Lola squeezes her hand as she sits and whispers, ‘I saw him in his dressing room. He seems on really good form. I don’t think he’s been drinking or anything.’ Lola’s eyes are shining, she’s happy. Elizabeth smiles and nods. As far as she knows, she’s the only person on the production team who has any clue as to the true nature of Lola’s relationship with Ricky.
‘Stand by studio floor, coming to you in two minutes.’
Elizabeth puts on her headphones and presses the button of the small console in front of her, saying softly into the small microphone, ‘Hello, Ricky. This is me. Just testing talkback. Can you hear me okay?’
‘Loud and clear, Mrs T,’ comes back the familiar voice of the star of the show in her ear. She can’t see him yet, but can hear from his breathing that he’s walking quickly down the corridor from his dressing room. She knows that his wardrobe assistant will be running along beside him carrying his jacket, which he never puts on until the very last second.
‘They’re a rowdy bunch tonight, can you hear?’
Elizabeth glances anxiously at the television screens that show her wide shots of the studio audience, up on their feet and dancing to ‘The Macarena’. They’re very pumped. She decides to ignore, as she always does, his reference to Mrs Thatcher. ‘See you on the other side, Ricky.’ She puts a smile into her voice.
‘See you on the other side,’ he replies, as he always does. And then, as he reaches the back of the set, before he leaps into the heat and glare of the spotlight, he addresses all the crew. His voice is deep and close into his microphone. ‘Elizabeth? Guys? Let’s make this a show to remember, eh? Let’s rock and roll!’
‘Fifty seconds!’ Lola announces loudly in the gallery.
‘Are the food props all standing by?’ Elizabeth asks and the clipped vowels of her young Etonian researcher, Zander, return in her ear. ‘Yes, ma’am, they’re under his desk.’
Elizabeth gathers the pages of her yellow script together and tidies them into a compact tome, her very own War and Peace. She glances at her mobile phone. There’s a thumbs-up emoji from Hutch and a picture of a double bed with a question mark. A shiver of pleasure and anticipation prickles all the way down her spine, but she puts her phone away. She finds her foot is tapping incessantly underneath the desk.
‘Twenty seconds,’ says Lola, placing her hand reassuringly on Elizabeth’s arm, but never taking her eyes from her stopwatch.
‘Have a good show, everyone!’ Elizabeth says, smiling down the desk at Robin. She gives him a mock military salute, which he solemnly returns. Everyone in the gallery is on the edge of their seats.
‘Ten seconds,’ says Lola, with a new warning note of urgency.
‘9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3…’
‘Roll titles!’ shouts Robin. The central screen, in front of the gallery desk, bursts into life with a cacophony of bright graphics, lurid yellow and blue shapes, which gradually form themselves into a giant head, the silhouette of a man in profile, with longish curly hair and an aquiline nose. The head dissolves into jigsaw pieces which re-assemble themselves into letters and finally words: The Ricky Clough Show.
In the studio, Ricky bounds down the stairs and runs to the front of the audience, as they whoop and cheer in concert with the warm-up who is conducting them from the sidelines. As he draws his hand across his throat they stop immediately as if they’ve been switched off and they sit back down, a bit disappointed and suspicious that the party might already be over.
‘Hello! Good evening and thank you for that warm hand on my entrance. Welcome to my show! Wanna know who’s on my sofa tonight?’ Ricky Clough is wearing his trademark purple suit, Doc Martens and a peacock blue custom-made shirt. His hair has been neatly combed to cover the seam of his transplant, but the curls reach down to his collar. He’s tall and his expanding girth is held in check by a clever combination of belts and expensive tailoring. His face is a light entertainment shade of polished conker. He has that unusual combination of camp and lascivious heterosexuality shared by so many successful performers. He paces restlessly around the set. His fizzing energy is almost electric. He’s an Icarus, Elizabeth thinks, you will burn if you get too close. It’s impossible not to look at him. He smiles brilliantly, revealing startlingly white teeth, as he ad-libs to the audience and cracks a joke at each of his guests’ expense, so that even Elizabeth – who’s seen it all before and knows his every facial tic – feels lost in wonder at his magnetic pull.
She presses the talkback button and says very quietly, ‘Ricky, Paolo’s ready – let’s bring him on to the sofa now.’ Paolo Culone, a young celebrity chef, is to be the first guest.
Ricky can hear Elizabeth’s instructions through an earpiece invisible to the audience and he responds smoothly by turning to the autocue camera that discreetly displays his script. He begins to read the words of his introduction. But as he moves towards his desk, he catches his foot on the step and stumbles, his arms momentarily flailing. The audience titter.
‘Whoa, babe, steady,’ Lola mutters under her breath.
Puzzled, Elizabeth kicks back her chair and goes to stand behind Robin, resting her hands on his shoulder, and they both lean forward, staring intently at their star’s face on the close-up cameras. His eyes are glittering in the studio lights and a sheen of sweat is already moistening his forehead. Nothing unusual in that, they’re used to seeing him in states of overexcitement, pumped by adrenaline, or wine – or worse. But as he arranges his cue cards on top of the desk, Elizabeth notices that his hands are shaking. His mouth is still moving but he’s stopped looking at the nearest camera. Instead, he’s looking down and his voice has dropped to a mumble. Elizabeth finds her heart beating faster. She doesn’t understand this unusual lack of grip from Ricky. Even when very inebriated, he can always keep the show going.
Robin jumps up crying, ‘Camera 5, pull wide! No close-ups. Stay wide!’
Elizabeth walks quickly back to her seat and Lola turns, her face full of panic. Elizabeth leans over the talkback microphone, presses down the button and reads from her script carefully and slowly, ‘Okay, Ricky, say after me… Now, most of us when we fancy a snack, think about a toastie, a steak bake or maybe some fish fingers…’ She turns her eyes to the bank of television screens and watches as Ricky slowly lifts his head and fixes his eyes, now glassy and unfocused, on camera 5. Out of his mouth, mechanically, come the words she recites in his ear…
‘But not my next guest, the man who invented the fish eyeball brioche! Ladies and gentlemen, Paolo Culone!’
‘Cue Paolo!’ cries Robin and the young whizz-kid of nouvelle cuisine comes running down the stairs and on to the set to wild applause, generated furiously by the floor manager. Only the lady with the flask and those sitting in the very front rows have noticed Ricky shaking and fumbling for his words and they are now sitting up very straight, alert to the exciting possibility of being witness to a proper show-business meltdown. Ricky doesn’t move from his desk chair as Paolo bounds on, but with a sort of superhuman effort, shifts in his seat so that he can greet the chef from a sitting position.
‘Ricky,’ Elizabeth continues, low and encouragingly in his ear, ‘the food props that you asked for are under your desk. You remember, we’re going to see if he recognises his own dishes by their smell. It’s a great idea – it was your idea, Ricky! Let’s do it now. They’re under your desk.’
Paolo