The deceit was not absolute. As Emma often said to her friends when taxed on the subject, it wasn’t
really
a lie at all, the three intrepid judges
would
eventually go to Birmingham, on another day, a day much further on in the selection process when the ‘crowds’ had been reduced to a more manageable few dozen. But they would go. Of course, when they did, they travelled separately up from London by car.
Shaiana had arrived an hour before her appointed time and then queued for another two hours while she and those around her were invited to grin and wave for the ever-present cameras. Shaiana had dutifully done as she was told but she hadn’t enjoyed herself as much as she was pretending to. She was a serious singer after all, not like these other gurning fools.
When she finally edged her way to the registration table, Shaiana was directed to go and sit among a group of about sixty people who had been separated from the main crowd.
An oldish man sitting in the seat next to hers turned and smiled.
‘Hello,’ said the Prince, offering Shaiana his hand. ‘How
are
you?’
When Calvin had been ‘surprised’ to hear the extraordinary news that the heir to the throne had applied to be on
Chart Throb
he had given strict instructions to Trent and his team that the early auditions for His Royal Highness were to be handled as much as possible like any other element of a
Chart Throb
day. Calvin knew that he had a huge mountain to climb if he was to turn the nation’s favourite whipping boy into its number-one pop star and he reasoned that the best way to start was to make it plain that the Prince must be seen to receive no special treatment. The Prince himself had also been very clear on this point.
‘If I play, I play fair,’ he said. ‘Dartmouth rules. When I went into the navy I got no special treatment and that’s how I wish to play this too.’
‘But isn’t him turning up going to cause a terrible stir?’ Trent had said to Calvin.
‘I honestly don’t think so. Everyone at our auditions is concentrating on just one thing, themselves. They’re not interested in anybody else. Why would they give some sad elderly man in a tweed jacket a second glance? After all, he certainly won’t be the only eccentric-looking old bloke hanging around, will he? If people do spot him, what will they think? They’ll think that bloke looks a bit like the Prince of Wales. They’re not going to think it
is
his nibs, are they? Not unless we start making a fuss of him, which we won’t. How many David Beckham lookalikes turned up last year?’
‘Eight. And eleven Poshes.’
‘And some of them were pretty good, weren’t they? But nobody thought it was them, did they?’
‘No.’
‘And there you’re talking about
serious
celebrities. Not some fucking prince. Just let him turn up and treat him like the rest and we’ll see how we go, eh?’
The Prince of Wales had duly been sent an acceptance form and instructions to attend Hall E3 of the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham. He was instructed to be prepared to sing, unaccompanied, one verse and a chorus of a song of his choice. He had therefore rescheduled visits to two primary schools, a regimental dinner and a mosque, and his plans had been entered into the court circular as ‘cultural’.
He arrived on the appointed morning in the first of two black Daimlers. This had caused many heads to turn, but only because people had imagined for a moment that Calvin Simms himself was arriving. When only a stooped, sombre-looking figure in a big old-fashioned overcoat got out, all interest was lost. The only obvious thing of note about the man who then made his way nervously into the crowded audition hall was that he was accompanied by two serious-looking persons in cheap suits that bulged at the armpit.
‘Look, an old boy band,’ someone had quipped as they made their way as directed to where Shaiana was already sitting.
‘Hi,’ Shaiana replied to the Prince’s greeting, but she scarcely looked up. She did not really want to talk to anybody. Today was about her and her alone.
She had to stay focused because she
just wanted it so much
.
‘What song have you prepared?’ the Prince enquired. ‘I’m doing “Jerusalem”, which I do hope won’t offend anybody. People often make the mistake of thinking that it’s a
Socialist
song but I disagree. I’m quite sure that when Blake penned his towering lyric he had
humanism
in mind. It’s a song about love of one’s fellow man and of one’s country, and I do think that’s important, don’t you?’
Shaiana, like many of the contestants assembled in Birmingham that day, had selected ‘The Greatest Love Of All’, which is about love for oneself.
