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‘Is it Clooney?’
‘Please let it be Michael Fassbender!’
‘Knowing our luck it’ll be Peter Andre.’
The shouting is getting louder, deafening almost. Camera flashes spark out from the crowds. Okay, Holls, I tell myself, here we go. It’s time to snap out of the black mood. Women with clipboards are scurrying about at the fence in front of me, talking into headsets and suddenly pointing in my direction. So much action after so much nothing. I shift the hand-warmer pad on my back slightly and take a deep breath. Then someone says …
‘Brad, this is Holly Forrest.’
In the blink of an eye, Brad Pitt is standing in front of me. Shit! Brad ruddy Pitt! He’s smirking, rubbing his hands together to keep warm and looking at me expectantly. The PR girl who’s introduced him stands silently to his side. After an hour of twiddling my thumbs, I have about half-a-second to crank into gear.
‘Hi,’ I say. Except I don’t. What I actually say is more like ‘huh’. My mouth has become so frozen from the cold that my face is more like a ventriloquist’s than a professional journalist.
‘Oh. Hi, Holly. Are you okay?’
‘Yersh, fine.’
Brad Pitt is looking at me weirdly. In an attempt to regain feeling in my lips I’m pouting like a Page 3 girl, and it’s clearly got him a little worried.
‘We’ve met before, right?’
Suddenly, my face flushes. I can feel warmth in my skin again. In fact, I’m blushing. Well, that’s certainly one way of getting my facial features back into working order, I think – get a major Hollywood heart-throb to say that he remembers you. Who cares if I’ve just been doing ridiculous mouth acrobatics in front of one of the world’s most famous men? None of that matters any more because Brad Pitt has said that he remembers me.
Of course, the second lesson of the showbiz world is that celebs often pretend to recognise you, because they know how great it makes you feel. Does Brad really remember me? I quickly calculate that I have interviewed him at least three times before so although it’s unlikely, it’s not actually out of the question. In truth, the warm buzz of excitement now washing over me doesn’t mind whether he’s lying or not. If you want to play that game, Bradley, I’ll go with it.
The hour that I’ve been waiting here, slowly freezing and losing the will to live, begins to feel like a distant memory. Cold? What cold? The passion of the crowds, the importance of the night and the fact that I’ve now got Benjamin Button at his most beautiful standing just a couple of feet away and claiming to know me are all combining to remind me of something very important, something that up until a few minutes ago I’d completely forgotten. It’s a feeling that always comes back. It’s all I can do now to stop myself from running up the length of the red carpet in front of me and blurting it out to the crowd.
‘I BLOODY LOVE THIS JOB!’
Shaking any distractions out of my head I focus and the interview begins, a well-rehearsed two-hander that Brad and I have both performed many times. Now my mouth has defrosted I’m quickly into the usual line of investigation.
‘What do you think are your chances of winning?’
‘What attracted you to the role?’
‘How’s the family?’
I know – not exactly Paxman, right? Red carpets, though, aren’t the place for intensity. It’s all just a show and everyone’s got a script to follow. Even Brad:
‘I’m just proud to be nominated … The role had a lot of scope to it … Angie and the kids are hanging at home right now …’
Despite the formality, I’m loving it. ‘How could I ever complain about this job?’ I’m thinking, as I occasionally lose myself in his sea-blue eyes. This is my home. The chaos going on around me as more stars arrive; the screams of fans, the hails of reporters and photographers; the antenna in my head constantly listening out for a headline or a scoop: these are my comfort zones. The third lesson in showbiz reporting is that this job has a habit of stirring up conflicting emotions, highs and lows – but ultimately I always come back to the same happy conclusion. Right now, there is no other place I’d rather be.
The beaming new girl calls over to me and I’m back down to earth. My 45 seconds with Brad has finished and he’s moved on up the line.
‘I saw you, Holly Forrest! You were flirting with Brad Pitt.’
‘What? And you wouldn’t?’ I call back. It’s true, though, and I’m still flushing. It’s not just that I’ve forgotten about it being cold. I’m now actually hot under the collar.
Brad Pitt, ladies and gentlemen. When it comes to heating you up, he’s significantly more effective than a hand-warmer pad down your pants.
