Idolism (15 page)

“In your email you urge your colleagues to keep this draft bill under wraps because otherwise, and I quote, ‘The election will blow up in our fucking faces’. Doesn’t have the public a right to know
before
the election what your plans for after the election are? Sir?”

Julian looked at Gardener. Everyone looked at Gardener, but Gardener didn’t have an answer. He just ran off the stage.

As Richardson jumped up from his seat and ran after him, the auditorium descended into chaos and Momoko’s cameraman didn’t even know where to point his camera anymore, Julian leaned forward to his microphone one more time and said, “I’d like to say thank you on behalf of the band and ourselves, and I hope we passed the audition.”

That same evening, Mr Richardson suspended us from school for the rest of the term. It was only two weeks until the summer holidays anyway, so we didn’t really miss anything. Of course our parents weren’t too happy, but in hindsight it was a good thing that we got suspended, because in the following weeks we probably learned more about life than school had taught us in the previous ten years.

We went viral within two or three days. Before the whole thing erupted, we had 39 YouTube subscribers, and the view count of our most viewed video was 213. A week later we had 125,796 subscribers, and the footage of our
Jerusalem
performance followed by Julian heckling the Education Secretary had been watched 11 million times. We were like bloody Susan Boyle, it was completely insane.

One of the most important things my dad ever taught me was to be prepared and always expect the unexpected. When I had set up our website about a year before this whole thing happened, the others had been scolding me for buying the big webhosting package. You know, 5GB of web space and unlimited traffic. We’re never going to need any of that is what they said, but I said one day we might. And there you go. With a smaller webhosting package our site would have crashed within the first 24 hours, and none of the 19,732 people who downloaded one of our songs for 99p each could have done so. In just one week we made enough money to buy pizza for everyone and to keep our website running for the next 200 years.

The Gospel According to Tummy – 7

It was a riot. There’s no other word to describe it. A bloody riot. The event ended in complete chaos. Everyone was running around like chickens in a fire drill. And Momoko and her camera team were at the centre of it all.

By the way, speaking of Momoko, right before we went on stage to perform our first song, Ginger came to me to apologize for calling me a liar when I had told the guys that I had met Momoko in the school corridor the other day. But it turned out that it was true. Momoko had been on her way to the head teacher because she was doing a report on Peter Tholen for her show
Inside Momoko
on T-Vox, and she wanted to attend the anniversary event with a camera team. Richardson said yes, and there she was, in the auditorium with a cameraman and a sound engineer. I kept watching her throughout the whole evening. At one point—and this is totally awesome—at one point when Richardson was speaking, she looked in my direction, and I waved at her. And she waved back and smiled! Can you believe that? Ask Ginger if you don’t believe it, she saw it too. She saw Momoko wave at me and then she turned to me with a
WTF
look on her face.

Anyway, Momoko was there to stalk Peter Tholen, and her cameraman filmed every bit of him, including him standing next to us as we performed
Jerusalem
, and that’s how that performance ended up on T-Vox. And on YouTube. And everywhere else. And because they also filmed Gardener’s speech and Julian’s heckling, we also ended up on the TV news on every bloody TV station in the country, and all our lives spiralled completely out of control.

Puerity shot to fame within 48 hours, can you believe it? We couldn’t. I mean, one day you’re just another bloke studying for your GCSEs, and the next day T-Vox are sending a limo to pick you up so you can appear on the most popular entertainment show in the country. It was so surreal. And so exciting. We were such noobs. We had no idea how this whole business worked. I mean, we knew how to play our instruments. We knew how to turn classical pieces of music into modern rock songs. Julian knew how to write amazing lyrics. But we had no idea how all the rest of it worked; the business side of music, the marketing, the media. We had no idea how to behave in front of a TV camera. I think that was a good thing. I think it was a good thing that before our first appearance on
Inside Momoko
no manager told us what to do and what to say, because we didn’t have a manager. The only person who gave us any advice before that show was Momoko herself, and that advice was, “Relax. Forget about camera and people. We just have little chat, okay?”

That’s when she winked at me and smiled her awesome smile again, I kid you not. And I was like, “All right, lady, let’s have little chat,” and the others rolled their eyes at me as if I’d said something incredibly stupid. But Momoko apparently thought it was very cute and she giggled her adorable giggle.

She quickly introduced us to her crew, Cameron the camera man and Mike the audio guy, and a makeup lady named Lily came to put powder on our glistening faces. Ten minutes later we were sitting on Momoko’s famous big red sofa as the show’s intro blared out of the loudspeakers.

After greeting the viewers at home Momoko cut right to the chase.

“If you have watch news today,” she said, “you have seen singer of a young band who got Education Secretary in big, big trouble. Everybody talk about everywhere, about Education Secretary and education reform plan. Everybody also talk about young band, but nobody know them. So I invite them in my show so people can get to know Puerity and we can have little chat about what happen yesterday.”

She turned to us. “Herro, Puerity. Welcome to my show.”

“Herro, thanks for having us,” I said. Michael and Ginger said hi as well. Only Julian was sitting there, biting his fingernails and not quite sure where to look.

“You welcome,” Momoko said and smiled. “Is great to have you. Why don’t you introduce? So that viewer can know you. You want to start, Michael?”

“Sure,” Michael said. “Hello, my name is Michael, I’m 17 and I play the drums.”

“Hi, I’m Emily, I’m also 17 and I play the keyboard.”

“Actually,” I said, “we call her Ginger. At school everyone calls her Ginger because of her ginger hair.”

“Eh?” Momoko said. “Really? That so cute!”

“That’s not true!” Ginger protested.

“It is too,” I said. “Also, in nursery school she always used to dance like Ginger Rogers.”

“Thomas!”