The Prince’s number, 8,900, was written in felt-tip pen on a big white label that had been stuck to his chest. Shaiana’s number was 16,367. Despite the fact that there were scarcely five hundred auditionees present in the hall, all the numbers displayed on the entrants’ chests ran to at least four figures, commonly five.
‘I am not a number!’ the Prince joked loudly, glancing about in a comradely fashion. ‘I am a
human being.’
Neither Shaiana nor any of the others nearby paid any attention. They were all lost in their own thoughts, running through in their heads the verses and choruses which might just change their lives for ever.
The Prince’s further efforts at integration with his future subjects petered out when an already familiar amplified voice boomed from across the hall. ‘OK, people! It’s Gary again,’ the voice shouted. ‘Say “Hi, Gary!”’
‘Hi, Gary!’ the crowd responded but with little enthusiasm.
‘Oh goodness, not this
fool
again!’ the Prince muttered. ‘He really is the most prize buffoon.’
‘Say, “Hi, Barry!”’ boomed a second voice.
‘Hi, Barry,’ they echoed.
‘Come ON,’ Gary shouted. ‘That was TERRIBLE! Say, “Hi, Gary and Barry!”’
The crowd dutifully replied with slightly more animation this time.
‘Hi, Gary and Barry!’
In fact it was not just the Prince who was heartily sick of Gary and Barry; by now everybody was. It was their job to cajole the crowd into supplying the production crew with the hysterically excited mob shots that made up the opening montage of the programme.
‘Ninety-five thousand people. Three judges. Twelve finalists. Just one
Chart Throb
!!
’
Somebody had to make those crowds shout and clap and wave and it was Gary and Barry, two amiable ex-drama students who wanted to be comedians, who had got the job.
‘OK, people, listen up! If you want to be a Chart Throb you gotta ACT like a Chart Throb! You gotta live it, breathe it, OWN it and owning it starts right now. Calvin is watching you! He is the Dark Lord of Rock and he is everywhere! So you have to put everything you’ve got into this! Let me hear you say, “YO-OH!”’
‘Yo-oh!’ everybody said, except the Prince.
‘I won’t do it,’ he muttered. ‘This isn’t bloody communist Russia.’
‘Let me hear you say “OH YEAH!”’
‘OH YEAH!’
All afternoon Gary and Barry had been working the crowd, gathering them into groups to shout the name of the show, moving them about the hall en masse, getting them to wave, jump, twist and jive in front of huge banners bearing the
Chart Throb
logo. Anything, in fact, to imply that an almost impossibly large number of people were having the time of their lives and loving every minute of their
Chart Throb
experience, as opposed to five hundred people hanging around in an empty exhibition hall.
On the occasion when they had interrupted the Prince’s efforts to befriend Shaiana, Gary and Barry were attempting to tutor the crowd in the difficult job of physically spelling out the word C-H-A-R-T. The ‘C’ and the ‘T’ were pretty simple and the ‘R’ was doable, but turning the body into an ‘A’ was hard and an ‘H’ pretty much impossible.
‘Do the “H” with your fingers!’ Gary commanded. ‘Like the “W” sign for “whatever”.’
‘And then we all throb, right?’ Barry added.
‘Yeah, that’s it!’ Gary shouted. ‘We all spell out C-H-A-R-T then we all thro-o-o-o-b-b-b! Right!’
At the planning meeting the previous evening there had been some discussion as to how the crowd should be instructed to perform a throb. In the end the team had agreed on a sort of general agitation of the arms and body which everybody knew was not a throb at all but a shake, the problem with a genuine throb being that it was rather a ponderous and uniform thing and simply not good telly.
‘C-H-A-R-T thro-o-o-o-o-b-b-b!’ went the crowd, all shaking and shivering at the appropriate moment.
‘Thanks, you’re brilliant,’ called Barry.