College (#ulink_018af21c-bd1a-5de5-a9ca-a918bd5b8c47)
I had been fascinated by showbiz for a long time, probably because I came from a very average background. The god-like looks and lifestyles of the rich and famous were far removed from my own sedate upbringing; I couldn’t help but be dazzled by their tropical allure. But as a child sat gawping in front of Top of the Pops every Thursday night, it never occurred to me that I could make a living from the entertainment world. I was far too meek and mild a character to ever be a performer myself; that celebrities had the guts that I lacked to be in the spotlight was part of their mystique. It was only when I grew older, crucially in those final weeks of my English degree when I really needed to start thinking about how I would earn a salary, that it occurred to me that the life of a showbiz reporter could be the one for me. While I might never emulate my teen heroes – acting like Julia Roberts, singing like Mariah Carey or dancing like Paula Abdul – I could at least bask in their glow a little closer. And, who knows, by mingling with the glitterati, maybe some of their confidence would even rub off on me too? This career could be part enjoyment, part psychiatry.
How did I turn this into reality? First of all, like many career paths, I had to study, which certainly wasn’t as enjoyable as I’d hoped it might be. Journalism, I was convinced, could be exciting and revolutionary; the right words, the perfect questions, could inform, entertain and even shape history. Being taught how to do that, however, was a strangely monotonous nuts-and-bolts experience – and, like analysing a joke, often lost sight of what made it fun in the first place.
Let’s take a trip back to the late nineties, and I’ll tell you all about it. Britpop’s on the radio, Leo’s playing Romeo at the cinema and – like every student in the country – I’m ploughing my way through cult classic The Beach by Alex Garland.
Oh, I can taste the pints of snakebite and black just thinking about it …
I was studying at a small town college in northern England. I was actually only there for a few months but, because I was miserable, it seemed like a lifetime. After my interesting and undeniably free-thinking degree in English Literature, this much more practical postgraduate course felt very dry. Suddenly, after three years of fanciful theories and intellectual posturing, I had to be straight and serious. As an undergrad, I floated about quoting Virginia Woolf and had few worries about the future. Now I was knuckling down and preparing for an actual job.
I’d enjoyed writing for the student newspaper as an undergrad and had watched every episode of Press Gang as a young girl; I knew what I wanted to do and was aware that some kind of professional qualifications wouldn’t go amiss if I wanted to be a proper entertainment journalist. This was, after all, in the days before anyone could start up a blog and become a ‘writer’. Back then wannabe journalists felt the need to actually – shock horror – train. I’d plumped for this particular course simply because it had been the only one with a flyer in my university’s careers library.
This postgrad diploma, while adding another few thousand pounds to my student loan, should at least help me to fulfil my dream. By learning the ropes of writing a story and doing an interview I’d be able to then use that knowledge to focus on my chosen field of entertainment. It was a big commitment but – in my head at least – simple. I was confident I’d be joined by fellow open-minded arts students, so what could go wrong?
My peers and lecturers, of course, had other ideas. While the course I chose was no doubt a fabulous one for people wanting to be political heavyweights writing for the Financial Times, my showbiz goals were slightly less catered for. All traces of entertainment had seemingly been deleted from our lessons. I spent my days in shorthand classes – an utterly boring skill which teaches you, over many hours, to simply write a little bit quicker – and getting ‘vox pops’ on the streets. God I hate ‘vox pops’, the technical term for the soundbites journalists collect from people out doing their shopping which you see on news programmes and read in the papers (‘vox pop’, a rather slang Latin term, translates as ‘voice of the people’). Just one glimpse of my sullen face, giant microphone in hand, and the locals would scurry away from me. Chris Brown would get a better welcome at a women’s refuge. This, I would think to myself as I made my way back to college with only the wise words of the local street cleaner on my minidisc recorder, wasn’t as much fun as talking about gigs, gossip and the latest happenings on Hollyoaks. It was going to be a long few months …
Getting started (#ulink_765a1fdb-2b17-5065-800d-0ba10706402a)
Part I: My First Story
‘Boyzone are outselling The Spice Girls by two to one.’
