How to Get Ahead in Television (15 page)

STEP 27 – ALWAYS HAVE YOUR WITS ABOUT YOU

O
VERNIGHT, EVERYONE AT
RealiTV suddenly knew who I was, though not necessarily in a good way. My newfound recognition mainly took the form of people pointing and laughing at me in the style of Nelson from
The Simpsons
.

I took refuge in the post room, where David was doing a ‘Which Cartoon Character Are You?' quiz.

‘Oh, Poppy, you know which cartoon character you'd be?
Butt
ley from
Wacky Races
.'

‘That show was before my time. The joke is lost on me.' I sighed.

‘There's a dog in it called Muttley,' David explained, looking disappointed I hadn't got the joke.

‘Hilarious, David.'

I soon learnt the reason Rhidian and I had been requisitioned to help on this survival show: the existing production runners had come to grief, one from mistakenly eating poisonous mushrooms and the other from falling down a slippery crevasse. The show needed temporary assistance while they recovered. I wasn't too thrilled about working on a show with such a bad track record of looking after its runners, or the prospect of a four-hour car journey with Rhidian. However, after a morning at the office with everyone laughing at me, I was quite relieved to be heading out on location.

‘I'll drive, shall I, Miss Crashyboots?' asked Rhidian as we picked up the production car.

‘Ha ha,' I said, pulling a face. ‘Oh, by the way, do we need to pick up an entourage of admirers on the way? I know it's hard for you to work on a production without one these days.'

‘Oh, I'm happy to make do with you, Poppy, as long as you promise to compliment me every fifty miles.'

‘I wouldn't know where to start.'

As we headed out of London, I read the production notes we'd been given while Rhidian navigated traffic and sang along to the radio.

‘So did you see the last series of this show?' I asked him.

‘
Survival of the Wittiest
? Yeah, I liked it,' he said.

The concept of the show was to throw six comedians into a remote location and see who could survive the longest. The comics had to forage for food, make their own shelter and endure all sorts of hardships, all while continuing to tell jokes. Anyone deemed to have lost his or her sense of humour was kicked out of the competition. Famously, last year's winner Barry O'Hara had gone a bit mad in the final week. He fashioned himself a loincloth out of dead squirrels, buried himself in a pile of bracken and conducted his own funeral service in rhyming couplets. It all caused a bit of a hoo-ha in the press (well, the squirrel loincloth bit) and animal rights people protested outside RealiTV for days. I think the PM even made a comment about it in Prime Minister's Question Time.

‘So are you an outward-bound sort, Poppy?' Rhidian asked with a smile. ‘Or am I going to have to pitch your tent for you and sweep the place for spiders?'

‘Don't be so sexist, Rhidian. That is so typically misogynistic of you to assume that, just because I'm a girl, I can't pitch a tent and I'm scared of spiders. I mean, next you'll be asking if I'm going to be able to cope without a hairdryer and a bubble bath in the evenings.'

‘I stand corrected,' said Rhidian, holding up a hand in supplication. ‘Far be it for me to assume Poppy Penfold is scared of anything… Well, except motorways… and newsrooms.'

‘Ha de ha.'

I actually had no idea how to put up a tent, and hoped Rhidian was joking about the camping part. I'd been imagining a cosy little B&B on the moor with pay-per-view and yummy little chocolates on the pillow.

We were making good progress down the motorway but still had a long way to go, so I decided to try and have a nap. I clicked my seat back a few notches and bunched my jumper up as a pillow.

‘Hey, what are you doing?' Rhidian asked as he saw me trying to get comfortable.

‘I thought I'd try and have a snooze,' I said.

‘Oh no, no, I'm not your chauffeur, Poppy. If I'm driving, you've got to keep me entertained, you can't just go to sleep.'

‘Rhidian,' I said with a sigh, ‘I'm sure the girls you usually share a long car journey with use the trip as a opportunity for a four-hour flirt-fest, giggling at your every observation, but not me, I'm afraid. I'm not very entertaining.'

