'It’s Like Public School: If You Come Out Of This In One Piece, You’re Ready For Anything. I’ve Created The Eton Of Entertainment'
In part four of Good Guys lost, the post-millennium talent show Charisma offers a shortcut to fame and Missy's behaviour grows ever wilder
Read part three of Good Guys Lost here
FOR JULIE IT was a whirlwind summer of auditions, forms and fear. She was heading closer to appearing on the most successful television phenomena in decades. Charisma mixed and matched genres to create something entirely new. It captured the viewing audience’s imagination – and that of the tabloid press – to the extent that Duncan Stevenson, the man who created it, could claim, without contradiction, that it was “the biggest thing that happened to Britain since Princess Diana”.
The boast was given validity by being unchallenged and appearing in The Daily Telegraph’s main section. Even colonels in Kent lapped up the wisdom of Mr Charisma – as he liked to be called – with their breakfast.
“She was the People’s Princess. We’re creating the People’s Pop Stars,” he said. “This is instant stardom. Being part of this is like winning the lottery.”
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To those few who had not seen the show in its first season of spectacular growth, its format was explained simply. The entire population of the country were invited – nay, encouraged – to have their singing abilities assessed. The good and the horribly embarrassing were filmed in front of the judges for a mini-series of pre-recorded shows that set the ground and tone for the live action that dominated the autumn.
The wacky and the wild were given their moment in the limelight while half a million dreamers were whittled down to 16 acts. Those who survived the process were split into four sections: boys, girls, over-25s and groups. They were then cloistered in a purpose-built house for almost three months and cut off from the world. Filmed 24 hours a day, they would be given intensive training in showbiz technique by day and left to interact by night. Their adventures – or lack of them – would be edited to an hour-long show every evening which focused on egos, drama and conflict. Each Saturday night the contestants would sing live and be judged by the panel on their performance. Then the nation could vote by phone – £1 per call – to evict one of the bottom two.
In theory, it was all about talent. In reality, the juiciest and most entertaining titbits came during the week, inside the house, as young showoffs without the experience or intelligence to deal with the intensity of the pressure-cooker atmosphere were stripped down to base emotions.
It was vicious, brutal television but the dreamers queued up to be part of it and the public tuned in to watch. It generated millions just in phone-call fees. The advertisers lapped it up.
“Look, people say the house is cruel, but its role is crucial,” Mr Charisma said. “Once, people would decide to be a singer. They’d start off performing to family, graduate to local pubs and clubs and pick up a following. If they were good, they’d attract attention and bigger audiences and finally be discovered by someone like me.
“It’s a slow process doing it that way. But as you go along you develop knowledge and experience that prepares you for stardom if it eventually comes. There’s lots of little staging posts: your first rejection, your first gig, the first time you’re booed off, your first autograph, your first groupie, your first limo… Each event is a stepping stone to the next and it gives you the grounding to meet the next challenge. These things happen gradually over a number of years.
“The show cuts all that out. In six months it sends you from anonymity to adulation. It’s too much. The culture shock could kill these poor kids.
“So the house is like a boot camp where we give them a crash course in stardom. It’s like public school: if you come out of this in one piece, you’re ready for anything. I’ve created the Eton of entertainment.”
In thrall to his subject and the sound bites, the interviewer neglected to mention that the producers set up scenarios that encouraged the housemates to plot against each other and ostracise individuals. Instead, the journalist countered with his own, sniggering simile, calling the show’s living quarters ‘a malign Mallory Towers’.
This is what Julie hoped to experience. Life was about to be transformed for her and 24 others.
*
The final part of the Charisma selection process dangled the temptation of glamour in front of the potential contestants for the live show. Eight hopefuls in each category – including bands – were taken to ‘judges’ houses’ in exotic locations, allowing the four talent spotters to make dramatic decisions on their final four artists against a backdrop of wealth and luxury.
In reality these were rented villas but they served a purpose: the contrast between the film-star setting and the life that the discarded were likely to return to in, say, Bradford or Glasgow, was almost guaranteed to provoke the hysteria and tears that powered the show up the ratings.
With seven others, Julie was jetted off to Miami – flying economy, of course – to a meeting with Missy and destiny. It involved a hectic two days of filming.