Not, I realise, a groundbreaking scoop up there with Kate Middleton topless or George Michael caught getting naughty in an LA loo (thank you to The Sun for their headline: ‘Zip me up before you go go’). Still, the battle between the Irish crooners and girl power will always be special to me. It was my first attempt to liven up my journalism course, and my first ever showbiz story. It was the scoop that showed me the way.
On that fateful day, half-asleep after another lesson in local government, I was instructed by my tutor to head into town and simply ‘find a story’. This is what, we were told, real journalists do when their publication or broadcaster is short of material. They just find out stuff and record it, like a nosey neighbour with a notebook. So, jotter in hand, I shuffled off into the streets to find a scoop. But I had a problem – if I tried to bluff my way through a chat about politics, the person I was talking to would easily catch me out. That I didn’t know the first thing about NHS funding or interest rates was written on my face. But if could find an entertainment story, I would be on safe ground. My fellow students could do with a bit of frivolity too.
An hour later, the whole class was back in our makeshift newsroom, preparing to share our freshly unearthed breaking news stories with our sniffy lecturer.
‘The housing market in the area has seen a significant rise in the last few weeks according to a local estate agent,’ said one girl, a 21-year-old like me, but with the smug air of a City banker on 200 grand a week, before snapping her notebook shut with a what-do-you-think-of-that? flourish.
‘Very good,’ replied my tutor. ‘That’s just the kind of thing we’re hunting for. Strong, clear stuff. Who’s next?’
A boy who had annoyed me from the beginning of term now piped up. Vocally religious to the point of tedium, he never wasted any opportunity to harp on about his piety.
‘The priest at St Michael’s is strenuously opposed to the prospect of a casino opening on the outskirts of town. I called by the church and he was more than happy to talk to me.’
‘Excellent,’ responded our tutor with ever-growing jollity. Our tutor was a dapper little man with an upper-class way of expression: ‘A top notch story. Follow that one up please.’ The Archbishop of Canterbury in front of me seemed to momentarily forget his modesty and looked extremely pleased with himself.
And then, it came. ‘So … Holly. Over to you. What eye-opener have you got for us?’
Okay. Here we go. I looked down at my notes then back up at the faces staring at me. I knew they wouldn’t like it. My peers were a surprising bunch, all of us were barely out of adolescence, but their earnestly worthy approaches to life were a real downer for me. Their heroes were Kate Adie and Trevor McDonald. Mine were French and Saunders.
‘Boyzone are outselling The Spice Girls by two to one,’ I blurted out, fully aware that this would probably go down about as well as a supermodel at a slimming club.
A couple of snorts came from the audience then a painful silence. The tutor in charge raised a quizzical eyebrow.
‘And this is news because …?’
‘W-well,’ I stammered. ‘This is the big pop battle of the moment. Boys versus girls. And these sales figures, well they’re a sneak preview into who’s going to win the fight. The guy in HMV said he wasn’t even supposed to tell me but I bought the new Jamiroquai CD from him to help sweeten the pill. Midweek sales figures are a bit of a secret, you know.’ (A few years later websites would proudly print the official midweek sales figures without hesitation. Back then, things were a little more surreptitious.)
Silence. I suspected that the kind of numbers I was interested in – the Top 40 broadcast on the radio every Sunday – weren’t the kind he thought I should be spending my time on. That day’s FTSE figures, fair enough. But new entries and highest climbers? Big mistake.
‘Hmmm, I don’t think so,’ he replied with his military air. ‘It’s not really front-page stuff is it? A bit frivolous. Anyone got anything that’s proper news?’
The Spice Girls, I don’t need to remind you, went on to dominate both the music industry and the media all over the world. Everyone wanted to know about them. Posh Spice changing her hair from a bob to a pixie cut might not be as politically significant as the property market or Sunday trading, I knew that, but to suggest it’s not headline-worthy nor interesting to millions of people is to underestimate the power of the entertainment world – the industry, incidentally, that is Britain’s biggest export. Among my peers my interests appeared frothy, but I knew that when a star arrives that offers something fresh, something different, something exciting, millions of people want to know more. Passions are ignited and we can’t get enough. Sat there, head hung low, feeling as out of place as a porn star at Disneyland, I was more determined than ever to immerse myself in this business of escapism. I would prove to these squares that it did have a point. Showbiz was an inspiration to the world and I wanted to be inspired for a living. And to inspire.
