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Authors: Ben Elton

BOOK: Chart Throb
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Shaiana’s form struck Emma immediately. Of course they all wanted it, in fact the very phrase
I want it so much
had become something of a
Chart Throb
mantra, but to write it
twice
? That was interesting; Emma had never seen that before. It was so inelegant, so raw, it smacked of real desperation and Emma knew that Calvin
loved
real desperation. She looked down at the section where Shaiana had been asked to describe herself. It was a small box with three blank lines in it, just twenty-five centimetres in which to write. These boxes were usually very full; most applicants managed to fit in as many as twenty words and the record was forty-four.
Shaiana had written only three:
I am me.
Emma looked at the photograph which, as instructed, had been stapled to the top right-hand corner of the application form. A tense, forceful-looking face, not beautiful but pretty enough, in a plain Jane sort of way. The eyes were big and Emma thought that the girl was holding them unnaturally open.
Look at me!
those eyes seemed to be saying.
Can’t you see I want this so much?
‘I think we should see this one,’ Emma said, handing the form across the table to Trent. Trent, the most senior researcher on the show, made all the final decisions at first-round stage and answered directly to Calvin.
Clingers, Blingers and Mingers were the three types of entrant that
Chart Throb
researchers looked for.
‘The Clingers are the desperate ones,’ Trent had explained on Emma’s first day at work.
‘Aren’t they all desperate?’ Emma had enquired.
‘Of course not. They’re all hopeful but they’re not all desperate. Clingers are
desperate
. They have just enough talent to be utterly self-deluded . . . actually, sometimes they manage to be self-deluded without having any talent at all, which is
really
good telly. Calvin
loves
that. Clingers cry and plead and beg.
God
gave them their dream, you see. It’s
that
important. Personally I hope that if there is a God he’s got better things to do than arrange the recording career of some barmaid from Solihull.’
‘So Clingers are women?’ Emma had asked.
‘Normally, but they can be male. Middle-aged guys who just want to give their kids a better life than they’ve had. Club singers who’ve done their time and paid their dues and want one last shot at the dream. You’ll start to spot them easily enough.’
‘What about Blingers?’
‘Blingers are the extroverts. The show-offs. The type of weirdly self-confident lunatics whose unshakeable faith in their own powers to fascinate actually
makes
them sort of fascinating, in a kamikaze kind of a way. They say things like
Hey, what’s wrong with being a little crazy?
They strike poses. They flirt with Beryl. They think they’re sexy. Women Blingers tend to be plumpers but they’re comfy being curvy and invariably turn up half naked.’
‘And Mingers?’
‘Ah, now
that’s
entertainment. The life’s blood of
Chart Throb
, the most essential element. Without the Mingers
Chart Throb
would be nothing.’
‘And who are they?’
‘The true casualties, the saddos, the uglies, the comically short-sighted, the cleft-palated, the misshapen, the obese, the educationally challenged, the emotionally stunted and the spotty nerds. The most vulnerable and inadequate members of society.’
‘It all sounds rather exploitative,’ Emma had said.
‘
Hello!
’ Trent sneered in reply. ‘Duh! Do you think we run a charity? Of course it’s exploitative. It’s a business. McDonald’s for the senses. What truly successful business doesn’t exploit its customers by pandering to their desires? We’ve turned the whole country into one vast medieval village so that we can all stand in the market square and laugh at the idiots.’
‘The Mingers.’
‘Exactly. Quasimodo time. They sing their little song and do their little dance, desperate for the laughter of the mob because at least it means somebody has noticed them.’
‘And what about singers, aren’t we looking for them too?’
‘Good question.’
‘Well, it is a singing competition.’
‘Yes, a lot of people make the mistake of thinking that. Actually singers are by far the least interesting group. Singers enter in their tens of thousands but we select very few for real consideration. Being a singer, no matter how good, is simply not enough. To be considered as a singer you have to fit into one of the other categories too. We’ll take Clingers, Blingers and Mingers who aren’t singers and give them a good run too, might even put one in the finals, but we would never even
consider
a singer who was not also a Clinger, a Blinger or a Minger.’
That conversation had taken place the year before. Now Emma was as practised at spotting the categories as any researcher on the
Chart Throb
team.
‘This girl’s a Clinger,’ said Trent, referring to Shaiana’s entry form. ‘Shame she’s not fatter. We’re still a bit short of SOPs.’
Emma winced. SOP was office shorthand for Sad Old Plumper. She had never quite got used to the casual cruelty with which her colleagues discussed the applicants.
‘You know Calvin likes the heavier ones,’ Trent went on. ‘They’re more real.’
‘This girl’s got Clinger eyes,’ Emma insisted. ‘They put pounds on her.’
Trent shrugged and for a moment Shaiana’s application hovered between the recycling pile and three much smaller ‘first audition’ piles. Finally Trent made his decision and the form was placed on the pile marked ‘Clingers’.
Emma opened another envelope.
Two ugly girls who thought they were ‘different’. Not different enough, not ugly enough. Recycling.
Next envelope. Pretty black boy who claimed to sing like Michael Jackson. Not as pretty as the half-dozen other black boys who claimed they could sing like Michael Jackson and who were already on the Blinger pile. Recycling.
Another envelope. Suki. Peroxide hair. Surgically enhanced boobs. Fake tan. Pussy pelmet for a skirt. ‘Hates being judged for her looks alone.’ Emma stared hard at the glossy photograph. Beneath the make-up, the tan and the false eyelashes, Emma thought that Suki looked tired, bitter and was almost certainly a prostitute. A Minger and a Clinger pretending to be a Blinger. Could work, not bad telly. Emma passed it to Trent.