‘Absolutely brilliant,’ Gary agreed. ‘Now let’s do it again!’
They did it four times, after which the crowd stopped throbbing and returned to their places in the queue.
Then the two camera teams covering the crowd scenes made their way over to the smaller, separate group, among whom Shaiana and the Prince were sitting. Emma came too. She carried a clipboard and looked rather harassed. Trent, in the vision control truck out in the car park, had just shouted at her that they were already an hour behind.
‘Can I have the Quasar please?’ Emma called out.
A muscular, confident-looking man jumped up from behind Shaiana.
‘Well hello, ba-a-a-a-aby!’ he said, grabbing his crotch and thrusting it forward. ‘You can ’av the Quasar any time you likes, princess, you nah wha’ Ahm sayin’?’
The Quasar spoke in a hybrid Euro-American accent that sat somewhere between Morocco and South Central LA.
‘We’d like a little chat on camera.’
‘Then the Quasar is ready to rock!’
‘Great,’ said Emma, smiling weakly, ‘that’s what we like to hear.’
Quasar bounded forward. He was dressed in skin-tight black jeans, Cuban-heeled snakeskin boots and a red silk shirt, which was unbuttoned almost down to his navel. Emma, followed by the camera teams, led Quasar towards the queue and placed him in among the crowd.
‘Why’re you picking
him
out?’ a couple of girls screeched. ‘We haven’t even been auditioned yet.’
‘You’ll get your chance, ladies,’ Emma called with exaggerated cheeriness. But she knew that they almost certainly would not. Most of the real Cling, Bling and Ming prospects had already been identified either from their application forms or by the teams of production staff patrolling the queues. Everyone else would, of course, be given thirty seconds or so in front of a junior researcher to avoid a riot but the chances of somebody showing sufficient weirdness, ugliness, desperation, tartiness, arrogance, emotional or intellectual dysfunction (or even, very occasionally, talent) at this stage to jump back into contention were not great. The National Exhibition Centre was not a cheap hall to rent and Emma and the other members of the hard-pressed production team had only a day in which to process the whole crowd, while at the same time attempting to pick up as many drop-in shots and pieces to camera as possible.
However tough a day Emma might be having, Quasar was loving his and he certainly did not allow the sullen resentment of the other contestants who had been bunched around him to dampen his spirits.
‘Wha’appen, babes?’ he shouted at Emma, flexing his buffed muscles.
‘How are you feeling here today?’ Emma shouted back from behind the camera.
‘I’m feeling
wicked
!’ said Quasar. ‘Because I am a
geezer
!’
‘Are you the best, Quasar?’ shouted Emma. ‘Tell us you’re the best there is.’
‘I’m the best there is!’ Quasar replied dutifully.
‘Tell us again,’ shouted Emma, ‘but louder.’
‘I’m the best there is!’ yelled Quasar.
‘Can you do a little move with it? Uhm, grab at your trousers or something?’
‘You betcha, babes!’ shouted Quasar, once more declaring he was the best there was, but this time grabbing at his crotch, spinning round and then dropping to do the splits.
‘Fantastic, Quasar!’ shouted Emma. ‘Tell Calvin that you’re going to rock his ass!’
Quasar needed little encouragement. He stepped towards the camera, pulled his shirt completely open, pointed down the lens and said:
‘Calvin Simms, the Quasar is gonna rock your ass!’
‘That was great, Quasar,’ Emma assured him before ushering him back to his seat. ‘Good luck.’
Emma’s fingers were massaging the packet of Marlboro Lights that was wedged into the top of her cute hipster jeans. It would be a long time yet before she would get a fag break and the work was exhausting. Summoning up all her energies, she reapplied her fixed grin and referred once more to her clipboard.
‘Shaiana?’ she called out.
Nervously Shaiana identified herself.
Emma looked at her, remembering her application form. Emma didn’t always remember the applicants that she put forward for audition, but she remembered Shaiana.
I am me
, Shaiana had written.