‘Please,’ I say again, and I hate the desperation in my voice. ‘We’ll get you a car. A posh car. We’ll pay you twice your normal fee. Please. You don’t understand, Rex won’t let us start filming until his chest is done, and the producer will blame me if we’re stuck here all night yet again.’
She sighs.
I try one more sympathy tactic. ‘I might get fired.’
The phone clicking stops momentarily. ‘OK, fine, where am I going?’
I’ve already told her three times, but I explain again, keeping the impatient scream firmly inside my head.
As I hang up, Rex thunders into the room. ‘Is she coming?’ he booms in his infamous quiz-host voice. His shirt is hanging open, showing off the aforementioned unruly and hideously un-contoured chest hair.
‘Yep,’ I say cheerfully, giving him a thumbs up, like it was no trouble.
‘Well, tell her to hurry fucking up,’ he says impatiently. ‘Every minute that goes by, these blasted chest pubes get longer.’ He gestures at himself and my eyes accidentally look at his body hair. I swallow some bile.
‘You don’t know how hard it is for me, darling, having such thick, luxuriant hair,’ he tells me dramatically, slumping down on the sofa in the corner. ‘You’re so lucky to have thin, unimportant hair that the public don’t care about.’ He lays a flannel across his face. ‘Get me some hot water, will you?’ he says. ‘I’ll do my pores while I wait.’
I want to tell him we have runners and interns for this kind of thing. I want to point out there’s a sink literally next to his stupid head. I want to tell him to fuck off. But I don’t. I just go over and fill up the bowl.
You wouldn’t believe it, but I am not actually Rex’sPA. Unfortunately, I made the mistake ofnotmaking any mistakes early on in our working relationship and now he thinks I am the only one he can trust to do anything. He says the runners are ‘a bag of burning poop’ who ‘cock everything up’. Which is true, but it’s still not my fucking job.
When I started here nearly two years ago, I was so sure it was going to be the dream role. I’d done my time as a runner at a production company, then as researcher somewhere else, then as researcher again. Getting bumped up toAPwas a big deal. And not just any oldAP– I’m the assistant producer at one of the highest-rated daytime quiz shows onBBC9! I’ve always been obsessed with quizzes. When I was growing up, Franny and I used to watchWho Wants to Be a Millionaireevery day, and our joint life aim was to be someone’s phone a friend. For a long time, as a teenager, I thought Chris Tarrant was my ideal man, until I realised he doesn’t actually know the answers to any of the questions, he just reads them out. I can’t tell you how many Sunday pub quizzes I’ve dragged Lauren and Joely along to. Franny’s the best teammate, though – she’s the smartest person I’ve ever met. She was in Mensa when she was younger! She has one of those photographic memories, and anIQof 156, which is incredibly handy in those seventies pop trivia rounds.
Anyway, working onQuiz Monstersseemed like it would be the most brilliant, fun job in the universe, and I was so sure those Facebook fuckers with their eight kids and nappy posts would die of jealousy. But it’s never quite what you think it will be, is it? Everyone told me the host was ‘difficult’ – they warned me – but I thought I could handle it. I mean, I’m great with difficult people! I can nice-person anyone into submission! But it feels like all I’ve done with my two years here is turn myself into Rex Powers’ lackey. And I’m still not totally sure he even knows my name. He calls me ‘darling’ a suspicious amount.
I step out of the office and flag Sam down. She’s the only runner who isn’t a total moron, and I’m her official ‘mentor’ here.
I really like her, actually. She’s great. She’s straight out of school, couldn’t afford to go to university (because who the hell can these days?) but still wanted desperately to work in telly, so has been doing work experience like a demon for two years, while simultaneously working night shifts at a bar to pay her way. She’s a grafter and proper northern, so of course she thinks all the other rich interns and rich everyones are idiots. Actually, I picked herCVout of the pile just to annoy Rex and my producer, but she’s been a godsend.
‘Can you get me an urgent car?’ I say, handing her the address. ‘Tell them it’s genuinely life or death.’
‘Ooh, is it for someone famous?’ she says excitedly and I grin. If you work in telly you’re not supposed to get star-struck, but Sam loves a famous person. We have guest stars on the show sometimes and she can barely keep a lid on it. She is so excited about this massive end-of-series live celebrity special we’re currently planning. I’m excited too, but it is also the bane of my existence. You have no idea the egos I’m dealing with. It’s funny because the very few A-listers I’ve dealt with have always been absolutely dreamy. They are professional and friendly and get on with whatever you’ve asked them to do. But anyone D-list or below? You cannot imagine the levels of dreadful. I think it’s because the lower down the celeb scale you are, the less prepared you are for the unscrupulous yes-men who descend on you when you find fame. These people will say absolutely anything to get in with you. They will climb up inside your rectum and nestle there, taking the free drinks and the free drugs, encouraging your ego to spiral out of control, until you truly believe you’re the most beloved A-list celeb to ever leaveLove Island.
