I remembered with horror that the launch show had taken place before I had got the job, but after I had applied for it. I’d been so nervous about my application that I couldn’t bear to watch it, so I’d escaped to the cinema and only returned home hours later once the broadcast was over. The holes in my knowledge were suddenly revealing themselves. The first half of the week had been all about technicalities, but now the sudden realisation was dawning that real people were about to start turning up on the studio floor.
‘Oh man, I’m in trouble. Who are they all?’
‘Artem is from LA, via Russia and he’s worked in the States a lot. He looks considerably tougher than he actually is. Robin looks more exotic than he actually is – he grew up just outside of Ipswich. Jared is all about the boyband look – he’s toured with Glee and was in High School Musical. Then there’s Lars. He’s a bit of a wildcard. He’s Swedish, and he’s dancing with Kelly Bracken. Apparently he’s very quiet but very charming. And he’s pretty much Scandinavia’s biggest dance star.’
‘Wow, lucky Kelly.’
‘She could do with a bit of cheering up,’ he replied, with a chuckle.
I was thrilled to have found someone to exchange gossip with. Kelly had famously just turned thirty, and was busy filming her final scenes in the West Country soap, The Valley. She had been a lead for ten years, and had become something of a household name while dating her dashing co-star Jeremy Norman-Knott. But despite his reputation as one of the most charming men in TV, he had recently been up to no good with the star of a cheesy reality show. There had been accents. There had been outfits. And there had been a disloyal friend with a phone camera.
No one had come out of the situation well, not even Kelly, who had done a series of daytime TV interviews insisting, ‘I’m fine. No really, I’m absolutely fine.’ For all her tossing her glossy hair extensions over her shoulder she looked more than a little shaken up. She had spoken a little too freely to some of the weekly magazines about how perfect and impenetrable her relationship with Jeremy was, only to find herself regretting her earlier confidence as the full horror of his infidelity revealed itself. She was now a decade older than a lot of the girls she was up against for her next role, still broken-hearted and carrying the weight of a woman who had spent a lot of time reacquainting herself with her Slanket, her Friends DVD box set and a freezer full of Ben & Jerry’s. If anyone needed a hot Scandinavian to throw them around the dance floor in front of a gobsmacked nation, it was Kelly Bracken. And I was delighted that Matt had realised that.
‘You are not kidding,’ I replied. ‘I hope she turns up looking sensational and shows us what she’s really made of.’
‘Okaaaaay,’ said Matt. ‘Sounds like somebody’s a little over-invested.’
‘Oh, come on,’ I said. ‘I thought you loved the show as much as I did.’
‘Well, yeah, I love the show. Because I love working on live TV, and on something with such a big audience. But my real dream is to work in news and documentaries, so it’s not as if I really care about every single dance.’
‘Oh.’ My voice was quieter than it had been all week. ‘I suppose I thought it was a big deal to you too. I feel a bit of an idiot for letting you know how much I love it now.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ he said. ‘It’s all great fun, but for me just not the dream, you know? I don’t really care about dancing. I don’t dance at parties or weddings – even the old folk show me up. It’s humiliating. And I can barely tell who’s doing well or not out there on the studio floor, so I tend to zone out and see it as just work. I like being part of the team that gets the right shot: that’s where the drama lies for me.’
‘But the disco balls? You gave me such an amazing welcome.’
‘Oh well, how could I not have done that for you when you were standing there all starry-eyed with Chloe slowly boring you to tears? You deserved to see it at its best on your first day.’
I was still a little disappointed by Matt’s confession but touched that he had made such an effort.
Tension continued to rise for the rest of the day. I was rushed off my feet, taking tapes of the dancers in rehearsal from the production office to the studio floor and back. When I wasn’t doing that, I was ferrying cups of tea and coffee, bottles of water and sandwiches to the production team. It was at lunchtime that I made my first trip to the production gallery, the hub of the operation, with its wall of monitors that gave a spectacular view of the set and the dance floor itself. The gallery faced the famous staircase and was positioned directly above the undecorated area of the set, where I would be standing during the show.
Natasha, the director, was in there with her team, looking down through the glass windows like the pilot of a spectacularly sparkly airplane. I was terrified about entering the room, knowing full well that some of the most important people on the Strictly team would be in there, including my own boss. The tension in there would be thick like smog. When I reached the door I carefully put down the tray of teas and coffees I had been asked to take them, then knocked a couple of times.
As I was standing there, Chloe came rushing out of the door, nearly tipping the drinks over.
‘Were you knocking?’
‘Yes, I didn’t want to disturb, or, um, come in during something important or confidential.’
‘Are you telling me that you didn’t know that the main production gallery door would be sound proofed?’
I suppose, I was really … The thing is, I did know that the door would be sound proofed – absolutely every part of a studio is. But in my anxiety to please everyone, and stay as unobtrusive yet helpful as possible, I had, well, I had forgotten. I was an absolute idiot.
‘Yes, of course I knew,’ I just about managed to stammer. ‘But I just wanted to make sure.’
‘Riiiight, well you don’t need to.’ Chloe made a big show of holding the door open for me and calling ‘Drinks coming through!’ as I entered the gallery. ‘And don’t put them down anywhere near the equipment. Liquid is lethal around here.’
My cheeks were burning even though no one else had seen our little interaction.
Things became even more tense by Friday. People had started to use fewer words per sentence, and replaced the lost verbs with cups of coffee. And – finally – the celebrities and dancers had started to populate the studio floor. Almost all afternoon was spent on the band rehearsal, which turned out to be the biggest test so far of my ability to remain calm and collected. There were several things that tampered with this aforementioned professionalism.
For starters, it was the first time I had seen any of the celebrities. Sure, I had seen celebrities before – my mum had taken Natalie and me to see countless dance shows in the West End when we were younger. Musicals had been my obsession – every birthday and Christmas the trip to London had been my biggest treat. I had done work experience on some low-rent cable channels, which had seen Big Brother contestants from years gone by lapping up the final remnants of their fifteen minutes of fame by presenting obscure game shows.
But these were Strictly celebs: a unique mixture of genuine icons, national treasures and sports legends … all of them doing something that was utterly new to them. It was that rarest of rare things – nervous celebrities, doing their best, but out of their comfort zone. I was transfixed.
The most common reaction to seeing a celebrity in real life is to compare them to the image you have been carrying around in your mind. It’s rarely an accurate image, but a kind of composite of your favourite of their screen appearances, the worst paparazzi shots you’ve ever seen of them, and perhaps a photo or two that you once snipped out of a magazine because you wanted hair, boots or a boyfriend like them. That picture will have been pinned to your cubicle at work, or carried around in your wallet until it’s all tatty. But