The edited show would imply that there was time for solitude and reflection in idyllic settings but the beach and relaxation scenes were shot in two bad-tempered hours and the contestants were crammed two to a room in a cheap hotel. On their first day they were given a song to rehearse – one neatly familiar to the audience, with lyrics and tune easily digestible to a Saturday teatime viewer – and offered one chance to perform it 48 hours later.
Missy arrived in a limousine about an hour before recording was due to commence after spending the night in a swanky hotel. It was hot, she was cranky and contact with the eight performers was minimal. Within two hours she was on the road again. The decision-making scenes would be captured back at the hotel that night, before the contestants learnt their fate the following morning. The discarded foursome would be packed off to the airport immediately, the winners kept around for another day to have lunch with their mentor and be given instructions on the next phase.
Judging had developed its own formulaic system after the first series. Missy would be videoed standing in front of a wall decorated with photographs of the hopefuls, pointing at one, making a dismissive comment here and there, asking for and rejecting the opinion of her sidekick – usually a down-on-their-luck pop star in need of an injection of publicity.
It was theatre. She knew who she would be coaching before she left London. Any battles were fought and won weeks before in discussion with the man who owned the show, her former lover. It was in low-key, probing disagreements that she would use her stock phrase: “You’re wrong, Mr Charisma. I can see something. This one has something. I can see it.” And always she would get her way.
As much as he sometimes resented her and the way she used his nickname in that teasing, mocking manner, Stevenson knew he owed much of his fame to her instincts. So Julie, waiting nervously in the heat, sweating and worrying that Missy had not even acknowledged her existence while she sang for her life, had already booked her slot on the live shows and her bunk in the house. All the rest was a facade. It just felt like real life. What happened in Florida illustrated how far Julie was moving from reality.
Missy’s final four in the over-25s category were a mixed bunch. Julie was plain but presentable; no boyfriend would ever be embarrassed to introduce her to friends but she was no captivating beauty. She was unselfconsciously funny when comfortable in company and naturally empathetic.
The other three were very different. One was a 26-year-old South London diva, Nola, all false fingernails and rapping asides; a babymother whose backstory was symbolic of the meltdown of Afro-Caribbean life in Britain. She was attractive in a hard-faced way that scared middle-class people but a potential winner of the show if she could control her abrasiveness and take a little direction. The all-white crew said she was “sassy,” without ever understanding the racist bias implicit in the term.
Another was Sharon, a 45-year-old waitress from Yorkshire with a weight problem and a voice like Shirley Bassey. She would win sympathy and help with the illusion that anyone, whatever their age and looks, could come from nowhere and become a star. The last was Mitch, a demented 43-year-old mechanic, a disappointed lothario and crazed northern soul-style dancer. He was in for three reasons: lack of competition, the freak-show factor and because it allowed the show’s dictator to ad-lib the phrase: “He’s living the jerrycan dream,” at the first live show. Which, after a week in the house trying to seduce every woman and girl, everyone expected would end with a one-way ticket back to Nottingham. It was Julie that the Charisma judge seemed drawn to, though. On the final night before the return to London, Missy called Julie at her hotel. “Meet me downstairs in 20 minutes, Baby Lamb. Do not, under any circumstances, be late. We are going to have fun.”
*
Miami Beach was warm. Miami Beach was cool. Miami Beach was pink and pastel. It was made for champagne.
There were friends of Missy in town: two actresses from a soap opera at home. They had spent a week in the Dominican Republic and had hated the place, staying holed up in their five-star suite for the entire time, living off room service and the wares of a local drug dealer recommended by a colleague in London. “The place was filthy,” the one who the nation believed was a hard-hearted bitch told Missy in the clinical, air-conditioned chill of antiseptic America. Her screen daughter told, to gales of laughter, how she had shat in a pillowcase and left it outside for third-world room service to deal with.
These women, three of them so familiar in Britain, were anonymous in Florida. The foursome headed out on the town.
“Champagne,” Missy said seriously to the maitre’d in the Bordello, a pink, pink boutique hotel at the frontiers of trendiness. The others squealed. But Missy’s gravitas was misleading. Mischief beckoned.