Actually, shh, but I think maybe I’m kind of starting to see a bit of this in Joely.
And you should see the fees these people are commanding! Not to mention their dressing-room rider demands. There’s an ex-Hollyoaks actor I won’t name who has genuinely requested ‘three women’ be provided in his room ‘upon arrival’. I am tempted to call his mum and sisters and have them be there.
But I’m hoping it’ll be worth it. LiveTVis always the most exciting kind ofTV, and it’s great for myCVthat I’m heading this up.
‘Sadly no famouses this time,’ I tell Sam, shaking my head. ‘Oh, but Davina McCall’s recording in the other studio next week,’ I say in hushed tones, checking no one can hear us gushing.
‘Ooooh, I love her!’ Sam says and I laugh. Duh, everyone loves Davina. She’s a glorious, shimmering goddess, and when Rex gets crushed to death by his own inflated ego one day, I pray Davina will come take over as host of this show.
Sam runs off, already on her phone, sorting the taxi.
I pull out my to-do list, stretching my arms to the ceiling as I do. I’m going to yoga later and I can’t wait to sweat the day off. It’s full-on when we’re mid-series like this. Eighty episodes, recording every weekday for months – it doesn’t stop. The latest group auditions don’t start until next week, though, and Aslan – my fellowAPand work husband – is babysitting today’s contestants. I might just have time to grab some food from the canteen before filming starts.
My phone vibrates in my back pocket. I keep it there because it feels nice on my bum cheek and I’m not ashamed to say it.
Six messages are waiting patiently from Lauren: three asking for my thoughts on prawn cocktail starters (I have no thoughts on prawn cocktail starters) and the others listing agenda points for our next wedding meeting later this week. It feels a lot to me like items we’ve already talked about. Many times. In fact, I am fairly certain, barely a few weeks into this engagement, we’ve already exhausted every possible element of wedding chat. But every time I think a decision has been made, something else comes up. So much for Lauren’s promise to make quick decisions. I breathe out, feeling a tiny bit overwhelmed. Work is too busy for prawn cocktails. Sliding my phone back in my pocket without replying, I head for the studio canteen. I need a coffee, some cake and a Franny chat.
Franny is my grandma. Granny Franny is her name, which – I know! – is hilarious, isn’t it! But she’s not justmygrandma; she’s the communal grandma around here. She got the job of tea lady/canteen supervisor just after I becameAP. The impression I get from the rest of the catering staff is that she just sort of turned up one day and told them she was having a job. It’s ridiculous, given how competitiveTVis, but Granny Franny is a force of nature. She barrels in, announces to the world what she wants, and won’t take no for an answer. And because she’s literally ninety years old, I think everyone felt too awkward to say no. She threatens to die on you if you say no to her, so it’s probably better they didn’t try.
I really love having her so close to me. I want her around as much as I’m allowed, at all times. Because even though she’s more alive than anyone you’ve ever met, I still know there is a...time limiton this relationship. I hate even thinking that because she is my favourite person in the entire universe, but I have to be somewhat realistic – she is a nonagenarian, after all. Granny Franny is like a mum and a best friend, as well as being a brilliant grandma. My parents had quite a volatile marriage from day one, and Franny only lived two streets away, so I spent most of my childhood over at her house doing our quizzes, and listening to her recite whole chapters from books she’d memorised for my bedtime stories.
Much as I love my parents, I think of Franny as being the one who really raised me – all the good parts of me, anyway – and our daily lunches together mean a lot.
In the steamy cooking area, Franny looks as fake-busy as ever. Her role is mostly supervisory, because she doesn’t actually really know how to cook, but she definitely likes to boss people about. Her ‘experience’ is deeply appreciated, by which I mean, the rest of the kitchen staff are afraid of her. As I walk over, Franny is waving her walking stick in the air. She doesn’t really need it, but she says it makes her look ‘grand, like Maggie Smith’. She says she’s the dowager of the canteen, which is ‘way better than Downton fucking Abbey’. The subject of the stick-waving is poor Andrea. Andrea is Franny’s closest friend and also Franny’s worst enemy; she gets a lot of stick, literally and figuratively. Right now, Franny is shouting at her about the chip fat needing more fat. Her cooking advice is almost always ‘more fat’.
