Chapter 1
Petey
If I’d known what Eva Pilotti breaking her leg on a skiing trip would do for my career, I’d have pushed her off the chairlift myself. I’m not as evil as that makes me sound, I promise. I don’t know Eva, I’ve got nothing against her, I hope she made a full recovery. But TV is a dog-eat-dog industry, and if you want to make it, you’ve got to fight for every opportunity you can get. The fighting isn’t always fair. There’s certainly no room to be sentimental about someone else’s misfortune.
Fighting for an opportunity was precisely how I found myself in a rickety old lift, headed up to the office of Monkey Ginger Productions in a building on London’s Golden Square. It was a fresh Wednesday afternoon in spring. My hair was freshly bleached, I was wearing my favourite blue boiler suit and my lucky earrings, and I was clutching a laptop loaded with ideas to pitch to the company’s boss, legendary TV producer Indira Murray. The lift rattled to a halt at the fifth floor.
“You’re a blethering idiot, Eva,” a woman with a strong Glaswegian accent shouted. It was, unmistakably, Indira herself.
“My five-year-old nephew has got more fucking brains than you, and my sister can’t stop him eating the chewing gum he finds under the seats on the bus,” she continued.
This was not a great sign. I checked the time. Five minutes early. Not really long enough to go back downstairs and come up again in the hope things had calmed down. I tried to extract myself from the lift as quietly as possible but got caught in the old-fashioned grille door, and it slammed shut behind me.
“I have another meeting, I have to go,” I heard Indira say.
I stood in the vestibule, staring at the reeded glass door with its gold lettering. My stomach was jittering so much I almost checked to see if I’d left my vibrator in. I took a deep breath and stepped into the reception area. No one sat behind the counter, but Indira’s office door was open.
“It goes without saying, you’re off the show.”
Indira raised an arm and waved me in—beckoning me to sit in the chair opposite her.
“This has sod all to do with morality. We’re filming in a five-hundred-year-old manor house. The job means running up and down stairs all day. You’re in a moon boot. How are we going to get you up to the top floor? Fire you out of a fucking trebuchet and hope for the best?”
Indira looked directly at me for the first time, mouthing “sorry.” I dismissed the need for an apology with a sweep of my hand.
“You need six weeks to recover, minimum, and it’s a four-week shoot.” Indira pulled a packet of cigarettes out of the drawer, put one in her mouth, and lit it. She shook her head. “Well, you should have thought about that before you did something so incredibly stupid. I’m sorry, my decision is final.”
Indira ended the call, took a long drag of her ciggy, craned around to open the window, and blew the smoke out into the cool air. Her eyes flicked back to me, inspecting me, sizing meup. She was every bit as terrifying as her reputation. Before starting her own production company, Indira Murray had done ten years onMake Me a Pop Star—the behemoth of all reality shows—starting as a runner on season one and working her way up to executive producer. You had to be made of pure steel to thrive in an environment so toxic.
“Word of advice. If anyone ever offers you five grand and an all-expenses-paid week at a Swiss ski resort in exchange for filming their risky, frisky al fresco OnlyFans content, please, I beg of you, remember that lube will make a chairliftreallyfucking slippery.”
I burst out laughing. Indira sucked on her cigarette.
“Remind me who you are?”
“P… Peter,” I spluttered. “Peter Topham. We met at the BAFTA?—”
“The kid fromWake Up Britain. I remember now.”
Kid?
“I’m twenty-seven.” I needed her to take me seriously. At least she remembered me. I’d met Indira a few weeks earlier at an after-party for the ritzy industry awards night. Fuelled up on free champagne and egged on by my best mate, Jumaane, I’d plucked up enough courage to introduce myself and ask for a meeting. Fighting for my opportunities, and all that.
“Do youlikeworking on breakfast television?”
She sounded like my parents. I had no idea what answer Indira wanted to hear, so I opted for the truth.
“The hours are hell, but it’s fun.”
She was eyeballing me like she was planning a dissection, so I kept talking, desperate to win her over.
“I’ve done five years. Started as a runner. Did two years as an assistant producer. Now I’m a field producer. But what I really want to do is produce big reality shows like yours. I heard you might be looking for fresh ideas?”
“Every production company in the country is looking for fresh ideas,” she said, blowing a grey stream of smoke through the open window.
“Exactly, and I?—”
She cut me off. “Since Channel Three cancelledMake Me a Pop Star, it’s opened a shit ton of prime time slots in the Christmas run-up. We need to fill them with something suitably addictive or the great British public won’t know what to do with themselves on Saturday nights and there’s a risk they’ll open their phones, disappear down a rabbit hole of ultranationalist conspiracies, and end up voting for total fucking fascists at the next election. And that’s not a country I want my nephew growing up in. So, yeah, I’m on the lookout for fresh ideas.” She knocked the ash from her cigarette into a mug. “What have you got for me?”