At the bar was a muscled, shaven-headed man with fat straining to burst out of his taut skin. His eyes were shaded with makeup, his cropped hair bleached platinum. He wore a tight white tee-shirt to emphasise his tanned flesh tones and burgundy trousers fashioned from the softest kidskin. The sun, or a facelift, had stretched his features like tanned leather.
“Look at Queenie,” Missy said and waved brightly to the man. “Coo-ee, love. Come and have a drink with us. Pink champagne.”
The man considered the scene and then walked across.
“Isn’t he lovely,” Missy said. “Look at his mince! Can I take you home with me, Baby Lamb? We’re from England.”
“She,” the man said, correcting Missy with a sibilant lisp. Missy shrieked. “She! She! Come on girl, join us! You in the business? Love your pants. Don’t your balls sweat in this heat, or have you had them clipped off? I think I’m going to call you Queenie.”
The man winced but Missy rescued the situation. She touched him lightly on the shoulder and said, “Baby Lamb, we’re Brits. We love our Queen. God save her.”
He laughed at last, not recognising the Johnny Rotten allusion, and signalled for another magnum. “So you’re in the business? What business? Fashion?”
“Showbiz, darling,” Missy said. “The only business.”
“Can your friends talk?” he asked.
“No,” Missy laughed. “Lips sealed except for blowjobs.”
They were getting on famously.
The girl watched the performance with awe. Missy was in total command of the situation. Queenie, evidently a big-shot in Bordello, generously allowed her latitude on his territory and, as the club filled up, his acolytes surrounded the kiosk where they sat and pouted and posed as they circled around Missy.
Julie, out of her depth, said little. She watched the men and marvelled that the full gamut of male homosexual stereotypes were on display. What came first the cliché or the culture? The same question could be asked of the world that created Missy, although her mentor’s key attribute was her capacity to surprise. These thoughts clouded Julie’s mind and she retreated into blank muteness.
Neither were the actresses disposed to speak much without the aid of a script. They drank and whispered between themselves until the older one leant over to Queenie and said: “Coke?”
Queenie shrank away and turned to Missy. “Jesus,” he said, petulant suddenly. “Who are these people? They’re embarrassing me. Here. In my place.”
“Baby Lamb, Baby Lamb, don’t worry. They’re stars in England. They don’t know. They don’t mean anything. They just want a little toot.”
And Missy, tactile as ever, soothed him down with a stroke and then made him jump with a slight grab of the groin and a screaming cackle.
“As it happens,” Queenie said with a haughty but amused tone, “I can help. But not here. We can party in my suite. With the boys.”
“Oooh, nice,” Missy said. But, when the group trooped up in the lift, Julie felt nervous. The soap twins were in a world of their own and Missy was trading camp gibes with the host. The dozen or so boys who trailed along varied between flutteringly effeminate and sullenly butch. It was volatile enough with bubbly but now drugs were on the menu.
Missy was unconcerned. She was locked in a closed circuit with Queenie. Except he was no longer Queenie. “What’s going on down there?” she asked him, returning to the earlier subject. “You must have the sweatiest balls in Miami.”
“The air-conditioning keeps me cool.”
“Dries them crusty, more like,” she said. “Come on, Crusty Balls, show me a good time.”
The man stopped. The new nickname was even less palatable. The whole group paused outside the suite door while he wavered on the edge of a hissy fit. But again Missy outmanoeuvred him by suddenly turning and lifting up her skirt – a demure, knee-length affair – to expose an uncovered arse. “I’ve got air-conditioning, too.”
It drew a laugh and the party began anew with the pop of corks inside the room. The fridge was packed full of Bollinger and music pumped from a place that Julie could not locate. She was drunk now and slightly tearful. Since arriving at the hotel and meeting Crusty Balls hardly anyone had spoken to her. The actresses were off snorting somewhere and the boys had little use for a young woman or polite conversation. She was lonely.
Then another man came into the room. He was very youthful, walking a tenuous line between camp and butch, and dressed like a High School quarterback in a letterman jacket and jeans. To Julie he seemed the all-American dreamboat. To Missy’s experienced eye he looked like a user, swinging wherever there was a dollar to be made or an easy victim to be had.
