‘Thanks, chief,’ Chelsie replied, while Trent tried hard not to scowl.
‘But the public bore easily,’ Calvin continued. ‘A little goes a long way in terms of audience manipulation and I think we need to bury the Prince as deeply as possible in the pack for a few weeks and concentrate on other stories.’
‘You want to keep him for the final, boss?’ said Trent, clumsily stating the obvious in order to re-enter the conversation and instantly regretting it.
‘No, Trent,’ Calvin snapped with angry sarcasm. ‘Why on earth would I want to do that? The heir to the throne in a
Chart Throb
final? Sounds boring to me, let’s chuck him out. OF COURSE I WANT HIM IN THE FINAL, YOU FUCKING IDIOT!!’
‘Yeah, right, absolutely, boss,’ Trent spluttered. ‘I’m just working it through in my mind here. Yes, of course we want to keep him for the final but I think taking the focus off him is going to be tough. I mean he’s the Prince of Wales, after all, singing and dancing week after week in a series of live studio talent shows, how can we possibly bury that?’
‘How, Trent? How?’ Calvin replied. ‘More to the point, how long have you worked on this show?’
‘I’m just saying that—’
‘We bury it by pointing the cameras at somebody else, of course. We control the cameras, we control the shots and we control the vision mixing. Have you forgotten that the rules of this show were specifically designed in order to leave absolutely nothing to chance? We give him short songs, we play half his performance on the audience and on shots of other contestants, we shoot him from the knees down if we feel like it and, most of all, we big up other stories.’
‘I hope you’re right, boss,’ Trent replied, desperately trying to back out of the corner in which he had placed himself while still appearing to maintain just enough dignity and individuality to justify his role on the show. Calvin might be a fairly ruthless leader but he did not pay his senior researchers for abject servility. ‘The finals are a tricky time, the public does crazy things and I’d hate to lose him early on.’
Trent was speaking without thinking. Unfortunately for him, Calvin was listening while thinking.
‘Trent,’ he said, almost gently, ‘I’m sorry, mate, but you’re going to have to swap jobs with Chelsie.’
‘What!’ Trent stuttered.
‘No, I’m serious,’ Calvin insisted. ‘If you want to stay on
Chart Throb
you have to accept a more junior position. I can’t have my number two wasting my time talking complete bollocks, like some naïve punter.’
‘But—’
‘Trent. Think about it. It’s one thing having the
public
believe that because the finalists are subjected to a weekly vote the competition is beyond the manipulation of the judges, but it’s quite another having my senior researcher being that stupid.’
Trent hung his head. ‘Sorry, chief. You’re right.’
Solemnly he vacated the chair closest to Calvin and went to sit beyond Chelsie, placing her between him and his boss.
‘Thanks, Trent,’ said Chelsie, assuming her new authority with consummate ease. ‘I think we’ll build a great working partnership.’
‘It always amazes me,’ Calvin said, speaking as if to cover Trent’s discomfort, ‘that the only thing the public ever suspects is that the vote is rigged, when the vote is the
one thing
in the entire process which is absolutely genuine. Why would I try and rig the vote? I
never
try and rig the vote. It’s so
obvious
that I don’t
need
to rig the vote in order to control the process.’
This was Calvin’s great secret, although it should never have been a secret since all the evidence was entirely public and no effort was ever made to cover it up. Calvin had been astonished at Dakota’s naïvety in not spotting it when they made their bet. He had been equally surprised but also enchanted by Emma’s failure to understand it when he offered to ensure the Prince’s eventual triumph. Both women had been intimately connected to the
Chart Throb
system, they surely should have been able to see that there was only
one point
in the whole process when Calvin could possibly lose control and that was in the
very final show.
The rules stated that each week the two least popular figures in the poll would be identified and then the judges would decide which of them would leave. This meant that, as long as Calvin controlled the judges, which he most certainly did, then he would always be able to control the final choice and ensure he did not lose anybody he didn’t wish to lose. For this reason, he normally instructed his colleagues to keep in the least popular person because unpopular contestants were far more interesting than popular ones and controversy was always good telly.
