Chapter Seventeen Pictures of You
When Josie called Patty to see if she knew anyone who understood live streaming or digital channels, it set off a chain reaction. Patty called Frankie, her former agent. He was delighted to hear from her and asked if she wanted an audition for a home-shopping channel. The company producing the show would also be able to advise us on the live wedding channel if we won the bid for the island. And so we find ourselves with an appointment to talk about our idea.
After work Charlie, Josie and I take the tram down to MediaCity in Salford Quays and we’ll meet Patty there. Like many old industrial areas, it has been transformed of late and now houses internet and TV production companies. Instead of shipyards and canals ferrying goods to all parts of the country we have courtyards selling frappuccinos, and airwaves ferrying news and entertainment. I guess it’s our own version of Silicon Valley and it has a real energy and buzz. I live only a couple of miles from this place but it’s a different universe. The huge glass-fronted buildings that house the main TV channels are like spaceships compared to the red brick Victoriana of the rest of the city.
The BBC moved here a few years ago and I watch as a group of schoolchildren line up for a tour of the studios. They enter the building then nervously stop in their tracks — there’s a real live Dalek from the kid’s show Doctor Who in the foyer and he’s programmed to say ‘Exterminate’ whenever anyone walks by. I bet they’re going to behave for the tour guide now. It’s just a delight to watch.
We check the address we’ve been given and move away from the docks. The production company we’re meeting aren’t in one of these glossy glass-fronted buildings looking out onto the river but are in an old warehouse behind all the glitz. The director of the production company comes into the reception to greet us. We’re meeting him before Patty does her screen test. Completely at home in this trendy otherworld, he looks just like the guy I saw waiting outside the bank manager’s office. I suddenly feel very suburban and yet I did try to dress for the occasion. How come two people can wear black jeans and a T-shirt yet one of them looks trendy and the other looks as if she’s just stepped out of M&S? Probably because I have.
Josie looks very at home as we follow his lead into the studio. I have to say I’m curious to see inside this mysterious world and am glad that we go into a proper studio for the conversation and not just an office. It’s a tiny area surrounded with thick black curtains and there’s a podium (for the presenter presumably) on one side and a kitchen island at the other. A TV camera stands at the front of the space, so presumably it can swivel one way if they’re filming a cookery programme and the other way if it’s a quiz show. When you watch this you think it’s a huge space but it’s really no bigger than our shop. We’re shown to seats behind the camera — just where a studio audience would be. All around us people busy themselves adjusting lights and cables, each of them knowing their role instinctively.
‘So this was one idea,’ says the director. ‘It’s a full show about the wedding. It’s a couple of hours showing the journey up to the big day. We’ll have a presenter interviewing the couple about how they met, who proposed and how — the whole before thing. Then we’ll move on to the preparations, choosing the outfits, cake, rings and what they saw in Formentera. Why they wanted to get married there. We have a bit about the tension leading up to the big day, maybe rings don’t fit, bridesmaid gets pregnant or flights delayed — we’ll find something. Finally we’re there, it’s the big day, time to walk down the aisle. We’ll show some of the preparation on the island and then the presenter tells everyone to take their seats, we’re about to cross live to the ceremony. Cue the lovebirds walking down the aisle.’
He stops and we look at each other slightly overwhelmed.
‘It’s a lot bigger than I’d imagined,’ I say.
‘It seems that way but the great thing is very little of the filming takes place overseas,’ he tells us. ‘We get a lot of content before the wedding and do the edits way in advance.’
‘And how would we film the Formentera piece?’
‘It’s really easy and most phones have good video cameras these days. If we needed to I’d find someone local and train them up.’
He seems to think everything is feasible, so we promise to get back to him if we do win the bid. I guess Patty is up next. I wonder whether she’s here yet?
‘Yoo hoo, everyone!’ — and suddenly I can answer my own question.
‘Blimey, this is all a lot smaller than it looks on TV isn’t it,’ I hear her say to someone without a hint of nervousness. Then my dearest friend appears before us.
‘What on earth have you done to your face?’ I ask.
She looks like a Native American. There are white stripes down her nose, her cheeks and across her forehead.
‘Are there cowboys chasing you?’ I ask.
‘Ooh, I hope so,’ she says, not taking offence at all. ‘This, my dear ignorant friend is...’
‘Contouring,’ finishes Josie. ‘Here let me blend it a bit for you.’