Part II: The Lucky Break
At every opportunity over the next few months I dropped a showbiz story into our daily meetings. Eyes never failed to roll, but I didn’t care. I’d discovered how to enjoy myself. I kept my head down and, amid the atmosphere of collective paranoia in which my peers fought over the same job adverts in the Media section of The Guardian every Monday, I focused on one kind of career in one kind of place: I wanted to be a showbiz reporter in London.
It wasn’t long before I came across a ‘situations vacant’ that suited my ambitions. The advert had explained that the editor of an entertainment magazine in the capital was looking for a junior to help cover the slew of music festivals the summer had to offer and generally assist around the office. Perfect, I thought, as I sealed the envelope containing my CV. Unsurprisingly it was an ad all my fellow students had studiously ignored. After what seemed a lifetime’s wait, I got a call asking me to go for an interview with the editor. I couldn’t believe it. Apparently she’d liked the chatty, friendly style of my application. It was just after Easter when I finally headed down on the train to London, ready for my moment. The questions asked about the showbiz world didn’t catch me out, but I feared the awfully middle-aged green business suit I stupidly decided to wear could be my undoing. The editor sat opposite me in the boardroom, her face non-committal, her outfit effortlessly chic. I journeyed back to college that night hopeful but realistic.
The next evening I found out I’d got the job. I’D GOT THE JOB! I would start as soon as my course finished in June.
So it was, a couple of months later, that term ended and, as my fellow students headed off to write about budgets and elections in a variety of newspapers, I left small town life and headed south to the big city with only a portable TV and bag full of clothes to my name. I would be renting a studio flat on an inner city main road, sharing with my old Uni friend Erica, and earning barely £200 a week. My parents, I could tell, were petrified. But it didn’t matter to me. The dream was coming true.
The rest, as they say, is history …
Publicists (#ulink_660567ab-631d-5454-b044-3767cea21c13)
The first people I met once I’d stepped through the doorway into the world of celebrity journalism, however, were not celebrities. They were publicists. And it wasn’t long before I realised that while the showbiz world had for many years appeared to me to run effortlessly like a well-oiled machine, it’s because of these publicists who are hidden away behind the cogs spraying on the WD40. In the entertainment world, talent and originality count for surprisingly little. Publicity, on the other hand, is everything. For every unrecognised genius without a publicist raising their profile, there’s a bimbo hogging the limelight with a team pushing them into the papers.
Heading to London that June, wellies on foot, ready for three months of festival-going, I hadn’t even considered there were backroom teams running the show. If you’d asked me then what a plugger was, I’d have said some kind of electrician. Now, of course, after many years in the industry, these people are a part of my life, many high on my list of best friends, others mortal enemies. It was only after making this discovery, that when watching episodes of Absolutely Fabulous that I totally got what the joke is. Before I laughed at the panto-like silliness of it all but now … Now, I know those characters.
Publicists are the behind-the-scenes string pullers, the reasons why you open up newspapers or log on to a website and see the same faces again and again. Just out of shot, invisible to the general public, publicists are pulling favours with the press to get their client snapped, written about or interviewed. ‘Do a feature on this new up-and-comer that I’ve just signed up,’ they might suggest, ‘and I’ll let you have an exclusive with my big name in a couple of months.’ Their lives are a maelstrom of schedules and sweet-talking, BlackBerrys permanently attached to their hands like children clinging to their comfort blankets; their days packed with meetings over skinny lattes, their nights with more meetings over popping champagne corks. If ultimately their job is little more than a very posh take on the nightclub bouncer – ‘I can’t squeeze you into the interview schedule’ their version of ‘You’re name’s not down, you’re not coming in’ – reporters quickly come to realise that it is these super-efficient sideliners that run the show. If they say ‘jump’, we say ‘how high?’ Cross them and we won’t be getting close to the big names.
This was just one aspect of show business that I had to learn fast. Plonked into the office on my first day, I was painfully aware that my new colleagues really didn’t have the time to hold my hand and teach me the ropes. I’d have to learn the hard way by simply getting stuck in. So it was, after chasing a few leads handed to me by my new boss, I worked out that there are several types of publicist in the showbiz world, each slightly different to the other although all, ultimately, doing the same thing – getting their client ‘out there’, into the public eye.