‘Too many Bobbies already,’ he replied.
Bobbies was office slang for Blonde, Big Boobs.
‘It’s our year for the truly sad slappers,’ he lamented. ‘They all think Calvin will want to shag them.’
‘Well, we certainly pushed that idea last series.’
‘And aren’t we paying the price! Every fucking crack whore in Barnsley’s dreaming of a fat fee from the
News of the World.
Recycle her.’
Emma stared into Suki’s eyes. Here was a woman on the verge of disintegration. Her whole adult life had clearly been built on a tawdry glamour and two-dimensional sexuality that within five years or so she would no longer even be able to fake. No doubt Suki had been pretty at school, pretty enough for her to conceive the dream, the dream that would ruin her life: that she could be like the girls in the magazines.
Hates being judged by her looks alone
.
Yes, thought Emma, particularly these days since you look like a sad washed-out old dish rag.
Emma was about to put the application on to the recycling pile but then, noticing that Trent was absorbed in his own research, she decided on a whim to give Suki a shot. If she featured on the show as a three-second Ming Bling it might double her stripping fee for a month or two and, God knows, it looked like she could use the money. Emma slipped Suki on to the Blingers pile and picked up another envelope.
Inside it was an application from yet another enormous West Indian mother of six with an ‘infectious laugh’ whose friends had told her to apply. Recycling.
Three more, all Theatre Arts students. Recycling. Recycling. Recycling. Seventeen more. All recycling. All those hopes, all those dreams, all those desperate pleas from desperate people asking to be saved from the lives they were leading and which they hated so much. All recycled.
Emma poured herself another cup of coffee and wondered about going outside for a cigarette. You had to stay focused, couldn’t afford to drift off, any envelope could be the one. Calvin’s rule was that every envelope must be opened as if it was the very first of the day.
For a moment Emma found her thoughts fixing on Calvin. He was such a
clever
man. Of course he knew it too but there was nothing wrong with that, within reason. Confidence was sexy.
Emma sipped her coffee, stretched wearily and took another envelope from the pile. Even before she had finished reading the form she knew that Graham and Millicent would receive an invitation to audition. Emma did not even bother referring the application to Trent before putting it on the Minger pile. Time was precious, the team had certain rules and Graham of the singing duo Graham and Millicent definitely had what it took.
Graham and Millicent
‘I’ll leave you two to it then,’ said Graham’s mum as she closed the bedroom door behind her. It was the bedroom of a music-mad lad: piles of CDs were stacked along the walls, while on the desk an iPod stood in its dock, connected to two enormous speakers on either side of the bed. There was a vinyl deck too and a decent-sized collection of old-fashioned LPs all lovingly catalogued. There were electric guitars, bongo drums, tuning forks, an iMac and the usual Pro Tools paraphernalia. The only difference between this bedroom and that of the majority of other music-mad young men who dreamed of pop superstardom was that there was absolutely no mess. This room was perfectly ordered, with everything in its proper place, where it could be located instantly. And there was nothing on the walls. No posters, no pictures, no framed drumskins signed by members of heavy metal bands, in fact nothing at all.
Millicent sat down beside Graham on the bed. Graham had his acoustic guitar on his lap but Millicent reached out to take it from him.
‘Come on,’ she said firmly. ‘We have to sing unaccompanied, you know that.’
‘But it’s so stupid,’ Graham replied. ‘We’re so much better with the guitar.’
‘It’s the same rules for everyone, Graham. You know how much you hate special treatment.’
‘I only hate it when it’s an excuse for denying me normal treatment,’ he replied. ‘I don’t mind cheating.’
‘I wrote and asked them. They said we can use instruments later, if we get through the opening rounds.’
‘Of course we’ll get through. I mean how good are we?’ Graham posed this question in the modern, rhetorical sense, meaning that he was quite certain in his own mind that they were very good indeed.
Millicent took hold of the guitar and as she did so her hand touched his and for a moment each of them exerted a tiny pressure.
‘We shouldn’t really be skiving off college, you know,’ she said.
‘You don’t get an audition for
Chart Throb
every day of the week, Milly, and anyway we won’t need qualifications when we’re stars,’ Graham replied.
‘Don’t get your hopes too high, Graham.’
‘We’re good, Milly. Everybody says so.’
‘Yes, and everybody who goes on that show says that everybody says they’re good. Come on, I thought we were going to rehearse.’
They began to sing, warming up as always with ‘Just Like A Woman’ by Bob Dylan. Milly loved the way Graham put the little croak into his voice even though she knew he only did it to cover up the inadequacies in his pitching. It was Milly who had the stronger. voice. Graham’s real passion was his instruments.
After ‘Just Like A Woman’ they did Woody Guthrie’s ‘This Land Is My Land’, and after that Graham suggested a cup of tea.
‘We’ve only sung two songs, Graham. You’re not concentrating.’
It was true, Graham did not seem to feel much like singing. He had something on his mind.
‘Milly?’
‘Yes?’
There was a pause. Whatever it was that Graham wanted to say was not coming easily.
‘What do I look like?’ he said finally.
Millicent was quite taken aback. She had known Graham for many years and yet he had never asked her that question before.
‘What do you look like?’ she repeated, feeling foolish.
‘Yes. I mean I know I have brown hair and Mum says I’m handsome . . . whatever that means, because mums always think their sons are handsome.’
‘Well . . . you are handsome.’
‘No, come on. What do I look like?’
Millicent was bright red. She wondered if Graham could sense it; she felt suddenly so hot that she imagined he must be able to feel the throbbing heat rising off her.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Why are you asking now? We’re supposed to be rehearsing.’

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