‘I’m so sorry we were interrupted,’ he said. ‘You were telling me about your little boy?’
‘I was telling you about my little Sam here, how he’s waiting for an operation.’
With the cameras still rolling, Keely walked back into shot.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ she said, ‘we need you for your audition.’
‘Oh bother,’ the Prince replied, adding, to the young mother, ‘Look, I have to go and
strut my funky stuff
, as my boys say, but I shall get someone to find out who to write to about your problem. Some
ghastly quango
or NHS
pen pusher
, I imagine. Personally I think they should stop counting the teaspoons and
employ more nurses.
But that’s just
my opinion
, and I don’t suppose any
politician
is going to listen to muggins here. I shall keep
banging on
regardless, it’s all I can do. Who’d be a prince, eh? In the meantime I shall certainly try to find somebody to write to about young Samuel here.’
‘Samson.’
‘Really? As in Judges, chapters thirteen to sixteen?’
‘No, as in the World Wrestling Federation.’
‘Goodness! How
fascinating.’
‘Cut!’ said Chelsie. ‘Fucking perfect. I mean . . . great.’
Pop School: Iona
The Quasar was through. Suki the prostitute was through. Bloke were through. Stanley, the single dad who was just doing it for his kid, was through. Tabitha the lesbian was through, having turned up and been filmed wandering hand in hand with her glamorous girlfriend in the same field of poppies that had provided the backdrop for Graham and Millicent’s romantic tryst. The Four-Z were through and had paid fulsome tribute to the Lord Jesus Christ for the crucial part he had played in their success so far.
The Prince of Wales was also through, having delivered a spirited rendition of ‘The British Grenadiers’ before he was whisked off to open a Whole Earth centre in Cornwall and deliver a speech on the importance of teaching history at Exeter University. The news of the Prince’s entry into
Chart Throb
was not yet in the public domain since the early programmes had still to be broadcast. The confidentiality agreement that all entrants signed would have kept the news from leaking out had it been necessary to invoke it, but the truth was that those contestants who had noticed the Prince at all continued to believe him to be a lookalike. Even the young mother whom he had offered to try to help set no store by his promise.
‘He’s been playing it so long,’ she assured Keely, ‘I reckon he thinks he
is
the blooming Prince.’
The comment was of course time-code-noted for inclusion in the final edit.
As the Prince hurried away with his detectives and his equerry in tow, Iona was finally summoned for her audition.
She looked very nice and she sang very well. As an experienced semi-professional who had been through the entire audition process the year before, she had the edge and it showed.
‘I should like to sing “A Woman’s Heart”,’ she explained.
‘That’s a good song,’ Rodney said, almost by instinct. ‘“A Woman’s Heart” is a great song to choose.’
Iona turned and stared at Rodney for a moment but she did not comment. Instead she looked away and sang her song in a pleasant, clear voice with what appeared to be genuine emotion.
When it was over Beryl was once more misty-eyed. While not actually crying – she had used up the last of her reachable nose hair on Graham – she was obviously moved.
‘Iona,’ she said, ‘you
owned
that song.’
‘Thank you, Beryl,’ Iona replied sweetly. ‘Coming from you that means a lot because I know you’ve had your doubts about me in the past.’
‘Not today, Iona. Not today,’ Beryl replied firmly. ‘I’m a woman and a mum and I know all about the pain in a woman’s heart, particularly because, as you know, for quite some time my woman’s heart beat in a man’s body and you can’t get much more painful than that, and let me tell you now, you were so emotional it wasn’t funny.’
‘Yes, Iona,’ Calvin agreed, ‘I thought that was a very fine performance indeed. Clearly as a woman you understand heartache. You’ve been through rejection and disappointment and you’ve used it to grow. Don’t you think so, Rodney?’
Calvin, Beryl and Iona all turned to look at the hapless Rodney. There was a long pause before Rodney turned to Calvin and whispered
sotto voce
, ‘Please, Calvin . . .’
‘What did you think, Rodney?’ Calvin replied firmly.
Rodney’s face grew resigned. It seemed he knew his duty and he would do it, excruciatingly embarrassing though it might be.
‘I . . . I . . . just don’t think you’ve grown since last year, Iona.’ Sweat was breaking out on his forehead. ‘You know that I loved you and your band last year and I went to a lot of trouble to say so, but I have to be honest here. I just don’t think you’ve grown.’
‘Really, Rodney?’ Iona replied, remaining calm but with her eyes flashing furiously. ‘That’s so strange considering how much “nurturing” I received from you after the last series ended. As I recall, for a while there you were
most appreciative
of what I had to offer.’
Calvin grinned broadly, not bothering to conceal his enjoyment of Rodney’s predicament.
‘I am simply taking a professional view here, Iona,’ Rodney blustered. ‘I like you, you know that, and I did my very best to encourage you after you were eliminated last year . . .’
‘“Encourage”, Rodney? Is that what it’s called? Actually, as I recall, it was you who needed the encouragement, particularly when you’d had a few drinks and couldn’t
rise
to the occasion, so to speak.’
Rodney’s jaw dropped, Beryl shrieked with cruel laughter and Calvin decided that for the time being enough was enough.
‘So,’ he said, ‘it’s a yes from me. Beryl?’
‘Oh definitely. A yes from me.’
‘And Rodney?’
Rodney squirmed as he had never squirmed before, withering under the fierce, steady gaze of the woman he had used and was now expected to betray.
‘Please, Calvin,’ he whimpered, ‘she’s through anyway on your two votes.’
‘Rodney, the people want to know what
your
opinion is. I need an answer and I
think
you know what it is.’
