Pippa sighs. ‘When it stops, as soon as it’s quiet, can you tell us your thoughts on whether the building site will cause any issues, please?’
‘Sure, of course.’
The drill makes the floor quiver, the shoddiness of the house further emphasised when a hunk of plaster falls from the ceiling and lands in the space between me and the crew. It seems unlikely they do much in the way of structural checks on these buildings; maybe the ceiling will collapse and this whole endeavour will kill me.
Silence falls, and I say, ‘There’s a large building site on the plot across the road from the property. There’s no avoiding that it will cause a lot of inconvenience in the short to mid term, but the mini supermarket and other stores planned for the location will be a real boon once they’re complete, and whoever stays here in the–’
My perfect answer is cut short by the doorbell to the house being rung in three short bursts, which still hang in the air when the visitor knocks with arat-a-tat-tat.
‘Who the hell is that?’ Pippa leaves the room.
‘Cutting.’ The cameraman presses a button on his camera; the sound recordist presses one on the black box he wears around his waist.
‘Did you hear what oor Mal was up to this morning?’ The sound recordist takes the headphones off his head and hangs them around his neck. Where they’ve been against his ears is red; he rubs at them.
‘He wasn’t kissing the house again, wis he?’
They are not talking to me. Without the camera being turned on it’s as if I too have been switched off. Maybe that’s why when I butt in with, ‘Sorry, kissing the house?’ they both turn to me like they’d forgotten I was there. Their brief surprise at my existence passes and they bring me in.
‘Malcolm, the presenter–’
‘Yeah, I’m familiar.’
‘Well – and this sounds like a lie but I promise you it’s not – he’s been spotted before kissing the houses we film in.’
I know Malcolm; there is no way this can be true. Diplomatically, I raise an eyebrow.Surely not, it says for me.
‘We’re not winding you up, he genuinely does.’ Any follow-up I have is intercepted by Pippa’s return.
‘Bloody next agent is here already. He’s waiting on the doorstep. The builders are on a tea break, so if I can get you to repeat what you were saying about the supermarket while it’s quiet we can get moving on to the valuation and b-roll.’
‘Action!’ Pippa calls, and I give a flawless delivery of my line with no interruptions.
‘Amazing, truly amazing. Now could you give me your valuation for the house in its current state?’
I nod. This is the biggest moment of all – what all of this has led up to. This is the crescendo of my appearance, of the episode. Then it comes to me: what more fitting a way to end this than with the truth?Fixer Uppershas created a nation of monsters and I have been slaying them one by one for the sake of us all. Looking down the barrel of the camera, I should confess. For a second I’m going to do it, but faced with the bored crew who just want me to say my response so they can get on with their day, my statement of intent disappears from my mouth. ‘In its current state, I would value this property between £60,000 and £64,000.’ I am a coward.
‘Again, please,’ the sound recordist says. Pippa swivels her head, gives him a hard stare. ‘There was a siren,’ he explains.
Pippa swallows, pushing down the question ‘What siren?’ Instead she says, ‘That was perfect. If you could do that one more time.’ This is my chance for redemption, and again I don’t grasp it. I say what’s expected of me.
The sound recordist nods to Pippa; everything was good on that take. ‘That’s a wrap on your interview. Thank you for making that so painless. All we have to do now is get some shots of you walking around the house.’
Her phone starts ringing; she checks the flashing screen. ‘It’s Mal. Boys, I’m OK to leave you to sort the shots, yeah?’
She walks off across the uneven floorboards towards the kitchen. She puts on a girlier, flirtatious voice for Malcolm. ‘Hello, darling. Where are you?’
Hearing any more of the conversation is impossible as I’m being manhandled by the sound recordist. He unclips my microphone while the cameraman tells me, ‘There’s no denying that doing this bit you’re going to feel like an idiot. It’s a very unnatural thing to do, to look at an empty room and pretend to be interested in it. I promise, if you go into the room believing it’s not a strange thing to do, you’ll come across much more naturally than if you worry you look like an idiot.’
‘I will try to believe,’ is all I can muster to this pep talk.
There’s a break in filming so they can take the camera off the tripod, position the light elsewhere. The two men must work together often. There’s an ease to their movements; they don’t need to chat about what they’re doing, they just do it. I use this lull to my advantage.
‘So, Malcolm kisses the houses?’
‘Yeah. He likes to have a private moment outside when he gets to the properties to tell them he’s going to make sure they’re well represented on the show.’
‘Does he have any control over that?’
