Woman of the Hour (2 page)

‘What did we get out of Dianne Lucas today? Three sentences? Our interview of the day!’

‘I’m sorry. She was a disaster and I think Fizzy did really well under the circumstances,’ I said.

‘That’s a given. But doesn’t Lucas have a reputation for being a nut job?’

‘Neurotic certainly, but her book is getting a lot of attention and—’

‘Why didn’t you pre-record her?’ he snapped.

‘That’s the wisdom of hindsight,’ I said.

To my surprise Bob, the news editor, spoke up in my defence.

‘To be fair, we do always say that live TV is better than pre-recorded,’ he said.

Julius gave him a dangerous look.

‘Rubbish. Liz should have predicted we would have trouble with her,’ he said.

Bob wouldn’t let it go.

‘I’m just saying that we pride ourselves on our immediacy, don’t we?’

This was true. Live TV is more risky than pre-recorded TV because you can’t control what will happen and we are encouraged to go live whenever possible. It was Julius who came up with our slogan:
Real people, real life, real stories live.

‘Someone with your experience; not good enough, Liz.’ His hectoring tone rang out across the table at me.

Julius left it at that and turned to the next item. But he would have noted that Bob had stuck up for me and he wouldn’t have liked it. I felt grateful for the support because Julius had made me feel inadequate even though he was one hundred per cent right about Dianne Lucas. It is well known that she is strange. There are stories of her holding seances in her sitting room to get in touch with her dead first husband. I should have thought about her eccentricities and sent a crew to interview her about her book. But why did Julius always feel the need to belittle everyone all the time?

As we left the meeting I mouthed a thank you to Bob who gave me a small nod. Bloody Dianne Lucas and her stupid hair; she was going straight onto my blacklist. Oh yes, I keep my own secret blacklist of guests who I will never book again. They get on my list if they fail on camera, as Dianne did today, or if they act out of order. I have always found it significant how a celebrity treats junior members of staff, like our runners who get them a coffee and book them a cab. Many a celebrity will put on the most charming face when sitting on the sofa with the cameras running, but I’ve seen some of them behave horribly to the runners; sneering or snarling at them for no reason. They go straight onto my blacklist. I enjoy the fact that they don’t realise they are reducing their time in the limelight because of their treatment of staff they think don’t matter.

I sometimes wonder how I have survived in live television this long. It can be a bloody and brutal business. When I started working in television seventeen years ago I was idealistic and perhaps a bit foolish. I was working on a series called
Celebrating Our Unsung Heroes
. Julius Jones was then head of features and he tasked me with finding a coal miner who was on the point of retirement after a life spent underground. We planned to make a big fuss of the miner and his wife. We’d bring them up to London to sit on the sofa with our popular breakfast stars, screen a brief package about his life of hardship and then beam in a pre-recorded farewell from his workmates which was guaranteed to reduce his wife, if not the miner, to tears. Bingo. Real people, real feelings, real television, Julius said.

It wasn’t easy finding a working miner, nearly all the mines had been shut down, but I did find Albert, a man who had gone down the mines at the age of fifteen. I liked him. He was a proud man. This was a big thing in his life and he had told his village he was going to be on the telly. A group of them had gone down to their social club that morning to watch the live transmission of his interview which was scheduled for eight-fifteen. Julius Jones was in charge of the show that day and he overran the running order by nine minutes, which is unheard of. He was in a rage and he told me he was going to pull the eight-fifteen story. I said you can’t, his whole village are waiting to watch it. He shouted at me: ‘If you can’t fucking deal with this you shouldn’t be on the team. Now get out there and sort it!’

I took Albert and his wife into our café. We made a point of giving our guests a good breakfast after the show, and I had to break the news to them. I was ashamed at how we had treated Albert, as if his life story did not matter. We ate bacon and eggs but I was finding it difficult to swallow the food. As I was escorting them to the taxi we crossed the atrium and the big boss, the MD of StoryWorld, was walking in. Albert stopped him.

‘You let my village down today,’ he said.