‘I'm sure you are when you want to be. Come on, tell me something about Poppy that I don't already know,' said Rhidian. ‘Like how your bottom is coping with its newfound fame.'

‘Not well.'

Rhidian laughed. ‘Okay, I've got another one: if you had to choose between having go-go gadget arms or go-go gadget legs, which would you go for?'

I smiled. ‘Well, obviously go-go gadget legs,' I said. ‘You?'

‘A hundred per cent arms. They'd be so much more useful for multi-tasking than legs. Legs, I'd be all over the place.'

‘Interesting,' I said. ‘Okay, I've got one for you: would
you rather have a teddy bear constantly on your shoulder who plays the maracas whenever you speak, or have the
Eastenders
theme tune play every time you walk anywhere?'

‘That's a good one.' Rhidian thought for a moment. ‘I'd probably go with the teddy bear. It would be hard to get TV work if every time you moved you ruined the shot with a musical interlude.'

‘Always thinking about work,' I said, ‘Mr Ambitious.'

‘Hardly,' Rhidian said, making a face.

Rhidian's phone began to ring. He looked at the caller ID and plugged his headphones in so that he could take the call privately.

‘I just have to get this,' he said to me. ‘Hey, Sonia, how are you?'

Sonia, the annoying make-up girl.

‘Yeah, I'm just in the car with Poppy,' he said. ‘No, we're driving down to another shoot… Poppy? Yes, the other runner, you remember? Blonde girl… ha ha… No. Yes… sure… yeah, I'd be up for that. Maybe once I'm back in town?… Ha ha, I know…' He laughed. ‘Yeah, of course. No, I'll let you know… Okay. Bye, Sonia.'

He hung up and I studied my nails for a minute.

‘That's nice you've stayed in touch with Sonia. She's that make-up girl from Scotland, right?' I asked.

‘Yeah. She was just calling to see if I knew what productions were coming up at RealiTV next month,' said Rhidian.

‘Sure she was,' I said.

‘Why do you say it like that?'

‘Because I don't think that's
really
why she was calling,' I laughed.

‘Why else would she be calling?'

‘Um, because she fancies you. Wow, you have a really bad radar for people fancying you if you didn't get that that was why she was calling.'

Rhidian shook his head, dismissing my theory.

‘So are you going to go for a drink with her?' I asked.

Rhidian glanced over at me and gave me a sly grin. ‘What's it to you, Poppy? Jealous?'

‘Hardly. I'm just amazed people can be so… so… well, obvious.' I felt my cheeks flush.

Rhidian chuckled to himself.

‘Trust me, you're not my type,' I said, turning to look out of the window. ‘Look, do you mind if I listen to a podcast? There's one on Russian politics JR recommended that I really want to catch up on.'

‘Well if JR recommended it… of course, go ahead.'

I plugged in my headphones and checked my phone for the eight hundredth time that day: still nothing from JR.

As we left the motorway a few hours later, I volunteered to take over the driving and give Rhidian a break. To my relief, he didn't make any observations about my driving ability as I pulled out of the service station. As I relaxed behind the wheel, my phone beeped. I'd left it in the passenger door.

‘Want me to get that for you?' Rhidian asked.

‘NO!' I said, a little too urgently. It could be from JR. I did not want Rhidian reading a text message from JR. I glanced over to see Rhidian picking up my phone.

‘Rhidian, do not look at my phone, please,' I said firmly.

‘Secret lover?' Rhidian teased. ‘It's a picture message.' He clicked on it before I could stop him. ‘Perhaps Ian sending you illicit photos?'

‘I doubt it. Rhidian, I'm serious, put my phone down.'

‘It's from someone called Nat. It's a picture of you in a wedding dress…'

BLOODY NATALIE! I could kill that girl.

‘Why is there a picture of you in a wedding dress?' Rhidian asked, a strange tone to his voice. He sounded almost concerned, as though he thought I might have been sold into slavery as a child bride or something. ‘Sorry, it's none of my business. That was rude of me to look at your phone.'

