How to Get Ahead in Television

by Sophie Cousens

  I had read no such article, but it sounded plausible, and if there was one thing my mother trusted, it was the opinion of the Telegraph.

  ‘Look, Poppy, I admire your spirit, I really do, but I’m just saying, we paid for you to get a degree, and we won’t stand by while you fritter away your potential.’

  ‘Look, fine.’ I sighed. ‘Listen, I promise if I don’t get this job, I’ll reassess the career plan.’

  I didn’t know why I was promising any such thing and was beginning to regret taking Mum’s phone call.

  ‘Excellent. That sounds like a good plan, Poppy,’ my mum said, perking up. ‘Now, on another note, there’s an article in the Mail today that I want you to read: it’s about freezing your eggs.’

  ‘Mum, I’m twenty-two! Why would I want to freeze my eggs?’

  ‘Well, it’s good to get them banked while they’re young and healthy. If you’re planning on putting your career ahead of starting a family, it’s good to have a contingency plan.’

  ‘I’m not freezing my eggs, Mum. I have to go.’

  My mother achieved new levels of insanity on a daily basis. But as I walked into Soho Square, I started to wonder whether there might not be an element of truth in what she was saying about my finances. I could barely afford to live on my runner’s wage as it was, and that was with me contributing only a minimal amount of rent. Fifteen grand a year was going to be hard to live on in a city like London. I thought of my friends who’d picked ‘proper’ jobs and their thirty-five-grand training contracts straight out of university. How much easier life would be… No, this is the career I wanted, so economies would have to be made. I looked down at the Starbucks cappuccino in my hand. I would need to start living on a budget.

  ‘Morning, Penfold,’ said Mel as I walked into RealiTV. She never called me Penfold; in fact, she rarely spoke to me when Rhidian wasn’t around. I eyed her suspiciously.

  ‘Can I ask you something?’ she said.

  ‘I guess…’

  ‘How do you have sex with someone in a wheelchair? Like, do you have to do it in the chair, or do you have to lift them out and do it on the bed with you doing all the work?’

  ‘Oh, bugger off, Mel.’

  ‘No, I’m serious, I genuinely want to know!’

  Mel looked confused at me taking offence. What Rhidian could possibly see in that girl, I had no idea.

  In the post room, David was on Helen’s computer doing some kind of ‘Which Movie Genre Are You?’ quiz. Luckily the other one was free, so I quickly jumped on to check my emails, hoping I might have something from JR.

  FROM:

  TO:

  SUBJECT:

  Dangermouse. Last night was fun. The fourth floor misses you and the sound of falling coffee cups that accompanies your presence…

  JR

  RealiTV – because a real workforce makes real TV!

  FROM:

  TO:

  SUBJECT:

  How rude. I only ever dropped two coffee cups, thank you very much.

  I’m glad the fourth floor misses me.

  RealiTV – because a real workforce makes real TV!

  FROM:

  TO:

  SUBJECT:

  Are you busy in the runners’ room today? If not, write up your show idea. The sooner we get it to the channel, the better.

  RealiTV – because a real workforce makes real TV!

  FROM:

  TO:

  SUBJECT:

  Aye aye, captain. Will get straight on it.

  So how exactly are you going to cope without me today?

  RealiTV – because a real workforce makes real TV!

  ‘Poppy, can you help the Entertainment floor with a printer blockage?’ David’s voice interrupted my emailing bubble.

  I sighed. Unblocking a printer was the last thing I wanted to do. I wanted to stay here and impress JR with my witty email banter, then hopefully he would ask me out again and we’d kiss and he’d ask me to go surfing with him in his van, and the whole ‘move to Cornwall and win an Oscar’ plan could begin.

  ‘Sure,’ I said.

  For the rest of the day I found myself scurrying around the building doing all sorts of tedious tasks, trying to jump on the computer whenever I had five minutes to spare. I grew more and more frustrated as the day went on and there were no more messages from JR. Maybe he was busy working? Maybe he thought I was busy working? Maybe he’d had an unexpected heart attack upstairs and no one had noticed… Perhaps I should go and check?

  ‘What’s wrong?’ David asked me mid-afternoon.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ I said.

