Live and Fabulous!

by Grace Dent

  “Ooh, I wonder what’s going on in there?” Claude says, pressing her face up against the mesh fence. From here, all we can see is tour buses, some mysterious marquees and production people dressed in black, darting about with clipboards and radios.

  “Oh, just all the most exciting stuff, obviously!” sighs Fleur. “That’s where all the stars and their entourages hang out. And the TV crews. I mean, just imagine?! Right now, CeCe Dunston from Final Warning will be knocking back Jack Daniel’s and chatting to Jocasta Jemini from the Losers ... And Lester Ossiah from Color Me Wonderful will be facedown in his macrobiotic vegan buffet getting an aromatherapy shoulder massage. And I bet Zaza Berry and Cynthia Lafayette the supermodels will be chilling out in the Jacuzzi and ...”

  “Erm? You’ve really given this some thought, haven’t you, Fleur?” smiles Claude, examining a huge stern sign above our heads, which decrees:

  STRICTLY NO ACCESS PAST THIS POINT EXCEPT FOR PRIVILEGED WRISTBAND HOLDERS

  “Just a soupçon,” mutters Fleur.

  At this instant, a ginormous triple-decker black tour bus with a sleek red flash along the side sweeps up slowly to the gates, followed by a gleaming long white stretch limo. The security guards immediately spring to action, yelling at each other agitatedly while beckoning the VIPs inside.

  “Nooooooo! I can’t believe it!” squeals Fleur, gesticulating furiously. “It’s Carmella Dupris! In there! In the limo!”

  Fleur’s right!

  Claude, who owns every one of Carmella’s CDs, as well as all of Carmella’s old-school stuff from when she was part of girl group G-String, begins to leap around squawking too. Wow! Can this really be true? I crane my neck to get a glimpse, but now people are surging all around me, knocking me out of the way.

  “Carmella!” squeals Fleur, ringleading the riot, slapping the limo’s side windows as it passes. “You rock, Carmella! I love you!”

  It is her!

  Inside the car, Carmella Dupris, who’s about as big as a saltshaker in real life, waves one tiny caramel-colored hand from underneath her huge floppy hat right in our direction. She’s teensy-weensy!

  “Dolce and Gabbana hat!” screams Fleur to anyone listening. “And Gucci shades! Carmella always has the most amazing wardrobe! She’s so cool!”

  “And she waved at us! She waved at the LBD!” hoots Claude, touchingly unaware that there are about five squillion fellow looky-loos hanging around us, going equally as berserk with adulation.

  “I know! I know!” agrees Fleur. “And did you see Big Benson!? Carmella’s boyfriend? The boss of Big Benson Records? He was in the back with her! He gave me a peace sign!”

  As Claude and Fleur hyperventilate, I stand with a silly grin plastered all over my fizzog, staring as the back of the limo disappears. The very second the vehicles are safely through the thick mesh gates, they crash shut firmly and a heavy bolt is thrown across, leaving the lowly LBD very much outside of the VIP enclosure.

  “Operation complete! Ms. Dupris is inside the enclosure!” shouts a belligerent-looking security guy into his walkie-talkie. “No intruders have entered the enclosure! Repeat: No intruders! Well done, everyone!”

  After some persuasion, we drag Fleur away from the VIPs, floating around the peripheries of the hallowed enclosure, intoxicated by adrenaline, drawing closer to the Hexagon Stage, where the crowd grows denser and more intimidating. The dry ground is reverberating with a pounding bass line. There must be about 50,000 people gathered here watching the music. Swarms of bodies are screaming and cheering, leaping up on each other’s shoulders; dancing and laughing and falling about, while up on stage Zander Parr caterwauls, albeit tunefully, like a cat in a combine harvester.

  “This is the band that sets off fireworks, isn’t it?” I shout.

  “Yeah!” yells back Fleur as a thunderous crash rips through the air, making everyone duck for cover, then rise up again cheering.

  On stage Zander Parr is leaping up and down in wild glee. Zander looooves pyrotechnics! He gets banned from every venue he plays at for taking things too far.

  “Wow! Look!” gasps Claude as pretty scarlet and ivory paper petals shower the audience; the crowd cheers wildly, picking them out of their hair. On stage, a vast pyrotechnic display is kicking off with all the requisite shooting flames, silver sparkles, bangs, whizzes and crashes. Eccentric Zander, looking practically robotic in his black T-shirt and skintight gold-mesh trousers, is jumping about like a man possessed, setting off Catherine wheels and waving around flaming torches with such abandon that he keeps totally missing his cue to sing lines.