It was with a music industry publicist – a plugger – that I had my very first dealings.
We’d just spoken on the phone and arranged, at the request of my boss, an interview with a band’s guitarist who had apparently had some of his kit stolen the night before. I was to head to a studio on Holloway Road in London and speak to the unlucky performer about his recent loss. The band were nineties poster boys – complete with floppy hair and smooth-skinned good looks. ‘What a great scoop!’ I naïvely thought as I made my way to the venue, especially excited at doing a story on a band that I’d loved for several years.
‘Just a few days into my first job and I’m already sniffing out stories!’ I congratulated myself.
A lovely bloke he was too, sitting on a giant speaker in the middle of the floor of the studio, attempting to sound forlorn at the loss of his favourite Fender. We had a good chat; with me surprised to find it much easier to talk to pop stars than to real people in the street. However, while I don’t doubt the robbery, the plugger had obviously seen this whole situation less as time for the band to sit around mourning and more as a great opportunity for a bit of publicity. They did, coincidentally, have a new single coming out and upcoming gigs to promote after all. Suddenly, thanks to some greedy thieves in North London, there was a ‘hook’ on which to get the band in the limelight again and unbeknownst to me, I’d been dragged right in. The story was mentioned on the television news that night, the band’s new video getting played in the process, and boom maybe a few more thousand record sales as a result. So, there was my professional showbiz news debut: as a stooge in a small yet cunning piece of PR spin. And this was with a credible band in the days before reality TV and endless gossip magazines – corners of the industry that now exist on a diet of such carefully fed stories – had really kicked off.
Pluggers would prove to be a big part of my life during the coming months, as I wrote my way through a roll call of late nineties musicians to fill the magazine’s pages. Some were already legends – Tom Jones, Phil Collins; others went on to have long careers – the Stereophonics and Ronan Keating, whose sales figures I had so eagerly announced back in that classroom at college. Many are now, alas, just footnotes in the history pages of pop; hello to Chumbawamba and Kavana. All of them had their pluggers, more often than not cheeky-chappy public school boys in their thirties, who dressed and behaved as if they were 17 and from Hackney. They boasted a passive-aggressive swagger that was part seasoned music industry insider, part market trader. If their drawn faces gave away just how hard they partied you couldn’t dismiss their influence. It quickly became clear that the music business was being run by frustrated rock stars.
Film publicists, though ostensibly doing the same job, are a very different breed. Like music publicists, they may have their own independent companies or they may work directly for a big label or studio. But unlike pluggers, film publicists are a mainly female race of clipboard huggers, who reek of refinement rather than roll-ups. I’ve often wondered if, at exclusive girls’ boarding schools, there’s some kind of work placement scheme within the film industry, since so many of the publicists seem to be only a few pairs of jodhpurs away from being part of the monarchy (both Sophie Rhys-Jones, aka the Countess of Wessex, and Tom Parker Bowles, stepson of Prince Charles, have worked in film and events publicity). To public school girls from the home counties, segueing into PR seems to be as natural as driving a Range Rover and holidaying at your parents’ farmhouse in Provence. Their love lives might sometimes suffer (long hours are part of the job description, since so much is done ‘on LA time’ – i.e. the middle of the night), but what these girls lack in romance, they gain in desperate journalists wanting to be their friends.
Ultimately, I prefer to work with film publicists. With their tall, slender builds and glossy hair, they might have a habit of making my genes feel extremely average, but there’s a classiness there that the pluggers seem to want to avoid. It’s like comparing Jamie Oliver to Nigella Lawson. I guess sophistication just isn’t very rock ’n’ roll. However, unlike pluggers, who all seem to have a real passion for music (as I said, they’re frustrated pop stars), it’s rare that I meet a film publicist who’s a dedicated cinéaste. But they are very good at wearing black and organising press schedules.
Every corner of showbiz has its own publicists, not just music and movies. There are book PRs, television PRs, theatre PRs, fashion PRs and events PRs, arts PRs, the list goes on. Each breed of these fixers, pushers and spin doctors might have slightly different traits but ultimately they all share one very important thing in common: without them, I’d be screwed.