‘They sit at home screaming at the TV, saying how
could
you keep that talentless fuck in the show! Don’t they understand that is exactly
why
we keep him in? The more frustrated and angry the viewers are, the bigger the show gets.’
His Royal Highness was in fact completely safe up until the very last show. That was the one and only time in the entire process when the public genuinely made the decision, and even then they did so only on the evidence Calvin gave them. Up until that point, the only possibility of upset was if Beryl or Rodney refused to follow the script and this was never going to happen, for they owed Calvin everything.
Calvin’s challenge was not to get the Prince of Wales into the final three, but to do so without losing the trust or loyalty of the
Chart Throb
audience. When he made his bet with Dakota he had committed himself to maintaining the show’s popularity, which meant that he could never be
seen
to manipulate the audience. His job therefore was to create a figure each week whom he could credibly dump, to allow HRH to be voted into the final three.
Week One
At the week one production meeting Calvin announced that it would be Tabitha, the lesbian with the glamorous girlfriend, who would leave the show first. He turned to Beryl, who had been designated as Tabitha’s ‘nurturer’.
‘I want you to tell her to sing Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing”.’
Beryl roared with laughter. She could see which way this was going.
‘Oh
yes
! From a paid-up card-carrying muff-muncher! Brilliant! That is so gross.’
‘It certainly will be by the time we’ve staged it,’ Calvin replied and turned to the director and vision mixer.
‘We’ll put her girlfriend in the front row and we’ll shoot it so Tabitha is singing it directly to her.’
‘Love it!’
the director replied. ‘Lots of close-ups and long, lingering looks.’
‘Exactly,’ Calvin replied, ‘and crotch-grabbing.’
Calvin turned to the choreographer.
‘I want you to stage it all hips and thrusting crotch, I want Tabitha grabbing her muff like she’s got cystitis. OK?’
‘I will if you insist, Calvin,’ the choreographer replied. ‘But I warn you, Tabitha is no dancer. She’s built like a brick shithouse and she’s got the rhythm of a dog on heat.’
‘You think I hadn’t noticed? It’ll look horrible.’
‘It certainly will. Do you want me to get her to wiggle her tongue during the instrumental?’
Calvin thought about this for a moment.
‘OK, but keep it vaguely pre-watershed. Just tell her to lick her lips a bit, I don’t want it protruding and, like I say, make sure she rubs her twat like she was Michael Jackson.’
‘Will do.’
Next Calvin turned to the costume department.
‘What have you dressed her in?’
‘A beautiful dark trouser suit with a silver pinstripe,’ Costume replied. ‘Slims her down a bit and hides her legs. Her tits are really all we’ve got to work with so we’ll open up her shirt a few buttons and lead with the cleavage. Accessories-wise I thought maybe a homburg hat and—’
‘Wrong,’ Calvin interrupted, ‘wrong, wrong,
wrong.
Give her a boiler suit and a T-shirt with
ALL MEN ARE RAPISTS
written on it.’
‘Do you think she’ll wear it?’
‘She will wear what we fucking well tell her to. They are all under contract.’
Chelsie and Trent were tasked to brief Tabitha on what was being planned for her and to ensure that she did her bit towards her own destruction. Theoretically it should have been Beryl doing this job because in the fiction of the programme Tabitha was one of the acts Beryl was supposed to be ‘nurturing’. The reality was that all three judges had long since given up even
pretending
that they had anything to do with the contestants prior to their actual performances. The researchers and producers did all the interacting, occasionally sending flowers and messages on the judges’ behalf and always being sure to remind the contestants to thank the judges for these small gestures live on air.
It was the ‘nurturing’ fiction that amused Beryl most. She loved it. It made her feel invulnerable, like she could get away with anything.
