Читать книгу Confessions of a Showbiz Reporter - Holly Forrest - Страница 7

I had been fascinated by showbiz for a long time, probably because I came from a very average background. The god-like looks and lifestyles of the rich and famous were far removed from my own sedate upbringing; I couldn’t help but be dazzled by their tropical allure. But as a child sat gawping in front of Top of the Pops every Thursday night, it never occurred to me that I could make a living from the entertainment world. I was far too meek and mild a character to ever be a performer myself; that celebrities had the guts that I lacked to be in the spotlight was part of their mystique. It was only when I grew older, crucially in those final weeks of my English degree when I really needed to start thinking about how I would earn a salary, that it occurred to me that the life of a showbiz reporter could be the one for me. While I might never emulate my teen heroes – acting like Julia Roberts, singing like Mariah Carey or dancing like Paula Abdul – I could at least bask in their glow a little closer. And, who knows, by mingling with the glitterati, maybe some of their confidence would even rub off on me too? This career could be part enjoyment, part psychiatry.

How did I turn this into reality? First of all, like many career paths, I had to study, which certainly wasn’t as enjoyable as I’d hoped it might be. Journalism, I was convinced, could be exciting and revolutionary; the right words, the perfect questions, could inform, entertain and even shape history. Being taught how to do that, however, was a strangely monotonous nuts-and-bolts experience – and, like analysing a joke, often lost sight of what made it fun in the first place.

Let’s take a trip back to the late nineties, and I’ll tell you all about it. Britpop’s on the radio, Leo’s playing Romeo at the cinema and – like every student in the country – I’m ploughing my way through cult classic The Beach by Alex Garland.

Oh, I can taste the pints of snakebite and black just thinking about it …

I was studying at a small town college in northern England. I was actually only there for a few months but, because I was miserable, it seemed like a lifetime. After my interesting and undeniably free-thinking degree in English Literature, this much more practical postgraduate course felt very dry. Suddenly, after three years of fanciful theories and intellectual posturing, I had to be straight and serious. As an undergrad, I floated about quoting Virginia Woolf and had few worries about the future. Now I was knuckling down and preparing for an actual job.

I’d enjoyed writing for the student newspaper as an undergrad and had watched every episode of Press Gang as a young girl; I knew what I wanted to do and was aware that some kind of professional qualifications wouldn’t go amiss if I wanted to be a proper entertainment journalist. This was, after all, in the days before anyone could start up a blog and become a ‘writer’. Back then wannabe journalists felt the need to actually – shock horror – train. I’d plumped for this particular course simply because it had been the only one with a flyer in my university’s careers library.

This postgrad diploma, while adding another few thousand pounds to my student loan, should at least help me to fulfil my dream. By learning the ropes of writing a story and doing an interview I’d be able to then use that knowledge to focus on my chosen field of entertainment. It was a big commitment but – in my head at least – simple. I was confident I’d be joined by fellow open-minded arts students, so what could go wrong?

My peers and lecturers, of course, had other ideas. While the course I chose was no doubt a fabulous one for people wanting to be political heavyweights writing for the Financial Times, my showbiz goals were slightly less catered for. All traces of entertainment had seemingly been deleted from our lessons. I spent my days in shorthand classes – an utterly boring skill which teaches you, over many hours, to simply write a little bit quicker – and getting ‘vox pops’ on the streets. God I hate ‘vox pops’, the technical term for the soundbites journalists collect from people out doing their shopping which you see on news programmes and read in the papers (‘vox pop’, a rather slang Latin term, translates as ‘voice of the people’). Just one glimpse of my sullen face, giant microphone in hand, and the locals would scurry away from me. Chris Brown would get a better welcome at a women’s refuge. This, I would think to myself as I made my way back to college with only the wise words of the local street cleaner on my minidisc recorder, wasn’t as much fun as talking about gigs, gossip and the latest happenings on Hollyoaks. It was going to be a long few months …