A Snowball in Hell

by Christopher Brookmyre

  An epiphany. Like in the Bible, he means. The annunciation. New Testament: Luke, Chapter One.

  Bedroom Popstars, however, would better belong in Exodus, among the plagues of Egypt, or better still Revelation, as there can be fewer more gloweringly ominous harbingers of our world circling the drain than this latter-day Bedlam.

  ‘Just so fresh, so audacious, so controversial,’ Damien spunks. ‘We’d seen Pop Idol and The X Factor, and these shows were simply about putting a voice and a face on a song: you didn’t have to be able to play anything, you didn’t have to write anything. Nick Foster took it one brilliant step further with a show in which you didn’t have to sing either. As he said, it was about acting like a pop star: who was the best at miming, posing – vogue-ing, if you like – to these catchy Nick Foster songs. And it had such a symbiosis with the technology of today, in that when the singles came out, they were on USB sticks, because it was an inextricably audio-visual entity. You weren’t just buying the song, you were buying the winning act’s performance, which included the video, their early attempts on the show itself, plus all sorts of personal extras.’

  ‘He’s always been one step ahead of the game, hasn’t he?’

  ‘And one step ahead of the critics, Jessica. They were outraged, they all said that what he had done was to prove the music was incidental – incidental music ha ha ha – but in fact what he had proved was that it was about more than the music. He started a real debate about this, about what it takes to be a pop star. It used to be the argument that the so-called manufactured acts weren’t as talented as the muso-songwriter types; then the argument became that at least the manufactured singers were more talented than these new acts just pretending to be pop stars. But it comes back to Nick Foster watching Robbie Williams and realising there’s a talent to acting like a pop star, there’s a talent to entertaining people through putting on the kind of performance that is expected of being a pop star. But of course, the most controversial aspect of the show – and for my money the most fun – was that it required that talent, that performance, to transcend the stage and the spotlights and break into day-to-day life.’

  We cut back to the haemorrhoid again.

  ‘In my three decades in this business, one thing I’ve learned is that people who want to be stars don’t care how they get there. The ones I’ve got the most out of were the people who didn’t particularly care whether it was music that got them there: they’d have as easily gone with acting, TV presenting, just whatever opportunity knocked. They know that it’s fame they want, and they will do whatever it takes to get it.’

  Which is our preface for a new montage, a veritable kaleidoscope of tabloid front pages and glossy magazine splashes harvested from the antics of the Bedroom Popstars contestants throughout its two appallingly successful series. Nightclub fights, drugs, booze, outrageous statements, phone porn, affairs, orgies, all manner of sexcapades.

  ‘The programme itself was actually the least part of the package, almost mirroring the way the song itself was the least part of the USB single,’ Damien enthuses. ‘Bedroom Popstars became an even more twenty-four/seven phenomenon than Big Brother. The contestants knew that they weren’t just competing on stage on a Saturday night – they were competing to see who could do the most to keep themselves in the spotlight through the week, between shows. Who could get on the front pages, the news bulletins, the websites. Who could act like a pop star offstage, even if they were a hard-up sales assistant or nurse or delivery driver. I mean, this is why Nick Foster is more than merely a pop svengali figure. He has created a non-stop form of public performance, people turning themselves into a continuous, living pop exhibit for our ongoing entertainment.’

  Jessica thanks Damien for his contribution. Nick Foster ought to be thanking him too: after such a sustained and enthusiastic rimming session, his sphincter must be looking almost as gleamingly polished as his implausibly shiny head. However, Nick has other more pressing things to be concerning himself with right now.

  ‘Okay, get your dancing shoes on at home,’ Jessica gushes, ‘because it’s our turn to walk up the red carpet as PV1 takes you, right now, into a packed Tivoli, where the party is kicking off with a live performance from none other than this year’s Bedroom Popstars winners: yes, it’s the incomparable, the unique Vogue 2.2!’