  ‘You bounced in here this morning, and now you look like Tigger who’s lost his bounce.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said, bouncing up and down to illustrate my perpetual bounciness. ‘Just tired. Hey, David, random question: has anyone ever had a heart attack in the building? You know, just been in their office and then accidentally dropped dead, unable to send texts or emails, but no one knew about it until the cleaner came later that night?’

  ‘No, Miss Morbid.’ David looked thoughtful. ‘Though Phil Farmer once got trapped in the disabled loo overnight. He didn’t die though.’

  ‘Well, that’s a relief.’

  STEP 26 – IT’S GOOD TO GET EXPERIENCE BOTH IN FRONT OF AND BEHIND THE CAMERA

  FROM: VANESSA

  TO: POPPY

  OMG POPPY PENFOLD!! Did I just see your arse on Rusty Howarth’s News Swipe???!?!?! V

  FROM: CLEMMIE

  TO: POPPY

  P, YOU ARE SO EMBARRASSING!! PLEASE CAN YOU NOT TELL ANYONE WE ARE RELATED!! Clem

  FROM: MUM

  TO: POPPY

  Poppy, I’ve had lots of people calling me to say they’ve seen you on some TV programme – ‘Rusty Howy’s News Game’ or something? Is it something we should have recorded? Well done from us! Mum x

  THE TEXT MESSAGES came in thick and fast. I was with Natalie watching Orange is the New Black on Netflix, so we changed the channel to look up the show in question on Plus One. I had a horrible feeling of impending doom as Nat flicked through the channels.

  ‘Okay, I’ve got it, this is it,’ said Natalie, jumping onto a beanbag and dropping the Sky remote in her rush to find it.

  Rusty Howarth’s News Swipe used outtakes and bloopers from news channels around the world. I watched in trepidation as the credits started. We didn’t have to wait long – one minute in – before they showed a clip of BBC news from Friday afternoon. There I was in the background, obliviously wandering through shot, then realizing I was on camera, farcically ducking down to crawl across the office, my bottom bobbing along behind the desks like a camel’s hump. It went on for a good twenty seconds – my bottom making its exit.

  ‘On the BBC, they’re really getting to the bottom of the day’s big events,’ narrated Rusty Howarth.

  ‘Oh no!’ Natalie yelped with laughter.

  ‘NOOOOO! How can they use that without… without getting my permission?’ I cried indignantly.

  ‘Um, because you crawled across their newsroom while they were transmitting,’ said Natalie, falling around on the floor in hysterics.

  My phone kept beeping – everyone I had ever known was texting me.

  ‘This is so embarrassing.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about it, Pen. Today’s news, tomorrow’s fish paper,’ Nat said, trying to compose herself.

  ‘That’s newspapers, Nat, this is TV; it’s going to be on YouTube for ever. Everyone at work will have seen it!’

  Nat looked thoughtful. ‘You just need to be philosophical about these things, Pen; worse things happen at sea.’

  ‘Do they? I don’t know, Nat, I’m probably not going to be nationally humiliated at sea, am I?’

  My phone started ringing; th
e caller ID said ‘Rhidian’.

  ‘Oh great. Rhidian. He’s probably calling to tell me this is going on my chart of failures,’ I said.

  ‘Ooh, put it on speakerphone, I want to hear what his voice sounds like,’ said Nat.

  I answered and clicked the phone onto loudspeaker.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hi, Poppy,’ Rhidian said. He sounded strangely quiet.

  ‘Oh, don’t pretend you haven’t seen it and you’re not calling to gloat.’ I sighed.

  ‘Seen what?’

  ‘Oh, ha ha.’

  ‘No, seriously, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m calling because we’ve been asked to go on a shoot tomorrow – last-minute change of plan.’

  ‘Oh.’ Damn it.

  Natalie hit her hand against her forehead, then mouthed ‘he sounds hot’ at me. I shook my head and rolled my eyes at her.

  ‘Um, right, no, nothing. So what’s the shoot?’

  ‘The survival show, Survival of the Wittiest. They’re having a bit of a crisis – both their runners are off sick – so they’ve asked if we can help out for two days. We’ll drive down to Dartmoor tomorrow afternoon. I was just calling to tell you to bring some overnight stuff into work.’