  “He’s really lost the plot this time!” laughs Claude, pointing at the huge video screens on either side of the main stage.

  “Thank you, Astlebury! I loooooooove yer!!” Zander screams while his lead guitarist looks on in mild dismay, shaking his head. At this point I notice Zander literally has no eyebrows left, just singed strips above each eye. Living proof that you really shouldn’t play with fire.

  “Let’s get farther forward!” shouts Claude.

  “Cool!” beams Fleur, never satisfied as a spectator to the mayhem.

  “Er, okay,” I say gingerly.

  Traveling anywhere in this field is no mean feat; it’s like treading through a maze of bodies, bags, coats, beer cans and burger boxes. Worryingly, whenever you spot a sneaky shortcut and shoot through it, your friends have all vamoosed in the blink of an eye, as they’ve taken another route entirely. That’s a total freak-out. Lordy, I’d hate to get lost here. Astlebury is so unbelievably massive, I don’t think I’d ever find our tent by myself.

  “C’mon, Ronnie!” says Fleur, linking my arm tightly. “I’ve got you!”

  On stage, the Flaming Doozies are cranking up their biggest hit, “Dead and Dirty,” and the crowd is surging forward in response: bodies slamming toward each other, people tumbling over and struggling to gain a foot up again. Some kids are throwing plastic bottles at the stage, narrowly missing Zander Parr, who’s retrieving them from behind the speaker stack and lobbing them back. This is so wild! Scary wild, but wild all the same.

  “Wooooooow! Look at him!” squeals Fleur, pointing out a hairy lad clad in baggy tartan shorts and a ripped tank top with a blue Mohawk being propelled by the willing crowd, right at the front of the stage. Change is pouring from his pockets.

  “Oh my God! A real-life crowd-surfing dude!” says Claude.

  Eventually, after twenty minutes of bobbing and spinning through the fuss, we emerge far nearer the front, but at the side where it’s a little calmer. By this point, Zander’s rolling about on the stage, screaming and sobbing, seemingly in the midst of some sort of total nervous meltdown, which the crowd is really lapping up because, well, let’s face it, he always flipping does it. (Whenever Zander is on Top of the Pops, my dad always huffs theatrically from behind his Daily Mirror, before yelling, “I don’t pay my license fee to watch this sweaty pillock jumping around screaming! Gimme that remote!”)

  Fleur is loving all the drama; she whips out her mobile phone and takes a picture of sobbing Zander to send to Josh in Amsterdam.

  “My brother loves Zander Parr! He’ll be so jealous!” she hoots, staring at her handiwork on the screen, then frowning a touch. “Ooh, hang on a minute. What’s up here?”

  Fleur turns the handset off, then on again, the phone booting up with a perky polyphonic flourish of Spike Saunders’s “Merry-Go-Round” and a screen saver of Fleur and her gorgeous mum on holiday in the south of France. Blondie pushes different combinations of buttons impatiently, with growing annoyance.

  “There’s zilch bars on the antennae screen,” she shouts. “Stupid flipping phone! I knew I should have pestered Paddy for that upgrade! Claude, you got any signal?”

  Claude pulls out her handset, an ancient, rather bedraggled implement manufactured at some point when dinosaurs roamed the earth.

  “Oooh, no,” shouts back Claude. “We’re both on Fusia network, aren’t we?”

  “Yeah,”
frowns Fleur, smacking her phone off her thigh, like it will help.

  “Errr ... sorry for butting in, ladies,” chirps up an elfin girl with denim dungarees and spiky blonde hair, rocking to the music beside us. “If you’re trying to use Fusia, you’ve no chance. The whole network crashed. Been down for over an hour.”

  “Oh, for crying out loud!” gasps Fleur. “Again? How?”

  “Er, about one hundred thousand folk in a remote field trying to send pics and messages at once probably!” shouts the girl. “People say it might be gone for the whole weekend.”

  “What!?” gasps Fleur.

  “Calm down, Fleur,” whispers Claude. “It’ll just be one of those Astlebury rumors.”

  Fleur gets very antsy indeed when her phone doesn’t work.

