Given six million people up and down the country still spent their Monday nights sitting in front ofCompass Point, tut-tutting about the state of Britain into their cups of tea, I had to acknowledge Mummy probably knew what she was talking about when it came to appearing on the telly. I would do well to listen to her advice. I turned to the make-up artist, who was buried in her phone—probably googling whatever technique it is morticians use on particularly peaky cadaver.
“Linda, can I get a coffee from somewhere?”
“Of course, pet.”
She grabbed her walkie-talkie off the dresser and said something cryptic, or possibly northern, into it. A minute later, one of those cheap airline-style coffee pots arrived. As Linda slapped TV make-up on my face like a builder rendering a garden wall, I wolfed down cup after cup of thin, watery caffeine. It tasted like the kind of thing Thames Water might release undiluted into the sea.
The morning was dragging on. I went to check my watch, but my wrist was bare. My little brother’s favourite drunken game is to change the alarm tone in my phone, without me noticing, to some beastly racket. Accordingly, I’d awakened to Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” at blistering volume. In a flailing bid to turn it off, I’d knocked over the glass of water on the bedstand, completely buggering my Apple Watch. I also drenched the signed copy ofWolf HallI was definitely (probably) going to read some day. OK, confession: If I’m being absolutely honest, I really only kept it there to make me look cultured in front of any potential boyfriends. If I’m being honestly honest, there had never been a boy with enough boyfriend potential to see it in the first place. But, in principle, if there ever was such a boy, I wanted him to know I was the kind of serious person who read tomes of the literary weight ofWolf Hall. As opposed to the kind of person who would spend twenty minutes pumping a make-up artist for gossip about Harry Styles. Which is exactly what I was doing when the door to the make-up room swung open and a fierce-looking fellow with an authoritative clipboard and matching audio headset poked his head through.
“Ludo Boche?” he asked.
I turned from the mirror to face him directly. He was about eight feet tall and lanky, with a sweep of hair that, if you stuck it under a paint shop colour tester, would see you walking away with a tin of white emulsion. He was wearing a figure-hugging blue romper suit and a red bandana, which made him look a bit like an extra fromMade in Dagenham. I was immediately obsessed with this aesthetic.
“I’m she!” I said, trying to channel a little golden-age-of-Hollywood glamour but falling short and looking like the kind of high camp muppet who might turn up to a house party in velvet trousers and start singing showtunes. (Which, frankly, isexactlythe kind of muppet I am.)
“Gassed,”Made in Dagenhamsaid, one eyebrow raised. It was an unreadable expression. “I’m Petey. I’m the AP. If you’re ready, I’ll take you through to the green room. We’ve had to move you up. You’re on the couch in five.”
Linda studied my face one last time and declared that I was, indeed, ready. I thanked her profusely, assuring her that, were it within my gift—and I thought it was possible it might be—she could look forward to a damehood for services to hung-over homosexuals in the New Year Honours List.
“Let’s go,” Petey said. As I got up from the chair, I felt terribly queasy. All that coffee, on top of no food, on top of a cracking hangover, just wasn’t sitting quite right. Petey held his clipboard aloft in what felt like a vaguely threatening manner and ushered me out the door. As I followed him down the hall to the studio, the coffee started repeating on me, all acid, bile, and regret. In the green room, Petey passed me a lapel mic cable, which I threaded under my jersey, and plugged it into a battery pack. He then tried several times to slide the battery pack into my back pocket without success.
“Sorry, these chinos are a bit tight,” I said. “I have ballet butt.”
“Hench, innit?” Petey said. He gave up and clipped the battery pack onto the pocket instead.
“Gimme your phone, keys, and watch,” he said, holding out his hand.
“Is this a stick-up?”
“You have to leave anything that might make a noise or interfere with the microphones here before you go on set.”
Thanks to Jonty, I no longer had a watch, but I gave Petey the rest of my worldly chattels. He disappeared into his headset, listening intently. Someone called, “And we’re out.”
“You’re on,” he said. I was ushered to the famous yellowWake Up Britainsofa where Sally Quartermaine and Krishnan Varma-Rajan greeted me like long lost friends. Krishnan leant over and touched me on the knee, which would have felt intimate if, firstly, it wasn’t for all the cameras and crew and, secondly, it wasn’t for the fact I felt like I was about to vomit all over the famousWake Up Britaincoffee table.
“Can I have a quick word with you in the break?” Krishnan said.
“Of course.”
Krishnan Varma-Rajan had deep-brown eyes that sparkled when he smiled. You could see why they put this man on breakfast television. He was bewitchingly handsome. After he came out a few years ago, one of the papers ran a story claiming the NHS had run out of antidepressants, such was the effect on Britain’s housewives. Overnight he went from being Britain’s most eligible bachelor to Britain’s most eligiblegaybachelor. Rumour had it the unsolicited underwear arriving in theWake Up Britainpostbag switched from Victoria’s Secret to FIST overnight. He’d been knocked out cold marching in last year’s London Pride when an overzealous autograph hunter threw a dildo at his head. It was all over Twitter. He was off air for a week, waiting for the circular bruise from the suction cup to fade from his forehead. In other words, Krishnan Varma-Rajan was undisputed gay royalty, and he wanted a private word withme.
“And we’re on in five, four…” a dismembered voice informed me from somewhere. Sally and Krishnan sat up straighter, so I did the same. The next five minutes were a blur, as two of British television’s most beloved faces asked me a range of serious questions about surprise nuclear power plants, Belarusian oligarchs, and government energy policy while I tried not to vomit live on national television.
“One last question,” Krishnan said. “The government is committed to reaching net zero by 2050. Doesn’t nuclear need to be a part of the conversation if we’re to make that deadline?”
“The problem here isn’t necessarily thenuclear, it’s theconversation,” I said, surprising myself with how intelligent I sounded. There was a brain in there somewhere, among the cocktail recipes, West End musical lyrics, and rutting honey badgers. “The problem is that the energy secretary hasn’t been having a conversation with the people of Leicester. They’re going to wake up to find a nuclear power plant being built in their backyard, and it’ll be too late to do anything about it.”
“Would they want to do anything about it?” Krishnan asked. “Leicester is a deprived part of the country with high levels of unemployment. They might welcome the jobs.” Krishnan sounded like my father:Sorry your town now has a half-life of two million years, but at least you bludgers will finally feel the dignity of work.
“They might,” I said. Although I wasn’t terribly certain how many unemployed nuclear scientists there were just hanging about in Leicester. “But the point is, if this is such good news for the people of Leicester, why is the government being secretive about it instead of shouting it from the rooftops?”
Before I knew it, Sally and Krishnan were thanking me for coming in, and it was all over. Sally turned to a different camera and began reading from the autocue.
“When is a King Edward not a King Edward?” she asked the audience at home. “When it’s a King George the Seventh. Gloucestershire farmer Ted Sykes has grown a potato that bears more than a passing resemblance to the new king, who’ll be crowned next month at Westminster Abbey. Farmer Ted will be here after the break to show us one not-so-humble spud. See you in a bit.”
“And we’re out,” the dismembered voice announced.
Sally thanked me again for coming in and kissed me on both cheeks. Krishnan, his hand gently touching the back of my arm, indicated I should come with him. We stopped at the side of the set, and he adjusted the knob on his microphone’s battery pack so that all the lights on it went out. I tried to do the same to mine, but I was nervous and there were several knobs and, somewhere between my brain and my fingers, something short-circuited.