  The camera swoops past Jessica and zooms between two dozen packed and heaving circular tables, up over a pulsatile miasma of sheer fabric and tit-tape on the dancefloor, to focus finally upon a dry-ice shrouded dais flanked by two stacks of speakers. Prowling this befogged promontory are the three proven, international-class media whores comprising Vogue 2.2: Sally, Anika and Wilson. They strut back and forth in energetic but yawningly hackneyed choreography, pumping thick radio mikes in each of their right hands like weights at the gym, an inexplicable accessory as it is a matter of pride, never mind mere fact, that they won’t be making any vocal contribution requiring electronic amplification. Their job is just to stomp around in synchronicity, throw some shapes, exhibit limited quantities of an indefinable property referred to as ‘attitude’ and, of course, mime (though truth be told they aren’t even required to do much of that, the accompanying ‘song’ largely comprising sampled loops of previous Nick Foster hits).

  If anyone had any doubt over Foster’s contempt for the contestants (or the idiots watching), then it should have been erased simply by the name he gave his latest creation: Vogue 2.2. That’s as opposed to last year’s winning line-up, who were called Vogue 1.1.

  Vogue 1.1 were a five-piece... (I’m unsure of the appropriate collective noun, as outfit, line-up, group and band all afford too much dignity-by-association through having been applied to people who actually made some kind of net contribution to the human race. Let’s go with ring. As in piece. As in gaping. As in Goatse.) Vogue 1.1 were a five-piece ring, but Foster wasn’t so unimaginative as to entirely repeat the formula. Bedroom Popstars series two was, he initially said, going to create another five-piece ring, and the show spent a couple of months whittling the contenders down to that number, before he pulled a ratings-rocketing flanker and announced that the series would be extending by a month, and that the magic number had changed to three. However, instead of also extending the usual voting and elimination process, Foster informed them that this final streamlining would be conducted on a voluntary basis.

  Two people would simply have to decide fame and pop-stardom weren’t for them, and resign from the competition. This ostensibly democratic invitation to reflection and, ultimately, selflessness, was in fact the equivalent of dropping the five of them on to a rubber dinghy with five knives, three lifejackets and one fucking big puncture. It was also a coded signal to the tabloids that it was open season.

  Foster defended the ensuing four-week cross-media backstabbing, secret-splashing, character-shredding bloodbath by saying that it was nothing they wouldn’t be expected to endure as pop stars and thus it was a crucial part of the audition process: ‘It’s one thing proving you’ve got what it takes to attract media attention – this will prove who’s got what it takes to really handle that attention.’

  Consequently the three survivors had demonstrated themselves to be in possession of formidably thick skins, in combination with merciless predatory instincts and an almost total absence of self-awareness. This is just as well, given the volume of latent resentment that lurks behind so many of the smiles being displayed for the cameras tonight as Vogue 2.2 greedily guzzle the limelight. The stars around the tables are no doubt telling themselves their barely suppressed hatred stems from their own true talents being insulted by this sham, but secretly every last one of them must have been cut deep by the awareness of what Vogue 1.1, 2.2 and the whole Bedroom Popstars phenomenon implies about their own successes.

  Vogue 2.2’s number comes to an end and they strike a frozen pose as they soak up the cheers from the blanks (i.e. non-celebs) on the dancefloor, and the conspicuously strained applause from the tables. The latter c
onstituency clap through teeth-gritted smiles, which underlines their impotent compliance: if they truly wanted to make a point, someone should have stood up and asked the cunts for an encore: then they’d really be fucked. However, nobody wants to shit where they eat. They are all here to suck up to Nick Foster in the hope that his blessings will continue and thus sustain the magic spell that has granted them places at those round tables, rather than hoping to get noticed down on the dancefloor, or outside in the street with the utter nobodies.

  What a gathering, truly. I can’t look at the dry ice without thinking of just how many of these parasitic nonentities I could have taken out in one go. I did that once to a club full of neo-Nazis watching a group called Krystalnacht: got fifty-five of them, including the band, by substituting the dry ice with poison gas. Very disappointingly, nobody in the media seemed to get the joke. You really have to spell things out to those bastards, because if you don’t, someone else will, and it’s their spin that will colour the story. That’s why, tempting as it was, I knew that a similar stunt here would only backfire. The last thing I wanted was to make every one of these spoiled puke-bags immortal, and have all their fucking dismal records re-released.