London (#ulink_265a1981-6616-507b-a932-1918d57064bc)
The late 1990s. Rush hour. And I was cycling down Oxford Street in London. Ask me to do this now and I’d laugh in your face, warned off by ten years of accident horror stories and, more importantly, the idea of cycling anywhere in the kind of outfits I usually wear. As a green and naïve newbie on the other hand? I was off and pedalling quicker than you can say ‘Pendleton thighs’.
This was during my first few months as a salaried journalist at the magazine. A celebrity court case was taking place at the now-closed Bow Street Magistrates Court and I had been informed by my panicking boss late one afternoon that I needed to get down there, and fast.
‘Y-y-y-you want me to report on the story?’ I stuttered, wide-eyed and in shock.
‘Don’t be silly, Holly –’ She smiled at me in that kind but patronising way bosses are so good at ‘– Sophie’s down there and the batteries have run out on her recorder. I need you to get down there bloody quickly with these.’ She opened up her palm in front of me to reveal a four pack of Duracell.
Yes, my life was sooo glamorous.
‘Dappy cow should’ve taken spares obviously but there you go. If she’s not up and running in the next half an hour, she’ll miss the post-verdict statement on the steps. With shorthand as bad as hers, I can’t rely on her getting anything down. Take my bike. It’s locked up just next to the post-room. That’ll be the quickest way.’
Her other palm then appeared, revealing a set of keys to a bicycle lock. Hungry to prove myself a willing new employee, I grabbed them along with the batteries and hurried off.
Watching that cute show Call the Midwife on TV the other night, I was treated to umpteen scenes of the female stars cycling gracefully around the back streets of fifties London. Poised and pretty, they don’t seem to have a care in the world (despite supposedly being in a rush to deliver the babies of hard-up, slum-dwelling Cockneys). This younger version of me, on the other hand, quickly found herself caught in the middle of a stream of cars, all apparently being driven by countless Jeremy Clarksons in a hurry to get home, with only the vaguest idea of how to get to the court house from our offices. Horns papped as I wobbled nervously into the middle of the road; cab drivers hollered as I dithered aimlessly at junctions and tried to remember the right way to go.
I can only imagine what my parents, already worried about my emigration to ‘The Big Smoke’, would have said if they’d known I was fumbling around W1 on the back of a two-wheeler (sorry Mum!). That said, my boss’s bike was a ridiculously chic and hi-tech affair – one of those lightweight mountain bikes that probably cost as much as I was earning in a month. Should I fall off, I was less worried about my own injuries, more about chipping the paintwork on this work of art.
I had only two resources to guide me: an A to Z that I’d scanned briefly back in the office but which I had unhelpfully placed in my bag, and memories of childhood games of Monopoly. The Strand – that was one of the ‘red’ areas, near to Trafalgar Square, right? I felt for the batteries in my pocket before hooking an uncertain left and praying for guidance. I just needed to get the double AAs to Sophie and everything would be okay. I might even be deemed efficient enough to be given a real story to work on. And I would still be able to write, even with a leg squashed by an impatient London bus driver.
Over the years, I’ve got to know the bustling streets of sprawling Central London extremely well. I’ve had to. Showbiz events aren’t confined to one place, despite Leicester Square being the most famous location for premieres. Swanky hotels from Mayfair to Embankment, Piccadilly to Covent Garden, fight with each other to host showbiz bashes, knowing that having a major record company or film studio as a regular customer would earn them thousands. I’ve been to some venues so many times, the concierge welcomes me like an old friend (although, I sometimes wonder if he realises I’m actually a journalist, not some hooker on a call-out). Now, I favour two feet over any other method of transport, what with buses being at the whim of traffic just like everyone else and the hassle of the London Underground hardly being worth it if the venues are central, and I can just as easily walk. I’ve also found that pacing the streets every week keeps you in shape almost as much as an intense session of Zumba down at the local sports centre would – and without the annoying instructor. On the days that I do have to take a cab I’m as familiar with the shortcuts and alternative routes as the drivers that take me. (My accountant may baulk at these taxi expenses every year, but has he ever tried to maintain a poker-straight blow-dry while walking in the pouring rain from Park Lane to Soho? I don’t think so.)
