When she is drunk she talks about Television. She makes Right and Wrong sound like a body odour; something exciting, banal, something she can never quite wash away.
When she is sober she talks about danger, about keeping the show dangerous. She decides that the station has lost its bottle, that a guest doesn’t smell right, that we are getting drag from the studio floor, that our presenter is two coupons short of the toaster. When she is drunk she says that we are helping to build a new Ireland.
When she is sober she says ‘Great show you guys’, because she believes in giving credit where Credit is due.
THE CREDITS
Series Producer The Love Wagon
So fifteen seconds to the Opening Animation. Stand by on the floor. Coming out of this to 4 on the top shot, camera 3 on the wide, then 2 on the fat bastard. I didn’t say that. VT Rolling. (Sorry I have to smoke.) Aaaaand Take It. (Tumpty tumpty tumpty turn) Standby Grams. Coming to the track on 3. GO GRAMS. And 3. And OFF you go Peter. Nice.
VOICEOVER: Ladies and Gentlemen it’s… the LoveQuiz! And here is your LoveHost… DAMIEN HURLEY!
Applause applause applause. Cue Damien and 2.
STOP! STOP!
Keep going. Coming to Camera 1 on the guys.
Stop-it I-love-it-do-it-again. More More More!
Camera 3 Audience shot. Audience shot. Take it fuck him and 2.
No really. No really. MY we’re all excited. We’re all of a tither toNIGHT.
Back on script.
So who’s going to find LOVE on the LOVEquiz this week? YOU won’t believe what we’ve got lined up for YOU tonight. I PROMISE there won’t be a dry
LEG in the HOUSE.
Retake later.
And speaking of LEGS, here’s this week’s lovely lady. She’s the gal who’s going to pick the lucky fella. She’s de-lovely, she’s delightful MARIE from Donny-CARNEY!
Cut 4! Camera 3 give me Marie. Cue Marie Cue Marie. And 3.
Whoops. Hang on Marie. Hang on everybody. Hey! Just testing. Yes you’re right! It’s the FELLAS first!
Get back on 1. Cue applause. Get back. Get back. Take it. That’s our edit. And 2. Suffer on.
I don’t know what there is to worry about. Nothing really untoward has ever happened on the LoveQuiz despite the fact that it is all in the hands of one unknown girl. The ache of one hundred and forty planning meetings, the agony of seventy weekend shoots, the anguish of six hundred and twenty-three phone calls to Props, bunches up and halts, breathless, waiting for her word, her simple whim. ‘I choose number 3.’ She could have chosen 2 or 1, but statistically speaking she will choose 3, which is why we put the most attractive down that end.
No-one has ever said ‘I choose number 15’, for example. No-one has ever declined to choose. No man has stood up in the audience and said, ‘I object, this woman is betrothed to another.’ No woman has shouted ‘Dyke!’ No clerk-of-the-court has unfolded, solemnly or not, the birth certificate to show that she is under age. No man in a rumpled suit has walked across the studio floor, excused himself in German and pulled up her dress to show the penis underneath.
She simply says ‘I choose number 3’ and with music, tears and laughter, as the credits unroll their speech of modest thanks to the women who arranged such lovely flowers, she kisses and walks away with her Number Three. The studio walls give way, the plane stands ready in the scene dock, the band plays as it mounts into the sky, while an ecstatic air hostess waves and lets fall a bloodied sheet on to the camera below.
‘No,’ says Damien, blowing into hospitality. He’s a rotund little boy, one of the great dictators. When he looks at you, you feel like you are the only person in the room, when he looks away, you despise him. We get on really well.
Frank, who was in the box directing, is twitching in the corner with a large gin and a face as blank as the breeze. They ignore each other. Instead Damien comes up to me, not because it’s my show this week, but because I like him.
‘No,’ he says.
‘No what?’ I say. ‘It was great.’
‘No more little wankers from Dun Laoghaire.’
‘He made the show.’
‘I make the show.’
‘Fuck off and have a drink. It was great.’
‘Where were my cues?’ He says he was standing there like a prick at a dykes’ picnic waiting for his cue when he gets a load of custard in the face. I say that was the best bit, even though the custard hit a camera which went down. Even though those cameras cost as much as a five bedroom house on the southside, now missing a back wall. He says ‘Was my reaction OK?’
So he set the custard gag up himself — anything for attention. He knows I know, so he blames Frank. You have to hand it to him for nerve.
‘No cues. Fucking snob. He cuts my best line. We had to retake the opening without my best line.’
‘That wasn’t Frank’s decision. That was my decision. Now go over and complain to the LoveWagon. She’s looking lonely.’
‘Fucking right. Fucking producers.’
Ten minutes later the audience is doing a conga down the corridor and abusing the security man. Damien sits down for a brief stupor on the couch before leaping up and slapping backs like some kind of backslapping machine. The LoveWagon goes around the room and is muttered at — by Damien, by cameras, by sound, by the guy from the farting cushions company. She nods a lot, especially at Frank.
Frank is a good director. He is also my friend. Maybe this is why he lets his fingers land on my thigh like he can’t remember whose leg it is.
Every week he tells me that revenge is a complicated thing, that murdering Damien would be nice, but not as effective as just putting him on screen. When he dips his head to take a drink, it’s like he’s probing his gin like a flower.
Marcus comes up for a fight. ‘Sorry about the date package, the cameraman had diarrhoea.’
‘Swings and roundabouts.’
‘Here we go,’ says Frank, even though I haven’t opened my mouth.
Because Marcus has green eyes or brown, depending on the light. The brown eyes like me well enough, the green eyes call me a fucking animal. In the old days Marcus used to say ‘I wonder about you. I wonder if you are a woman at all.’ Tonight he just says:
‘The custard was good.’
‘Thanks.’
‘What about Your Woman?’ says Frank.
‘Awful,’ says Marcus. ‘Brilliant.’
‘I’m in love,’ says Frank.
I say, ‘I think she’s in her dressing room.’
‘Right.’
‘I think she’s having a little weep.’