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.
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.
Despite the fact that it’s never quite the same when you’re attending them ‘on the job’, some of my experiences at these events were nothing short of incredible; bands always seem to try that bit harder at festivals – with such a variety of people in the crowd, they need to.
But there’s one particular experience, a few years into my career, which will stay with me for ever. It was 2002; Rod Stewart was headlining