The MD looked over at me.

‘Is this true?’

I nodded miserably. ‘Albert’s village had gathered to watch his interview. We had to cut it.’

An hour later Julius Jones hauled me into his office and he was incandescent.

‘You naive little bitch! Landing me in it. I won’t forget this.’

But I’m still working at StoryWorld. I was a researcher then and now I’m head of features and Julius Jones has worked his way up to become the director of programmes. He is my boss.

I called my team in and we went through the list of who we had booked for the rest of the week. I was under pressure to deliver a strong interview of the day tomorrow. Simon was keen that we go with a member of the public with a human interest story. A single-parent dad called John had written in to our agony aunt, Betty.

‘John’s wife upped and left him with their three young children. He’s given up work and built his life around his kids, but he’s worried now because his daughter is hitting teenagehood. He feels she needs a woman around to talk about girl stuff and does Betty have any advice for him?’ Simon said as he passed me the email.

I read what John had written and it was the most marvellous letter.

‘It’s wonderful, Simon, but he’s an unknown.’

‘I’ve spoken to him on the phone. He’s a natural. He came out with all these brilliant funny stories about his kids. And look at him.’

Simon handed me a photo he’d printed of John seated on a sofa with his three children climbing over him, two boys and a girl. The sofa was worn, the room was shabby but the kids looked happy. He was a good-looking man with a friendly open face.

‘He is rather attractive,’ I said.

I handed the photo to Molly, my other researcher.

‘I wonder why he hasn’t got himself a girlfriend then,’ she said.

Molly and Simon get on but there is an inevitable rivalry between them for stories. She was pushing her idea for Fizzy to interview a footballer who had brought out his memoir; actually it was more of a misery memoir than a sporting one.

‘It’s not only about football, it’s also about his tough childhood and it’s surprisingly well written and revealing,’ she said.

‘Why does everyone think footballers are stupid?’ Simon said.

I was reading the back of the book.

‘And he wrote it himself? Not a ghostwriter?’

‘All his own words...’

‘Maybe next week, Moll; I’m not keen to do two book stories back to back.’

‘I’ve got this feeling John from Sheffield will be great. I think Fizzy will love him. We get her to empathise with him and she can ask viewers to email or tweet us any suggestions about dealing with teenage girls,’ Simon said.

‘That’s Betty’s territory,’ I said.

Betty is our formidable agony aunt and she covers these types of issues on her weekly slot, but she was away doing a lecture tour in Canada. It was high risk but in the end I decided we would invite John from Sheffield as our interview of the day. Some of our most successful items have involved ordinary people and Simon’s instincts are sound.

Chalk Farm flat, 7.15 p.m.

I was home by seven-fifteen tonight which wasn’t too bad. I pay Janis, a woman who lives locally, to be with my daughter Florence until I get back. Flo complains it’s stupid because at fourteen years of age she is fine to be left on her own, but she gets on well with Janis who has been her childminder for years. Janis cooks her supper and they talk. I learn all kinds of useful stuff about Flo from Janis, which I’m grateful for but which also makes me sad because Flo stopped confiding in me a while ago. When she was younger we were incredibly close and she was my best cuddly little girl.

Janis left and I knocked gently and popped my head round Flo’s bedroom door. One of the great fights between us has been about how I barge into her room unannounced. Now I try to remember to knock first. Flo’s bedroom was in near darkness except for the glow of her tablet which lit up her face. I love that face more than any other face in the world. She did not smile when she saw me but she did not scowl either.

‘Had a good day, sweetheart?’

‘Yeah, OK. Dad called.’

‘How’s he doing?’

‘He said Granddad will pick me up if I get the train on Friday.’

‘Great.’

Every two or three weeks Flo spends the weekend with her dad Ben and his parents in Portsmouth. We have to be flexible about it because Ben works as an aerial photographer and sometimes a big job will come up at the weekend and he can’t see her. Sometimes she will go down on a Friday night, which I prefer because it gives her longer with her dad.

‘I’m making chilli. Do you fancy some?’

She shook her head.