  Besides, I’m not a monster any more. Well, yeah, I probably still am, but I’m a monster with some panache. There’s no style or flair to such indiscriminate killing, and no moral to the tale either.

  Vogue 2.2 exit the dais, replaced by the evening’s mistress of ceremonies, Mica Dahl, erstwhile ‘Cheeky Angel’, subsequently lost to the music world, though her departure has been television’s gain these past couple of years as the main presenter of Bedroom Popstars. A catwalk suddenly extends phallically from the dais on to the dancefloor and she slinks along it in a pair of knee-high boots more normally associated with the principal boy in a panto. A podium erupts from the floor at the end of the catwalk as she approaches, while ten yards behind her, a huge blue panel reveals itself to be a projection screen as a still image of the haemorrhoid’s taut hide becomes manifest upon it.

  She says a few words, bids everyone welcome. Something, however, isn’t quite to spec. You’d have to be looking for it, but it’s there. She’s got the practised professional grin switched on when she’s talking, but as soon as she’s introduced the first montage on the screen and she thinks the camera is off her, you can see the uncertainty on her face as she presses the earpiece and listens for instruction.

  The montage ends and she turns the smile back on. She cracks some jokes, makes specific mention of a few of the assembled stars, then introduces the next live performance, this time from re-formed Eighties Foster-pop veterans No False Moves! (the exclamation mark being an incorporated part of their handle). It’s an atypically slow number that they give us; a hit in its time, but not the high-energy gay-disco fare they are remembered for. Similarly they have opted to dress in identical long coats rather than their contemporary preference of skin-tight day-glo spandex. The choice of track shares its explanation with the choice of wardrobe: it’s all to disguise that the act people remember as four hyperactive androgynous teenagers are now just four shuffling fat blokes.

  Four Gentle Moves having been spent, we’re back with Anxious Angel, who announces a quick break, cueing spotlights on the dancefloor and music on the speakers.

  There is, if you look beyond the gloss and gels, a bit of a ferment about the place: much running around beyond the sidelines, inconspicuous shuttlings by personnel in official t-shirts and headsets.

  Jessica and co have got wind of it, and bearing in mind the threat of her attention-deficit audience switching over if she doesn’t keep hitting their id-gratification feed-bar, she directs the camera away from the dancefloor and back to herself.

  ‘Bit of gossip for you folks, just between you and me, the rumour around Tivoli right now is that the guest of honour might be fashionably late for his own party. You’ve seen Mica up there, well I can tell you that she was supposed to be introducing Nick at the end of that first montage, but as yet there’s no sign of him. You’re actually getting a rare insight into how these things can be. It’s the swan effect, you know: all smooth and graceful on the surface but everything frantic beneath. If you ask me, though, this is just more exquisite showmanship from Nick Foster: he’s keeping everybody guessing, making sure nobody takes him for granted. Dancing to no-one else’s tune, working to his own sense of timing, and when he finally makes his entrance, you can guarantee it’ll be a show-stopper.’

  Quite, Jessica, quite. A show-stopper, undoubtedly.

  There’s a guy in a booth inside the Tivoli, sitting at a console watching monitors and computer screens, looking at different camera views, video cues, track lists, a scrolling script. His name is Garth Whiting. He is directing the show. Probably getting more than a little jumpy at this point, what with his presenter unaccustomedly winging it and the evening’s star attraction as yet unaccounted for. Garth hasn’t been able to reach him all day: mobile, landline, email, texts, nothing. Fucking prima donnas, huh? Not to worry, though. I’ll soon be sealing off the main source of his anxiety, if not exactly putting his mind at ease.

