Читать книгу Confessions of a Showbiz Reporter - Holly Forrest - Страница 13

In the same way that I only really understood a lot of Absolutely Fabulous after I’d started mingling with similarly hilarious PR women, I only really ‘got’ a lot of romantic comedy films once I’d started to analyse my own life as a media girl. On inspection, my day-to-day existence looked a lot like the plot of a Katherine Heigl movie – without the benefit of actually looking like her. It’s no surprise that so many ‘chick flicks’ have their lead characters work in journalism (The Devil Wears Prada, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days and Confessions of a Shopaholic to name but a few). It’s a world rammed with confused women – women who, on the one hand, are desperate to prove themselves in a career by working every hour that God sends, but on the other wanting to lead a normal life: spend time with friends, have a relationship, maybe even a family. Of course, it is possible to do a bit of both. The fact that it’s not exactly easy, however, is the kind of dramatic conundrum that every rom-com screenwriter in Hollywood wets themselves with excitement about.

Take my friendship group as a case in point.

It’s a Sunday afternoon and I’m cosying up by the fire in my North London local with my friends, relaxing after a hard week (the previous Wednesday had witnessed the BRIT Awards – always exhausting) and enjoying a massive roast dinner. My housemate Erica is one of my oldest cronies, she’s the kind of girl I can talk to about anything. She works in the media too, though less on the journalistic side and more in marketing. At work she’s a ball-busting career woman who rules the roost. I’ve been to meet her at the office on a couple of occasions and seen her in action; her minions flock around her like an entourage around J-Lo. But when she’s at home at night in our flat, laid out on the sofa with only a slanket and a Kate Hudson box-set to keep her company, she turns into Bridget Jones. I know that she could morph into a lover, girlfriend, even wife, very easily, the transformation just one online date away. For the moment, though, she seems happy enough being the classic chick flick singleton for whom work is her only significant other.

Then there’s Ali, a fellow showbiz writer. She never stops either. Shops, bars, even doctors’ surgeries all have their closing times. Ali, however, doesn’t follow such specific hours. Her worklife is always ongoing, a 24-hour rollercoaster. It’s exactly that which led to her break-up from a boy she’d been with for four years. He just couldn’t stand the pace. Since the entertainment capital of the world, Los Angeles, is eight hours behind London time, there’s simply no other way to cover a lot of breaking news than to pull an all-nighter. Four years of sharing your bed with his girlfriend’s iPad was just all too much for him.

Then there’s me. I won’t go into detail as to what I was doing when I got the call, late one Thursday night in June 2009, that Michael Jackson was dead, but let’s just say that jumping out of bed, throwing on some clothes and running out of the door swearing loudly isn’t exactly conducive to passion. Especially when you can’t even remember whose flat you’re in. Not my classiest moment, but if I’m called in to do a shift, I’m called in to do a shift. As I sat forlornly in the back of the cab that Thursday night, trying to smooth my barnet into something that didn’t look so obviously like ‘sex hair’, I could already imagine Drew Barrymore signing on for my biopic.

The media is littered with examples of what happens when work takes over. Stunning women, ladies who surely would be deemed ‘a catch’ by a multitude of men, are leading single lives well into their forties – not through choice, but through lifestyle. Sometimes, though, my colleagues just can’t meet a guy because they simply don’t have the time or the opportunity. Certainly, there are plenty of careers where the hours are long and erratic, but in the media – especially in showbiz – there’s one extra challenge for women: you’re on-call 24/7, in a work environment packed with more gay men than a Girls Aloud gig … Hell, even Katie Price would struggle to date with those odds.

Indeed, only my friend Danny has a serious relationship he can boast about, although not with another media-bod. Danny’s partner has learnt to deal with Danny’s career by simply not getting involved. His own career – a job in the City that Danny understands about as much as I do nuclear physics – is so far removed from Danny’s job in radio that they keep things fresh by blissful ignorance. Both know their lives require them to do certain things the other would never comprehend, and they just accept that. For some people, your partner not showing an interest in your professional life might sound odd but after several years of trial and error, believe me when I say Danny’s shown us all how it’s done. His home life isn’t constant chats about music or finance. It’s about other stuff that has no link to work. That’s got to be the healthiest way to keep alive a relationship two people so want to last.

Sadly, others find themselves on different paths. My friend Olivia was an events girl through and through, always seemingly at the end of her tether as she put together another showbiz bash or fended off another set of freeloaders looking for tickets to her latest party. She lived and breathed the job, albeit through a liver and lungs battered by regular intakes of gin and tobacco. Olivia would go home in the wee small hours, back to a flat with just QVC and a microwave meal to look forward to, despite having been working with glamorous stars and their publicists all day. That kind of contrast is one that seems even more painful when you reach middle age, as Olivia had. I think it’s this contrast that led to her breakdown. Burnt out and bored with being too sick to work, Olivia pretty soon felt that she had nothing to fight for any more. Within a few months it was all over. Her memorial service was a gathering of colleagues who not only missed their old friend, but were silently praying they didn’t end up like her. Sadly life doesn’t have the happy endings of a rom-com.

So when I find myself working late, slaving over a story about weight loss or a feature on fashion, I constantly give myself reality checks. Showbiz is a big industry and one that fascinates millions – but for most of the time, it’s just a bit of fun. Stressing over something that isn’t the end of the world is pointless. If you do, it could be the end of yours.