‘Er… It's for a play.' I said the first thing that came into my
head. ‘And yes, don't look at other people's phones!' I grabbed it from him and thrust it into my door pocket.

‘What play?' Rhidian asked.

‘Er… the Bride of… of Frankenstein.'

‘
The Bride of Frankenstein
?'

‘Yes. It's for a local theatre group I'm in.'

‘Isn't the Bride of Frankenstein a scary zombie?' Rhidian asked.

‘Yes, but, it's a… it's a revisionist version. This is definitely the right road, right? I feel like we're driving east for some reason? Don't you feel like we're driving east?' I tried to change the subject.

‘Yes, it's the right road. So when's this play on?'

‘On?' I asked.

‘Yes, can we come and see you in it? Perhaps a group of us could come and support you? I'm sure Helen would be up for that.'

‘Er, NO! No, it's a society thing. Only the society can see it. It's not open to the public.'

‘What society?'

‘The, er… theatrical society of Greenwich,' I said.

‘So they put on plays, but they
aren't
open to the public?'

‘Yup,' I said, shaking my head. ‘They're not very financially-minded. It's more about people who appreciate the art of stagecraft…' I petered out mid-sentence, praying for this inquisition to end.

‘Well, that's a shame.'

Rhidian was quiet for a minute. I didn't dare look over to see what expression he had on his face. I couldn't tell from his tone whether he believed any of this, or was just asking these questions to torment me further.

‘Well, I tell you one thing, Poppy, you look amazing in that costume. You'll make a beautiful Bride of Frankenstein.'

‘Thanks,' I said, caught off-guard by the compliment.

When we eventually arrived in Dartmoor, it was dark. I hadn't dared ask the ‘are we seriously camping?' question, but
as Rhidian pulled into a remote campsite, I had my answer. As we got out of the car and stretched our legs, the show's producer, Mark, came over to greet us. Mark was in his mid-forties. He was one of those outdoorsy types who bounded everywhere like an over-energetic Labrador. Whenever I saw him in the office he was wearing hiking gear and carrying crampons.

‘Hey, it's the replacement runners,' he called back to his team, congregated around a campfire. ‘You made good time getting down here.'

‘Yeah, roads were pretty clear. Hi, I'm Rhidian,' Rhidian said.

‘Great news you guys were able to fill in for a couple of days. You might have heard, we've had a few runner casualties.'

‘Happy to help,' said Rhidian, unloading our bags from the car.

‘Hi, I'm Poppy,' I said, introducing myself to Mark.

‘Hi.' Mark smiled. ‘So I'd set up camp, grab some food from the campfire, then hit your bed – we'll have an early start tomorrow. Trace has just cooked up a squirrel and nut tagine. Neither of you are veggie, are you?'

‘No,' we said in unison.

‘That's good. Trace likes the production to be ecologically sound, so he insists the crew live off locally sourced produce while we're here. We try and incorporate as much foraged food into our meals as possible, so it can be tough if you're veggie.'

Trace Armstrong was the host of the show and the UK's top survival expert. He'd famously claimed he could survive in any environment for at least a week with nothing but his wits. I'd watched a Christmas special of his show,
Living Without a Trace
, where he'd lived in the London Underground for seven days surviving on mice and discarded food scraps. The show had ended up being controversial, as he'd contracted a rare tongue-swelling disease from the experience and been quarantined in a special unit for tropical diseases for a month afterwards. Transport for London hadn't thought it very good PR for the Underground.

‘Oh, and while you're here, please don't fall down any crevasses – we can't afford to lose any more people,' said Mark.

Rhidian and I started to unpack the car. I was relieved to see there were already two tents set up for us, so I wasn't going to have to prove my tent-putting-up prowess.

‘Isn't this great – we're getting to meet Trace Armstrong!' said Rhidian. ‘He's a pretty extraordinary guy. Hey, Poppy, shall we see who can stomach the most squirrel tagine? Winner gets to keep the torch tonight – Production only packed us one.'