He immediately headed for the girl, giving her the wide-beam smile that had charmed cash and favours out of people for more than a decade.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hiya,” Julie responded, her blush verbalised.
“What a great accent. I could listen to you talk forever…”
Missy stiffened. The champagne haze cleared and she began to pay attention. No pansy was going to queer her property.
Their host stiffened too. Missy, distracted by her concern for the girl, failed to notice. The older man was jealous.
As the heads of the young couple moved closer together, Missy and her companion watched like angry Sicilian chaperones.
“Who does that little bitch think she is?”
“I don’t know Crusty, but it looks like trouble.” They were at cross-purposes, each referring to a different person.
“I won’t have this.”
Julie and her new friend quickly reached the stage of body contact and whispering. The girl said something in the all-American’s ear and he laughed, looking up into his host’s eyes to pique his jealousy.
It worked.
The tensed face torqued tighter with anger and he moved rapidly to grab the girl. “You little bitch,” he shouted. “Leave him alone.” Julie backed away and the middle-aged homosexual slapped her across the face.
Missy was there a moment too late. “Leave her alone, you haggard old queer,” she shouted.
And suddenly the music went silent. The man stood there, fury on his face and, in an instant, his adolescent apostles were lined up behind him. It felt like a lynch mob.
Missy said nothing. She reached down under her skirt in a movement that confused everyone in the room. There was a flash of bare quim and the hand was out again.
A collective shriek went up and all the boys shrunk away. Crusty Balls alone stood still, in horror. Missy had pulled a bloodied tampon from under her skirt and she brandished it like a gauntlet, whacking the host across the right cheek. He stood rigid, his mouth open in an unarticulated scream. So she slapped him on the left cheek. Then she stepped away as a jolt of shock animated the room again.
She grabbed Julie. “Come on,” she said, heading for the door. The boys moved angrily after her but she stalled the posse by hurling the tampon back at the chasing group. They squealed again and backed off as Missy and the girl ran for the lift.
“Like vampires with a cross, lovely,” Missy said as the elevator doors closed.
They reached the lobby and Julie, dazed, was ushered into a cab. As they drove away, she said to Missy: “What about your friends? What will happen to them?” The two actresses were still upstairs, probably happily snorting cocaine in a toilet or bedroom.
“They’re not going to get gang raped, darling,” Missy chortled. “They can take care of themselves. You should learn something from tonight, Baby Lamb. You’ve got to know how to make a big entrance. But the big exit can be more important.”
Julie shut her eyes and the world spun. There was, indeed, a lot to learn.
There was something that worried her about Missy. The sexual exhibitionism disturbed the girl from the north. Everyone laughed at her mentor’s antics but they were sordid. Missy scared her.
*
Julie made it through to the live weekend shows and did reasonably well but in truth she won the competition not as a result of her performances on stage but because of her behaviour in the house. Amid all the hysterics and divaish antics, she was a reassuring mother hen, diffusing arguments with homely northern good sense, a calming influence on hothoused emotions. She kept the place tidy and dispensed cups of tea. There was no hint of arrogance about her and people warmed to her personality.
Four times in the 12-week series she was in the bottom two and forced into a sing-off with a rival. Each time Missy voted to keep her in. At least one of the other judges concurred when the nation’s favourite dominatrix narrowed her eyes and said: “I can see something in her, and the British public will see it, too.” And they did. Every time her continued presence was on the line, Julie won the public vote.
In the final, a week before Christmas, she polled more than a very marketable boy band to take the Charisma title. She had the festive No 1. The boys would go on to become Britain’s biggest pop stars for the next half-decade.
Mr Charisma, for all his complaining about Julie’s success, was happy in the end. For the next season of the show, however, they dumped the idea of putting all the contestants in a house and got rid of the nightly show. Missy gloated but the programme became more stage-managed than ever after Julie’s victory.
The only woman on the judging panel had called it right. The viewers loved the down-to-earth northern lass who could hold a tune. She had no charisma but she was nice.
The short cut to fame had worked. In the 2000s only shortcuts mattered.
On Wednesday: In 1970s Liverpool, Billy gets out of jail and tries to make a career as a singer songwriter