  I’m sitting looking at just the one monitor myself, less than a hundred yards away, as it happens. I’ve got a digital receiver – ‘TV on a stick!’ – plugged into a USB port on the laptop, and PopVision 1 open in one window. Like Garth, I have alternative views available to switch to, one of which will soon be available to him also.

  I send him an email, then call him on his mobile to alert him to this. A couple of minutes later, technically Garth is still controlling the show, but it would be fair to say he’s got a new producer. I’ve changed the aesthetic but I’m a hands-off guy to work with, restricting my input to two brief instructions.

  One: switch the screen above the dais to stream from the link in the email.

  Two: the second you cut it off, he dies.

  There’s a few seconds of silence after the musical interlude finishes, with no sign of Mica returning to the end of the catwalk. The lights go down, however, and the screen above the stage has gone enticingly blank. There’s a strangely unprompted silence as a sense of anticipation runs through the place.

  ‘I think something special might be coming up,’ Jessica guesses with a wink.

  You go, girl.

  Suddenly, a bass drum begins to pound, and a silhouette of a male figure in classic Bond pose appears on the big screen. There’s a cheer as the silhouette becomes full colour, revealing an old Radio Times cover image of Nick Foster holding a TV remote like it’s a Walther PPK. This heralds a sequence of familiar publicity stills of the guest of honour, changing every few beats.

  A guitar starts to play above the bass beat, a dirty death-metal-style snick-snick creeping along ominously like an anaconda through the undergrowth.

  Captions begin to appear, white out of black, in between the changing photographs of Foster.

  ‘A man of many faces.’

  ‘Many styles.’

  ‘You’ve seen him a thousand times.’

  ‘You’ve heard him a thousand times.’

  Bass guitar augments the rhythm section, broadening the sound, building up to something. In the audience, people begin to clap along to the drumbeat.

  ‘But you’ve never seen him...‘

  ‘You’ve never heard him...‘

  A keyboard chimes over the guitars: synth brass, classic Nick Foster Eighties style. It’s playing the chorus of the chart-topper he wrote for one-hit wonder Wendy Clear, ‘Hurts So Good’, but it’s a twisted, discordant version of the melody: it’s recognisable, just, an even more nightmarish migraine-warped rendition than anything Marilyn Manson did to ‘Tainted Love’ or ‘Sweet Dreams’. Sounds pretty good to me, but then I’m biased. I recorded it.

  ‘Like this . . .’ concludes the caption.

  And with it, finally, a vocal sounds over the screen, now faded to black. It’s a scream: a throat-rasping, lung-deflating hardcoremetal graaawl that Jonathan from Korn would hav
e been proud of. It sounds like the vocalist is having a telegraph pole slowly removed from his arse, footpegs intact, or perhaps more accurately like he’s been wired to the mains. Very, very accurately, in fact.

  On the screen, the all-black view tracks out from what is revealed to be a pupil, revealed slowly to be the centre of a bloodshot, scared and terrified eye, then further revealed to belong to one side of an implausibly taut and shiny face.

  A second vocal plays over the music: my own, telephone-distortion take on the Eighties hit chorus:

  Hurts so good. Hurts so good.

  Turn up the music cause it

  Hurts so good

  I need your lovin cause it

  Hurts so good I know we shouldn’t but it

  Hurts so good

  Please don’t stop, you know it

  Hurts so hurts so gooooood

  At the end of the chorus comes another scream, strangely in key, though this is because I sampled it and made a few adjustments. And as it plays, the image tracks back further to show Nick Foster lashed naked, Prometheus-style, to a gigantic Marshall amp, into which is plugged an equally gigantic black guitar lead.

  The amp is not real, just a scaled-up façade, the main part constructed of a highly conductive metal mesh, with the logo and dials printed on thick card. Face-on, as seen upon the screen above the stage, it looks surprisingly convincing, with the weird scale effect that the amp ceases to look giant and instead Foster begins to look miniaturised.

  The guitar lead is not real either, just a length of black rubber tubing.

  The electricity is real. So are the screams, though as I admitted, they have been manipulated to sound in key.