‘People actually
believe
this shit!’ she would say to her friends in the States, shrieking with laughter at the very idea. ‘They believe I go down to the fucking rehearsal rooms each day and hold my contestants’ fucking hands! It’s incredible. I am proud to say that there has never been a single fucking shot of me working with any of these assholes, not on their routines, not on their songs and not on their emotional well-being, and yet
still
people believe that I’m some kind of mother hen! It’s wonderful. Incredible. One day I swear I shall turn to that camera and tell the viewers what a bunch of fucking morons the contestants really are. But I love them, of course. They’re my people.’
Love them or hate them, Beryl most certainly was not prepared to do any work with them and so it was Chelsie and Trent who, together with some junior researchers, travelled up to the block of service flats in Kilburn where the contestants were being housed and briefed Tabitha on what was expected of her.
It took a bit of selling.
‘
All Men Are Rapists
,’ Tabitha said dubiously. ‘You think people will like that?’
‘Well, not
all
the people,’ Chelsie conceded, ‘but at this stage of the competition with all twelve acts still in it you need to develop a
niche
vote.’
‘But “Sexual Healing”? Isn’t that a bit graphic?’
‘Absolutely. There’s nothing better than a bit of graphic sapphic. Trust me. You have to paint with broad strokes on this show. You only get a couple of minutes to make an impact. Now about the intro clip, what do you want to say?’
Chelsie was referring to the video package that preceded each finalist’s performance, in which they were filmed against a black backdrop looking moody with wind in their hair, while they recounted their fears and hopes in voiceover.
‘Well,’ Tabitha replied, ‘I thought I’d talk about how I’m dead nervous and that I’ve worked really hard because I really, really want to be a singer.’
Chelsie frowned.
‘Hmm, I think it would have
much
more impact if you were to talk about how you wished that you and your girlfriend had a daughter who you could dedicate the song to and how you believe that IVF for single-parent lesbians should be available free by right on the NHS and you should be allowed to choose the sex so you don’t get a boy because . . .’
‘All men are rapists?’ Tabitha enquired.
‘Exactly. People will love you for having strong principles.’
Tabitha did what she was told to do and was rewarded with a cacophony of booing from the studio audience. Barry and Gary had made it clear in their warm-up that the audience were to feel free to express themselves as loudly as they wished and that booing was acceptable.
Before the telephone votes had been counted it was obvious that Tabitha would be one of the two who were up for rejection.
Encouraged by Keely, the judges indulged in a few moments of clunking, mahogany-hewn banter.
‘How could you have given her that song?’ Rodney spluttered.
‘It’s a great song,’ Beryl replied. ‘It’s a Marvin Gaye song.’
‘Yes, and it should have been left to Marvin Gaye. The song was too big for her.’
‘Yes, Tabitha,’ Beryl conceded in her cooing, croaky, trying-to-be-nice voice, ‘I’m afraid that the song was just too big for you.’
Tabitha was up against Latiffa for rejection but there was never any doubt about who would be going home.
‘Tabs babes,’ Keely said, ‘is there anything you would like to say to the judges?’
‘Well, I wasn’t really happy with the choice of song—’
‘The song was great, lady,’ Calvin interrupted. ‘It was just too big for you.’
Tabitha might have liked to add that she wasn’t happy with her choice of costume either but sadly her time was up.
Week Two
Having dispensed with Tabitha in an orgy of press hatred in week one, the following week Calvin targeted Latiffa, the wannabe Tina Turner of the group. Previously Calvin had been careful to edit Latiffa’s character in a favourable light, making her self-confidence seem positive and strong and her belief in her own sexiness larger than life and sassy. Now he turned all his guns against her, using song choice, costume and pre-performance profile to transform her instantly into a noisy, irritating, loud-mouthed, self-deluded show-off. He gave her ‘Simply The Best’ to sing and pitched it in Tina Turner’s original key, which was way too high for Latiffa. They dressed her in the sort of micro skirt that Tina had worn in the eighties and for which you required legs that had seen a lot fewer kebabs than Latiffa had, and they recorded a profile in which she was coaxed into sounding like an arrogant, self-serving bore.