  “Well, forget meeting Daphne,” says Fleur, sounding genuinely a bit narked. “She’s on Fusia too. That’ll be my fault, I bet.”

  “Not much chance of bumping into her here,” I say, looking around us. We all look at one another, trying to weigh up how much trouble we’ll be in for officially 100 percent losing our “grown-up,” but somehow we’re distracted by the antics of Zander Parr. The singer has decided to finish the Flaming Doozies’ final number by whipping off his clothes, one item at a time, chanting “La! La! La!” to a tune that sounds suspiciously like “Baa Baa, Black Sheep,” while the rest of the band struggle to keep up with him, resorting to pure improvisation.

  “Zander! Zander! Zander!” chants the crowd, egging him on.

  Just as Zander begins removing his underpants, which I’m sorry to say are a rather saggy, mottled pair of beige Y-fronts that have certainly seen numerous world tours, a posse of flustered security guards rush onto the stage to try to remove him.

  “Thank you, Astlebury and goooooood-byeeeeee!” Zander yells in his cute Dutch accent as the microphone is forcefully removed from his person and someone in a headset places a clipboard over his delicate nether regions. “This is the best day of my life!” he yells. “I’m Zander Parr and I am as ne-kked as zee day I was born! Good night! Have a good flight home!”

  The crowd goes absolutely nuts as he’s carried off stage.

  “Aggghhh! That was so much better than on TV! It’s so wild when you can actually see the fireworks!” laughs Claude.

  “And smell Zander’s singed underpants,” I laugh.

  “Hey, and Final Warning are on next,” reminds Fleur. “It’s their first British gig for two years.”

  “Yeah, that’s going to be huge,” says Claude. “We were so lucky to get tickets for this!”

  And then there’s a bit of an awkward silence as the LBD all know exactly whose total favorite band Final Warning is. Let’s not even go there.

  “Two ... two ... two ... testing ... two ... two ... okay?” repeats a roadie on stage, sound-checking CeCe Dunston’s microphone. “Can you hear that? Two?”

  Uggggh ... , I think. I wonder what Jimi’s doing right now, while I’m here having fun. Crying on his tear-drenched pillow? Counting off the hours till I come home?

  Or doing more normal Jimi activities, like retrieving a wide array of boogers from his nose, then smearing them on stuff? Or staring at pictures of women with massive moshee-moshees in Maxim? Or finding the hilarious hidden extras on his Dude, I Sooo Blew Up Your Mom II! DVD?

  Suddenly a firm hand cups my waist, almost sweeping me entirely off my feet!

  “Ooooh,” I say.

  “Fancy seeing you here!” says a familiar, rather deep voice.

  I turn around with a gasp.

  “Oh my God! Joel, hello!” I smile as the hazel-eyed hottie stands before me, surrounded by his motley crew. “It’s you!”

  As I give Joel a small friendly hug, Claudette Cassiera is letting out a big not-playing-it-cool-at-all whoop.

  “Damon! You’re here!” Claude laughs, then whispering more to him, “I didn’t think you’d remember.”

  “You were pretty specific!” whispers Damon back, giving Claude a sloppy peck on the forehead. Fleur, Nico, Franny and I all pretend not to notice. “You said you’d be near the front on the right for Final Warning.”

  “Ronnie! Fleur!” cheeps Claude, turning to us. “Look, it’s the lads again! Fancy these guys finding us again ...”

  Fleur and I swap “Does this bird think we fell off a Christmas tree?” glances and begin laughing. Soon Fleur’s roundly abusing a slightly green Franny about his vomit-regurgitation antics, and Nico is off at the bar getting us drinks, while up on stage, there’s a flurry of movement as hairy roadies tape track-running orders to the amps at the front of the stage, and fiddle about, tuning up guitars.

  “Er, incidentally, Ronnie,” Joel says to me, looking slightly bashful. “Can I point out that I’m not stalking you?”

  “Er, yeah, whatever,” I say cheekily. “Tell it to the judge, Stalky McStalkerson.”

  “I’m not!” laughs Joel. “It’s just that Damon wanted to ...” We look across at Claude and Damon, who appear to be having a play fight, of all things. “... oh, you know.”

  “Yeah, I’m only winding you up!” I giggle.

  “Good,” he says, half smiling, poking me in the stomach gently. “ ’Cos, I mean, who’d walk out of their way to see you anyhow?”