  ‘Ah, okay.’ I tried to think if there was anything else I should ask, but Nat was distracting me by miming kissing her hand. She was so immature. ‘Thanks for… thanks for telling me. So I guess I’ll see you in the office tomorrow.’

  ‘Great. Oh, and Poppy…’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Your arse has never looked better.’

  He rung off before I could say anything. He had seen it! Bloody Rhidian.

  ‘Wow, you didn’t tell me your competition was Dr Hottness McSexerson!’ Nat squealed.

  ‘He’s not,’ I said.

  ‘Are you kidding me? Even if he looked like a Hobbit with herpes, that voice would be enough to get me. Just the right amount of huskiness, manly rather than boyish.’

  ‘You need to get out more, Nat.’

  ‘You’ve never said what evil-competition-Rhidian looks like.’ Nat eyed me distrustfully.

  ‘Haven’t I?’

  I really didn’t want to tell Natalie that Rhidian was technically quite good-looking, otherwise she’d start inventing some ludicrous fantasy about him in her head, and every time I mentioned him she’d be annoying.

  ‘Um, quite normal-looking, I suppose…’ I said.

  ‘Normal how?’

  ‘Um, six foot two, blond, nothing out of the ordinary.’

  ‘Bad skin?’

  ‘Er, no… quite nice naturally tanned skin, actually.’

  ‘Weird nose? Piggy little eyes? Strangely protruding forehead?’

  ‘Er… no. Sparkly green eyes, normal forehead and a pretty nice nose, in fact.’ I looked sheepish.

  ‘Poppy Penfold, you devious little wench. Why didn’t you tell me this guy was a total fitster?’

  ‘Look, he’s not a total fitster. Is he technically really attractive? Sure, I guess. But he’s not my type, Nat – he’s a total womanizer and he’s really competitive. JR is much more my type.’

  ‘Did JR ask you out again yet?’

  ‘Not yet. We’ve both been super busy.’

  ‘Suuuuper busy,’ Nat said in a serious voice, nodding her head slowly.

  I stood up and threw my beanbag at her from across the room.

  STEP 27 – ALWAYS HAVE YOUR WITS ABOUT YOU

  OVERNIGHT, EVERYONE AT RealiTV suddenly knew who I was, though not necessarily in a good way. My newfound recognition mainly took the form of people pointing and laughing at me in the style of Nelson from The Simpsons.

  I took refuge in the post room, where David was doing a ‘Which Cartoon Character Are You?’ quiz.

  ‘Oh, Poppy, you know which cartoon character you’d be? Buttley from Wacky Races.’

  ‘That show was before my time. The joke is lost on me.’ I sighed.

  ‘There’s a dog in it called Muttley,’ David explained, looking disappointed I hadn’t got the joke.

  ‘Hilarious, David.’

  I soon learnt the reason Rhidian and I had been requisitioned to help on this survival show: the existing production runners had come to grief, one from mistakenly eating poisonous mushrooms and the other from falling down a slippery crevasse. The show needed temporary assistance while they recovered. I wasn’t too thrilled about working on a show with such a bad track record of looking after its runners, or the prospect of a four-hour car journey with Rhidian. However, after a morning at the office with everyone laughing at me, I was quite relieved to be heading out on location.

  ‘I’ll drive, shall I, Miss Crashyboots?’ asked Rhidian as we picked up the production car.

  ‘Ha ha,’ I said, pulling a face. ‘Oh, by the way, do we need to pick up an entourage of admirers on the way? I know it’s hard for you to work on a production without one these days.’

  ‘Oh, I’m happy to make do with you, Poppy, as long as you promise to compliment me every fifty miles.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know where to start.’

  As we headed out of London, I read the production notes we’d been given while Rhidian navigated traffic and sang along to the radio.

  ‘So did you see the last series of this show?’ I asked him.

  ‘Survival of the Wittiest? Yeah, I liked it,’ he said.

  The concept of the show was to throw six comedians into a remote location and see who could survive the longest. The comics had to forage for food, make their own shelter and endure all sorts of hardships, all while continuing to tell jokes. Anyone deemed to have lost his or her sense of humour was kicked out of the competition. Famously, last year’s winner Barry O’Hara had gone a bit mad in the final week. He fashioned himself a loincloth out of dead squirrels, buried himself in a pile of bracken and conducted his own funeral service in rhyming couplets. It all caused a bit of a hoo-ha in the press (well, the squirrel loincloth bit) and animal rights people protested outside RealiTV for days. I think the PM even made a comment about it in Prime Minister’s Question Time.