‘No, ta. I’m stuffed.’

She was keen to get back to her tablet so I closed her door. It was one of our better exchanges because recently we rarely talk without angry words passing between us.

As I chopped the onions I reflected that I would have a free weekend. Ben and I set up the weekend arrangements after we divorced and I try hard not to let it slip. Before our split I couldn’t understand those women who try to stop contact and who bad-mouth their exes, especially when they do it in front of the children. But afterwards, when things got ugly, I would find myself biting back my anger and frustration in front of Flo. There was a lot of anger and disappointment to process after ten years of being together and I’m sure she must have overheard our heated words from time to time.

StoryWorld TV station, London Bridge

John, the single-parent dad from Sheffield, was terrific. Fizzy connected with him at once and she got him to talk openly about the struggles he’d had since his wife left him and their three kids one afternoon. It was out of the blue, he said. There had been no warning signs and no message left. His wife had asked a neighbour to keep an eye on the kids till he got back from work and then had driven away in the family car. When John got back he’d tried to call her, getting more and more anxious when he couldn’t get through. But it was only after putting the kids to bed that he saw she had taken her clothes, her jewellery and one framed family photo. He has not heard a word from her since and he thinks she had some kind of breakdown. He has had to cope with the children’s questions and their misery at this rejection by their mother. Children so often take the blame for these things onto themselves, he said. I thought of my Flo when he said that. Did she feel she was responsible for Ben and me breaking up? Fizzy asked him what was most difficult and he replied that with his daughter, the oldest of his three, reaching thirteen he was feeling out of his depth.

You can’t fake authenticity and we’ve been flooded with emails and tweets from viewers with all kinds of advice as well as about thirty marriage proposals! I am planning to do a follow-up story with John in a month or so and I can see him becoming part of our StoryWorld family. Even Julius was pleased at the morning meeting.

‘I don’t know why that item worked so well but it did,’ he said.

Julius shuffled his running order and script into a neat pile in front of him. We were waiting for the signal that the meeting was over because no one gets up to leave until he indicates that discussion has ended.

He said: ‘I’ve been thinking about the overall look of the show and I’ve come to a decision. From now on I want our presenters to wear pastel colours. People wake up to us every day and it’s our job to lift their spirits and to offer them a cheerful start. I don’t want to see
any
black or dark blue or dark green on anyone on camera. Dark colours say misery, we associate black with death. From now on StoryWorld will be yellow, it will be pink, it will be pastel. Is that clear?’

‘Sounds good to me,’ Fizzy said.

Fizzy is close to Julius and I’m sure he had briefed her on this before the meeting. It was Julius who gave her that first break as our weather presenter and her rise since has been meteoric. A lot of us resent how well those two get on and we are careful around Fizzy for this reason. Some of the team even think that they are lovers. I don’t think so; it looks more like a master and protégée relationship to me. After Fizzy’s enthusiastic endorsement there was an awkward silence in the meeting room. I am the producer who deals with most of the presenters so I had to say something.

‘Julius, I can see your point but how am I going to get Gerry and Ledley into pastels?’

Gerry is our astrologer and he favours a smart tailored look with a navy blazer or dark jumper. Ledley is our cook. He’s tall and slim and he goes for a relaxed anti-fashion style. He’ll come in wearing an orange shirt with dark red jeans or a printed pattern shirt with worn black jeans and boots and he gets away with it. He has even been written up in a magazine as a good example of street style. I couldn’t see Ledley agreeing to wear a pink shirt.

‘You can put Ledley into chef’s whites. And tell Gerry it’s the brand, the StoryWorld brand. People don’t want dark colours and misery in the morning. They want upbeat stories and light bright colours. I want this implemented straight away.’

Bob the news editor spoke up now.

‘I assume we’re talking the feature presenters here, Julius? News can hardly be pastel.’

Bob runs the team of news reporters and they are overwhelmingly male and macho. In every TV station there is a great divide between the features team and the news team which is why his support of me yesterday was unexpected. Julius gave Bob a hard look.