Rodney had no choice. Calvin was the boss. Getting the job on
Chart Throb
had changed Rodney’s life completely, transformed him from a middle-ranking nobody into a major television personality, the sort of person who received regular invitations to corporate golfing trips. He could not give that up. He simply couldn’t. Besides, how much more could she embarrass him than she had already done?
‘I’m sorry, Iona. I just don’t think you can cut it alone.’
Iona stood still for a moment, staring hard at Rodney.
‘Well now,’ she said, ‘in that case I shall just have to try harder to find a way of making an impression on you. Shan’t I, Rodney?’
All Back to My Place: Graham and Millicent
Calvin finally ended Millicent’s agony during the last round before the finals. In the part of the show called All Back to My Place, each judge supposedly took a group of semi-finalists into their own home for a period of intense training and ‘nurturing’. The reality was that the time the contestants spent in the judges’ homes was exactly as long as it took for them to perform their song and be informed whether they had made it through to the finals or not.
In fairness it had originally been thought that some genuine nurturing might take place at this stage of the competition but as the reality of having to actually
interact
with twelve desperate star-struck strangers in
their own homes
sank in, the judges had all quickly downsized the level of commitment that they were prepared to make to the show.
‘Do you really think,’ Beryl gasped, speaking for all three of them (including Calvin, whose idea it had been), ‘that I’m going to have a dozen desperate fucking nobodies who’ve crawled out from under some little English stone traipsing round my beautiful home and using my toilets? These are the sort of people I’ve worked all my life to
leave behind
! The people I have gated security to keep a-fucking-way! These are the people who ask for fucking autographs while I’m trying to sneak in to see my surgeon. I
hate
these fucking people. I’ll greet them at the front door but they’re not to come in. You can take them round the back and they can perform down by the pool. If they need the toilet they can use the one the gardeners use. They are absolutely
not
to set foot in the house, do you hear me?’
The home that Beryl’s group were to be allowed to knock on the front door of was at least her mansion in Los Angeles. Calvin was not prepared even to go as far as Beryl; he did not volunteer the use of any of the homes he actually lived in. The ‘place’ where his ‘nurture group’ were to be permitted to gasp briefly in envious awe was a holiday spread in Morocco that he’d bought as an investment. As in Beryl’s case, nobody was to be allowed in the house.
‘They can perform on the patio,’ Calvin said, ‘and change in the gym.’
‘Can they have a quick dip in the pool?’ Trent enquired, desperate to gain some usable footage to maintain the fiction that the judges were extending some sort of hospitality. ‘Beryl won’t allow that.’
‘All right but make sure they shower first. Make fucking sure they’ve turned in their cameras and mobiles before they get within a mile of the gate.’
Rodney was happy to have his group inside his home but this did not solve Trent’s problem because, rather embarrassingly, Rodney’s home was an unremarkable flat in Battersea. Keely always did her best to big it up in the voiceovers.
‘And the group that Rodney is to nurture,’ she shouted ecstatically, ‘are to be whisked off to his luxury penthouse apartment overlooking the romantic River Thames in Good Old London Town.’
But no matter how she put it, Rodney’s home simply wasn’t a Hollywood mansion, nor was it a huge holiday spread in Morocco. It was still a flat in Battersea.
The shooting for this part of the contest was always the most complex for the production team because of the travel and accommodation arrangements. The selected contestants had to be transported to one of the three nurturing locations, accommodated in the cheapest nearby motel, shot in various travelogue-style set-ups to prove that they really
were
there (‘I can’t believe it, I’m on Sunset Boulevard and I’m from Leeds’), and filmed wandering round the luxury grounds of Calvin’s and Beryl’s places, though not Rodney’s (‘I’ve always believed in my dream but seeing all this just makes me want to dream it even more’).
Then there were the ‘auditions’ themselves, which meant shooting twelve different numbers in each of three separate and problematic locations in which technicians had to remove their shoes and sign gagging orders before being allowed to look for a power socket. Then everybody had to be got home again. The return journeys were further complicated by the necessity to film the failed contestants staring tearfully out of the aeroplane window, contemplating how they were going to inform their poverty-stricken families back home that the long-dreamed-of fame and fortune were not about to materialize.
The long tease that Calvin had perpetrated upon Graham and Millicent finally ended beside Calvin’s swimming pool. They had just sung ‘Don’t Go Breaking My Heart’, the old Elton John and Kiki Dee hit. As before, Millicent had effectively held the tune and Graham had resorted to gravel-voiced rock posturing to cover his shortcomings. As before, Calvin turned black to white without a scintilla of shame.
‘Millicent,’ he said, ‘the way you sang that song broke
my
heart, dear.’
He let that hang for a lengthy moment as once more Millicent’s jaw fell open, revealing her fat, pale, familiar tongue.
‘I’m afraid the game’s up. Graham can’t carry you any longer,
I
can’t carry you any longer. I have given you every chance to work and to learn and to grow—’
‘I
have
worked,’ Millicent blurted, for once finding a voice.
‘But you haven’t learned and you haven’t grown.’
‘People say I’m good!’
‘What people, Millicent? People who produce records? People who make pop shows? I don’t think so, dear. The truth is that you are appalling and you had absolutely no business getting as far as you have done on a serious musical talent show such as this one. We all know why you’re here. You’re here because of your partnership with the saintly and endlessly patient Graham. We wanted to keep him so we kept you but we can’t do that any more, Millicent. Like I say, this is a serious talent show. I am
very
serious about the music. The music is
all
that matters. I don’t care about
characters
, about personalities or anybody’s false hopes and dreams. I am interested in the
singing
, nothing more, nothing less, and
you can’t sing
, dear. Sorry, but them’s the facts. And because of you I’m sending you both home. Graham, Millicent. Goodbye.’