  ‘So are you an outward-bound sort, Poppy?’ Rhidian asked with a smile. ‘Or am I going to have to pitch your tent for you and sweep the place for spiders?’

  ‘Don’t be so sexist, Rhidian. That is so typically misogynistic of you to assume that, just because I’m a girl, I can’t pitch a tent and I’m scared of spiders. I mean, next you’ll be asking if I’m going to be able to cope without a hairdryer and a bubble bath in the evenings.’

  ‘I stand corrected,’ said Rhidian, holding up a hand in supplication. ‘Far be it for me to assume Poppy Penfold is scared of anything… Well, except motorways… and newsrooms.’

  ‘Ha de ha.’

  I actually had no idea how to put up a tent, and hoped Rhidian was joking about the camping part. I’d been imagining a cosy little B&B on the moor with pay-per-view and yummy little chocolates on the pillow.

  We were making good progress down the motorway but still had a long way to go, so I decided to try and have a nap. I clicked my seat back a few notches and bunched my jumper up as a pillow.

  ‘Hey, what are you doing?’ Rhidian asked as he saw me trying to get comfortable.

  ‘I thought I’d try and have a snooze,’ I said.

  ‘Oh no, no, I’m not your chauffeur, Poppy. If I’m driving, you’ve got to keep me entertained, you can’t just go to sleep.’

  ‘Rhidian,’ I said with a sigh, ‘I’m sure the girls you usually share a long car journey with use the trip as a opportunity for a four-hour flirt-fest, giggling at your every observation, but not me, I’m afraid. I’m not very entertaining.’

  ‘I’m sure you are when you want to be. Come on, tell me something about Poppy that I don’t already know,’ said Rhidian. ‘Like how your bottom is coping with its newfound fame.’

  ‘Not well.’

  Rhidian laughed. ‘Okay, I’ve got another one: if you had to choose between having go-go gadget arms or go-
go gadget legs, which would you go for?’

  I smiled. ‘Well, obviously go-go gadget legs,’ I said. ‘You?’

  ‘A hundred per cent arms. They’d be so much more useful for multi-tasking than legs. Legs, I’d be all over the place.’

  ‘Interesting,’ I said. ‘Okay, I’ve got one for you: would you rather have a teddy bear constantly on your shoulder who plays the maracas whenever you speak, or have the Eastenders theme tune play every time you walk anywhere?’

  ‘That’s a good one.’ Rhidian thought for a moment. ‘I’d probably go with the teddy bear. It would be hard to get TV work if every time you moved you ruined the shot with a musical interlude.’

  ‘Always thinking about work,’ I said, ‘Mr Ambitious.’

  ‘Hardly,’ Rhidian said, making a face.

  Rhidian’s phone began to ring. He looked at the caller ID and plugged his headphones in so that he could take the call privately.

  ‘I just have to get this,’ he said to me. ‘Hey, Sonia, how are you?’

  Sonia, the annoying make-up girl.

  ‘Yeah, I’m just in the car with Poppy,’ he said. ‘No, we’re driving down to another shoot… Poppy? Yes, the other runner, you remember? Blonde girl… ha ha… No. Yes… sure… yeah, I’d be up for that. Maybe once I’m back in town?… Ha ha, I know…’ He laughed. ‘Yeah, of course. No, I’ll let you know… Okay. Bye, Sonia.’

  He hung up and I studied my nails for a minute.

  ‘That’s nice you’ve stayed in touch with Sonia. She’s that make-up girl from Scotland, right?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah. She was just calling to see if I knew what productions were coming up at RealiTV next month,’ said Rhidian.

  ‘Sure she was,’ I said.

  ‘Why do you say it like that?’

  ‘Because I don’t think that’s really why she was calling,’ I laughed.

  ‘Why else would she be calling?’

  ‘Um, because she fancies you. Wow, you have a really bad radar for people fancying you if you didn’t get that that was why she was calling.’

  Rhidian shook his head, dismissing my theory.

  ‘So are you going to go for a drink with her?’ I asked.