“You can call me Tummy,” I said and turned to the camera. “Hi, my name is Tummy and I play the bass guitar.”

“And how old you are, Tommy?” Momoko asked.

“No, no,” I shook my head. “It’s Tummy, not Tommy.”

“Tummy?”

“Yeah,” Ginger said. “People call him that because he’s fat.”

“I’m not fat! And to answer the question, I’m 17.”

“Yeah, seventeen stone.”

“Seventeen
years!
”

“In Japan we have sumo wrestler,” Momoko said. “Many sumo wrestler are very famous. Sumo wrestler are very honoured in my country. They must always eat very much so they can be very big. Very big is very good. You are very cute, Tummy.”

What a great moment. Guys like me usually don’t get called cute by hot chicks like Momoko. So please excuse me for not knowing how to deal with such situations.

“See?” I said and stuck my tongue out at Ginger. I know, it probably wasn’t the maturest thing I’ve ever done, but it was the best I could come up with.

Ginger laughed. “You’re sticking your tongue out at me, seriously? How old are you, five?”

“Do I look like a five-year-old to you?”

“No,” Ginger said, “you actually look like ten five-year-olds to me.”

That cracked everyone up, even the studio crew. Poking fun at the fat kid is always hilarious.

Now Momoko looked at Julian. “And what your name?”

“Julian.”

“And how old you are, Julian?”

“Seventeen.”

“And you the singer?”

Julian nodded. “I also play the guitar.”

“I see.”

“You must excuse Julian,” Ginger said. “He is a bit shy.”

“He’s not shy,” Michael laughed. “He’s bloody autistic!”

“Oh no!” Momoko looked concerned. “Is contagious?”

“No, it’s not contagious,” Michael said. “And he’s not really autistic, I guess, but we sometimes call him that because he’s not very good at talking to strangers. But he’s very good at writing. He writes all our song lyrics.”

“I have read some lyric on your Internet site. They very interesting. Very poetic. Where you get your idea?”

“I don’t know,” Julian said.

“You don’t know?”

“They’re in my head. I don’t know how they get there. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and they’re just there, so I write them down.”

“So is all like … divine inspiration?”

“Inspiration, yes. Divine, probably not.”

“Now,” Momoko said, “yesterday you had school anniversary, yes? Everyone has seen on TV, and everyone is talking about in all the country. Why don’t you tell how it all happen?”

Momoko looked at us, but none of us really knew what to say.

“I’m not sure we even know what happened there,” Ginger finally said. “Or why.”

“I see,” Momoko said. “You talk about government, Julian. About what government want to do. You not happy with it, yes?”

Julian thought for a moment. Then he cleared his throat and started to talk. He didn’t look at anyone. He didn’t look at the camera. He just stared straight ahead and talked.

“You see,” he said, “in the news they always tell us the authorities did this and that, the government said so and so, Company X plans whatnot. That’s not realistic. There are no authorities, governments, and companies that do things and say things. It’s not abstract entities that control our lives, it’s individual people who make individual decisions. They’re just bubbles rising up to the surface of a boiling news world. It’s not companies that we must hold accountable, or governments or authorities. It’s individuals. What we must fight are single stupid decisions made by single stupid people. Everyone can do that. If someone around you behaves like an idiot or acts like a jerk, tell them so. Don’t look the other way. Don’t hide your opinion. This is your life, and it’s the only one you’ve got. Don’t waste it. It’s not for your entertainment. It’s not TV. Watch everyone else watch you. Be the star of your very own show. There are no masses. There is just a mass of individuals. And each and every one of these individuals must do whatever they think is right.

“The Education Secretary is planning all these new laws that would affect everyone under 18 in this country, and he wants to introduce these laws without asking the people first. That doesn’t seem right to me. I think people have the right to know these things before they are rammed down our throats. Somebody had to tell them. So that’s what I did. That’s all.”

When Julian had finished you could have heard a pin drop in the studio. For a few moments everyone was stunned, especially Michael, Ginger, and I. We were no strangers to Julian’s ramblings, but we had never actually seen them happen anywhere else but at Underground Zero where we were amongst ourselves. But this wasn’t Underground Zero. This was a bloody TV studio, and we were being watched live by five million people. I wondered if Julian was actually aware of that.

“Is very interesting,” Momoko finally said. “You just do what you think is right, yes?”

Julian nodded, still not looking at her. “Yes. One always has to do what is right. How can you know something is right and not do it? It’s like knowing you’re doing the wrong thing and doing it anyway.”

“Is very good. I think you are role model for everyone.”

Momoko chatted with us for another couple of minutes, and then we had to play a song. We played
Jerusalem
, the same song we played at the anniversary. It wasn’t our favourite song, and we would have loved to play something different, but it was the song that had brought us to public attention, and apparently it was the song that people had us associated with. At least that’s what Momoko said. She said they had received thousands of email requests for
Jerusalem
, so that’s why we played it and that’s how it became our first single. Except we didn’t have a CD at that point. We didn’t think we needed one. We had an MP3 that we sold via our website and on iTunes. Nobody bought CDs anymore.

After our appearance on Momoko’s show, the limo was supposed to take us back home. But I didn’t want to leave. I asked Momoko if she could show us around the studio, and she said she could. However, the others weren’t really that interested, so I told them I’d catch up with them later, and they got in the limo and left.

Momoko showed me around. She showed me the whole studio, the green room, the dressing rooms, everything. I don’t know. I don’t really remember any of it, because I just kept staring at her all the time. I wasn’t really interested in that studio tour. All I wanted was to keep staring at Momoko. The last thing she showed me was her private office; the telephone, the fax machine, the TV, the window. I didn’t care. I just kept staring at her, and before I even knew it I asked her, “Do you have a boyfriend?”