One thing is for sure – I certainly wouldn’t cycle any more. But, back then, on my mission, I was only just learning about the city’s traffic chaos. Thankfully, after about 20 or so hellish minutes, I finally reached the court and handed over the batteries to a ridiculously thankful Sophie. I hung around for a few minutes, and watched as the musician who’d been in the dock that day came out on to the steps of the building to read out a statement. He’d been involved in a messy court case with former band mates, all of them arguing over royalties. Now he’d won, he looked relieved that it was all over. I knew how he felt.
Sophie was standing in among the throng of microphones and television cameras, holding out her dictaphone to record every word and even throwing in a few questions to the beaming pop star. Forgetful she may have been, but she was doing what I dreamt of doing.
Still, I had hope that one day soon I’d be given a chance. I’d already learnt several important lessons, after all:
1 Always be prepared and carry a spare packet of batteries.
2 Memorise the London street map like your life depends on it.Oh, and
3 Never cycle down Oxford Street at five o’clock in the evening.I wheeled the bike all the way back to the office.
Festivals (#ulink_d6ae78da-91cf-57d0-a10d-2ae64d391eab)
A few weeks after joining the magazine, having made a considerable amount of coffee and run endless errands, I finally got to do what I had been hired to do in the first place: report from some of that summer’s music festivals. With a camera and notebook in hand, I set out to get a snapshot of the fashions and fads going on in remote fields that season, unaware that I was about to make a huge discovery about my career choice.
There are more festivals now than ever. Some are legendary, like Glastonbury and Reading; others are out of the way in small towns and normally feature a seventies dad rocker as a headline act. Every summer we have ample opportunities to pop on our jean shorts and cowboy hats, neck pints of warm cider and chill out in sunny fields for a weekend listening to bands we’ve never heard of. Sounds blissful, right?
Everyone knows that Glastonbury is amazing. Thousands of revellers gathered in a historic setting, all united by a shared love of music and partying. A loved-up crowd singing along to soaring anthems on a balmy midsummer night is a magical experience – at least, this is certainly what I had been told at school by my more adventurous mates, those girls whose parents weren’t quite as panicky as my own and who seemingly lived a much more exciting life than mine by being allowed to travel miles to gigs. When I first got the job at the magazine, knowing that I was heading for the festivals, I couldn’t wait to make up for lost time.
But this, it turned out, is not how it works for a showbiz reporter. It’s hard enough as a regular ticket holder to plough through the mud and crowds to get from the dance tent on one edge of the camp to the main stage at the other in time for the headline act. As a showbiz journalist, with recording equipment and a deadline, you can multiply that difficulty by ten.
When you work in an industry that is – for most people – a leisure pursuit, you learn something very quickly: what was once your hobby is now your bread and butter. What you once did to chill out is now your job. That’s not to say I don’t still enjoy listening to music, watching the TV or going to the cinema as a pastime; it is, however, difficult to switch off completely. Maybe I’ve met the actor up there on the cinema screen and, since they gave me really boring answers to my questions, I’m finding it difficult to imagine them as a charismatic action hero (I’m talking about you, Nic Cage). Or perhaps the love song that I’m listening to, all heartfelt and emotional, is hard to swallow since its singer sadly seemed little more than a hard-nosed businesswoman when I met her (and that’s you, Christina Aguilera).
It was during my outings to festivals that summer that I had my first taste of this. I was in work-mode, while seemingly everyone around me was soaking up the sun and smoking weed. I spent more time worrying about whether I’d get the interviews I needed than I did actually kicking back and enjoying the gigs.
The schedule of the festival season soon became engrained in my brain – and it still is. In recent years, the Isle of Wight festival, reborn after its legendary status in the 1970s, has been kicking things off in mid-June, but it’s still Glastonbury a week or so later that really marks the start of a long summer in wellington boots. Then there’s the riotous T in the Park in Kinross-shire, the arty Latitude in a Suffolk forest, the highly commercial V in both Chelmsford and south Staffordshire, the ear-splitting Reading and Leeds festivals, that take place over the same August Bank Holiday weekend as the rave-tastic Creamfields, and then it’s all wrapped up at the quirky, boutique Bestival, which takes place back on the Isle of Wight where things all began ten weeks earlier. Not to mention a huge number of smaller festivals around the country and a plethora of branded events in virtually every park in London.
