…My only television interview is for a local access digital cable channel in a shed in Shropshire. A young balding man greets me at the door and shows me to the green room which is just a cupboard with a portable TV showing dreadful documentaries about the local community. I make a cup of tea and then the same man leads me to the studio which is another tiny room with one fixed camcorder on an Argos tripod pointing at two plastic chairs in front of a green screen.
The screen makes me nervous because they are able to project anything that takes their fancy after the fact. On my Media Production course at Bournemouth University I once floated TWAT above the head of a fellow student who I actually quite liked, so I know what people are capable of.
The man clips a microphone to my shirt and then sits in the chair opposite mine. He clips on his own mic and slots an IFB into his ear. There appears to be no one else in the building, although it seems that he receives some information on his earpiece because he nods at the camera and then at me.
“Okay?”
“Yep. Great.”
He turns on a TV smile. “So, Christopher Hardy, welcome to our studio.”
“Thank you. Great to be here.”
“Your debut novel is called Clear History. Talk a little about how the idea came about.”
“Well, it’s an idea I’ve had knocking about for many years. Probably since I was about fourteen or fifteen. It’s an amalgamation of several different influences such as 1984, Robocop, Judge Dredd and computer games such as Beneath a Steel Sky and Syndicate. But it took me twelve years or so to make sense of all the ideas and come up with a cohesive storyline. Plus I wasn’t really mature enough to write a decent novel until a couple of years ago.”
“What genre would you place it in?”
I do a TV laugh. “Well, that’s a good question. I suppose it’s a sci-fi novel, and that’s where you’ll find it in the shops, but I think it has a broad appeal. It’s set in a semi-fictionalised version of our present, and the themes it tackles are, I think, very much of the present, or perhaps our immediate future.”
“Writing a novel is really a process of implanting a dream in someone’s head, isn’t it?”
“Err…Yeah, I suppose it is.”
“Is this a nightmare or a nice dream?”
“I suppose it’s more of a nightmare if I’m being honest. But, you know, an exciting one. The kind that when you’ve stopped shaking and sweating and you feel safe enough to turn the light off again, you want to write down. But don’t; I own the copyright.”
“Would you mind reading a passage?”
“Not at all.” I pick up the copy of my book by my feet and turn to the pages I’ve read five times already this week. I address the camera lens directly in an effort to engage the audience. My mouth is dry by the time I finish. I close the book and turn back to the presenter.
“Excellent,” he says. “That’s great. I think we’re ready.”
“Okay. Ready for what?”
“We can go for a take. Let’s roll to record. If you’re ready?”
“That wasn’t…recorded?”
“No,” he says. “I just needed to know a bit about you and the book before we start. This is the real thing. Ready?!”
I nod tiredly and his real TV smile appears, dangerously dazzling under the row of lights hanging from the pipe in the ceiling.
“So, Christopher Hardy. Welcome to the studio…”
…A surprisingly intelligent DJ on Radio Norwich actually seems to have read my book, which throws me at first. He has it at arm’s length, occasionally flicking it around his desk with the point of a finger as though it is somehow harmful.
“Your book is poison,” he says on air, screwing his face up in distaste.
“Sorry?”
“It appears to have embedded in it a thorough hatred of the human race.”
“Oh,” I say, relieved and delighted that someone finally appears to have understood my novel. “Yes, absolutely. Almost everything and everyone fills me with despair. Each day brings with it something else to send me further into a spiral of despair.”
“So how can you reconcile those feelings with an effort to sell your book to those very same people?”
“It is tough,” I admit. “Ideally only the small percentage of people who aren’t objectionable would buy it. I wanted to vet potential buyers, have them pass a series of tests before they were allowed to make a purchase, but the publishers wouldn’t allow it. So I’m encouraging people who have bought it to ask themselves a series of questions. If the answer is Yes to things like ‘Do you own and enjoy records by the Lighthouse Family?’ ‘Do you own more than one mobile phone?’ or ‘Did you actually complain to the BBC about Brand and Ross’ misguided comments?’ then they should return the book to me via my publisher and I will personally send them a cheque for the cover price because I don’t want them representing my audience. I’m not paying their postage though.”
“But surely a dual mobile-owning Lighthouse Family fan who doesn’t enjoy seeing old men humiliated in the name of light entertainment and also happens to appreciate your book demonstrates either the variety of tastes that make up our population or you’ve inadvertently written something that belongs in the same niche of popular culture?”
“That thought is certainly…chilling.” I say little else for the rest of the ten minute interview…
…I call Pauline back at Harper’s while I drive between Liverpool and Birmingham.
“I had to turn down four late shifts at QVC for this trip,” I moan. “I think that I should be compensated for that.”
“You should be thanking us. I thought you hated it.”
“I’m secretly in love with Anne Dawson,” I say. “We would have been together for two of those shifts.”
“If you do a good job then you’ll make as much money from book sales over the next two weeks as you would doing proper work. As for the woman, whoever she is, you’re married.”
“These Travelodges don’t even have mini-bars for Christ’s sake. I’m homesick. I want a contract for a second book. I want a tour manager. I want women sent to my room. I want a better room. I want my book sold to the US market. I want to stop seeing James Hardy on the television. I’m sick of driving. I’m racking up a fortune in petrol costs.”
“I told you, just keep track of your mileage and we’ll reimburse you.”
“Damn it.”
“What?”
“I forgot to reset my milometer. I’ve no idea how far I’ve driven since London.”
“I’m losing you Christopher,” she lies and she hangs up…
…I wake up in an unfamiliar town and some eager radio station actually sends a taxi for me. Unfortunately as I sit contentedly in a leather swivel chair in the interview booth, the DJ starts speaking to me in a foreign language and I simply cannot understand a word the woman says and after a few uncomfortable minutes she plays a record and just looks at me as if the mistake is mine.
“What country am I in?” I ask the intern leading me out of the building.
She looks at me as the DJ had. “Scotland.”
“Then why was that woman talking a foreign language?”
“It’s called an accent you cheeky wee English cunt,” she says.
I drive back across the border, thankful to be back where people speak proper English. Then I check my tour itinerary and see that I am going to Newcastle…
Free Counter
No comments:
Post a Comment