed they had gone from being poor and frustrated to becoming rich and successful simply by imagining they
were
rich and successful. The book includes the story of a man who was sick of getting bills that he couldn't afford to pay, so he took his bank statement and whited out the total, then wrote in a new total and ‘visualised' that he had a large sum of money in his account. He claimed that within a month cheques just started arriving into his account and his financial problems were solved.

Some people might simply laugh at such nonsense, but to me it seemed dangerous. Wacky theories such as these prey on the vulnerability of unhappy people, leading them to believe that they can easily live their dreams. The only people getting rich, in my opinion, are the people writing, publishing and promoting such ideas. I was mortified to think that these intelligent, well-educated and sophisticated women who were my new colleagues could possibly fall for such obvious nonsense.

The following week Mia bounced into the production office and touched my arm.

‘Did you watch the DVD?' she asked. ‘What did you think?'

‘I thought it was the greatest load of claptrap I've ever seen,' I responded. ‘I don't believe a word of it.'

Mia looked hurt and went very quiet. I felt awful for bursting her bubble, but I just couldn't pretend to go along with the whole thing. Apparently Zoe had seen the film and was also convinced it was life-changing information. I wasn't sure about Libbi and Lisa, but I knew that I couldn't support the notion that The Secret was the reason behind our show getting the nod of approval from the network. I also sensed that the concept could be introduced as a topic of discussion on the program, and I wanted to distance myself from it from the word go.

Later that week I was in the production office, reading press clippings on the corkboard. Articles that had been published in advance of the show were displayed for us all to see. There was also a curious media release that talked about
The Catch-Up
as though it had been running for several months. It spoke of the show being a ‘huge ratings success' for the Nine Network, and of the prospect of moving it from its daytime slot to prime time in the evening. I was totally nonplussed. Then I realised what was going on. Someone in the office had written the release in an attempt to send out positive messages to ‘the universe' that the show was going to be a runaway success story. It was going to make us all rich and famous. We were living The Secret.

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.