  “Precisely,” I agree. “Perish the thought.”

  But then the emcee cuts in, telling us to make some noise for the one, the only, the legendary FINAL WARNING!

  YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

  the pit

  The next few hours prove to be the most incredible ever.

  First, Final Warning crash through a fabulous set, playing all of their most famous songs accompanied by a totally tone-deaf crowd singing along enthusiastically. During one song, lead singer CeCe Dunston, with his trademark floppy, curly black hair and big blue-bottle dark glasses, divides the 50,000-strong audience up into two sections, making both sections battle to be the noisiest! I almost lose my voice yelling. Then CeCe pulls an amazingly lucky girlie out of the front rows onto the stage and serenades her with a raunchy song about her peachy bum! She isn’t offended, of course; in fact she pulls out a pen and asks him to sign the washing instruction label in her panties.

  By now, the sky is clear, the sun is blazing down and a soothing breeze is breathing gently through the fields, cooling us all down wonderfully. It’s so cool that we met up with the lads. They’re a brilliant laugh as well as top eye candy to boot. And just to make matters more amazing, between songs, the verily lovely Joel and I have been giggling and gossiping about life (okay and having a bit of a flirt too!). I’ve been uncovering some pretty impressive “boy data” on my new friend. Stuff such as he’s taking A-levels in physics, chemistry and math next summer (wow?!) and he lives with his mum in a small town called Charlton-Jessop approximately ninety-seven miles from the Fantastic Voyage. I’ve also uncovered that the scruffy yellow van with the graffiti isn’t Joel’s, it belongs to Franny (which makes much more sense), and also that Joel drives a black Volkswagen Polo. Hey, but most impressive of all, Joel’s biggest ambition is to be a surgeon. Oh, and not just any old everyday surgeon ... a brain surgeon!? Apparently, according to Joel, that takes about ten whole years!

  Yes, Joel knows what he wants to do with his life for the next ten years!

  I haven’t even planned the rest of this summer!

  (Jimi wrote “cosmic spaceman” as his ambition on his last career advice questionnaire.)

  And if all that isn’t enough, Joel also works at Charlton-Jessop’s municipal pool on Saturdays as a lifeguard! Gulp! I can only surmise from this information that beneath Joel’s combats and T-shirt nestles one of those toned, smooth lifeguard bods that totally distracts the LBD during Blackwell swimming lessons when we’re supposed to be rescuing bricks from the bottom of the pool, dressed in pajamas.

  My mother would soooo love Joel.

  She’d be sizing him up for a bridegroom’s top hat the millisecond she set her beady eyes on him. He’s totally the type of guy I suppos
e I should be going out with.

  After Final Warning stagger exhaustedly off stage, the Losers, an Australian four-piece band with two boys and two girls, replace them. The Losers play lots of synth, string and flute lullaby-style songs, which seems to lull the audience into a catatonically calm state. Some of the Losers’s songs are so sad, they actually make you want to weep, especially when Jocasta Jemini, the minuscule, rather depressed-looking lead singer, plays her flute and sings lyrics about being “lost at sea” and “dying of a broken heart.” Some people wave lighters backward and forward during the most maudlin songs; some seriously, as they love Jocasta, others sarcastically, as they think she’s a miserable old trout. Oh, and some people just throw plastic bottles at her. I’ve figured by now that some people just throw plastic bottles whatever the occasion. By the time the Losers finish, then run off stage, then run back on and play all of their biggest hits, then finish properly, the sun has set and the air feels much crisper. It’s almost 8 P.M. Where has the time gone? Everyone in our gang is in high spirits, especially Fleur, who’s utterly determined that for the next act, Color Me Wonderful, we should all move farther into the center of the crowd, then push to the front, against the stage barrier, where the rowdiest action always is.

  “Oh, come on!” Fleur scoffs. “Stop being such wet farts! This band always has the most amazing laser show! We have to get right to the front, so we can really dance!”

  Franny and Nico agree immediately. Joel, Claude and I aren’t so sure. It looks pretty rough down there to me. I’ve already seen kids who’ve fainted or been crushed being pulled over the barrier by security guards. Saying that, I know that Fleur will go anyway. Then I’m going to miss out on one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences.

  So I agree to go.

  “You sure, Ronnie?” asks Joel.