Josie starts to rub the edges of the stripes, giving Patty a slightly more normal appearance. I’ve obviously heard of contouring, the art of giving yourself cheekbones, but had no idea how it was done. Clearly Patty hasn’t either but has been educating herself on the art via YouTube videos.
‘As I haven’t had the chance to lose the ten pounds this camera is about to put on,’ says Patty, ‘I thought I’d better create an optical illusion.’
She takes off her coat and gives us a swirl. She’s wearing a lovely shift dress with black panels down the side.
‘Contouring and bodycon,’ admires Josie. ‘Girl, you’re pulling out all the tricks.’
Patty smiles appreciatively as the studio team come out onto the floor. The director greets Patty very professionally and shows her where she has to stand. Then he attaches a microphone and asks for a camera check. He peers into a little screen beside the camera. Looking over his shoulder I can see the lighting has turned Patty’s odd make-up into a more defined face ― she actually looks good. The director asks for a sound check, so Patty stretches her mouth and starts singing the tongue twisters she always did before a show to loosen her up. She starts with Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers then adds one of her very own making, Red Rioja, white Rioja and a bowl of olives. She has us giggling but we’re given a stern look so we stop. We can’t help ourselves, it’s all ridiculously exciting. The director seems satisfied with the sound so moves behind the camera with us. He then utters the words I have always wanted to hear in real life, ‘Lights, camera and... action.’
They’ve given Patty a bag of flour and she has to pretend it’s the home-shopping product of the day. She has to extol the virtues of it but also has to ask an imaginary co-presenter lots of really daft questions.
‘How perfect do you think a top-of-the-range juicer would make your mornings?’
To her credit, Patty manages to ask all the questions as if there is someone there and as if they’ve told her something really interesting. It’s a bit wooden but it is her first time.
The director suddenly yells, ‘Cut’, then gives a round of applause as a studio audience would and we follow his lead.
‘Word perfect,’ he says, ‘but could we inject a bit of you into it? Roll.’
Patty does at least ten takes of this and is getting quite hoarse by the end so the director calls a break, or rather he tells everyone to ‘take five’, which again I find exciting — they really do say these things then. Patty is offered some water, which she grimaces at.
‘Is there any food?’ she asks and the slender young production assistant who looks as if he survives on espressos scurries around trying to find something.
‘There’s a full Farm Kitchen hamper out back,’ instructs the director and it appears a few minutes later.
Patty forages through it pulling out a range of gorgeous foods: cheeses, hams, fruitcake and whisky. She finds something she can eat easily and opens a packet of biscuits. While she’s distracted the production assistant takes the packet and offers us one, too. Oh my word, they are crumbly, buttery, spicy, lovely, and Patty obviously thinks so, too.
‘Oh, these truly are divine,’ she declares, her face expressing every crumb of pleasure. ‘How on earth do they make them taste this good?’
‘You should try the rest,’ says the director. ‘Can someone make Patty a plate of the other goodies, please?’
The assistant plates up samples from the rest of the hamper and lays them out on the kitchen island. Patty needs no invitation to go over and start tasting each one. My mother will die of envy when I tell her this tale. She’ll declare that if Patty got all this free after denying her a couple of morsels in the shops, then there’s no justice in the world. I can’t wait to taunt her with it.
‘Patty, could you tell us what you think of each dish, please,’ says the director, ‘in your own words. Pretend they’re options for the wedding buffet.’
She picks up the cheese and chutney, perfectly arranged on a little oatcake then, taking a mouthful, her eyes roll heavenwards. ‘Now I have just come back from a luxury cruise ship,’ she says with her mouth only partly free of food. ‘And they serve delicacies from all over the world: French Brie, Italian Carboncino — no I’d never heard of it either — but this, well this beats them all. Is it British?’
She holds up the wrapping to read it. ‘Yes, it is,’ she declares, ‘well there you go. The best cheese I’ve ever tasted right here on our doorstep.’ She takes another bite and continues, ‘You know that moment when you’re in a restaurant and they serve you something so wonderful you don’t ever want it to end? Your other half is making conversation and all you can think is stop talking, I want to concentrate on this gorgeousness in my mouth? Well, that’s how this tastes. I don’t want to be talking to you lot, I want to be by myself with a glass of red and plateful of this and I don’t want to be disturbed all evening — not even by all of the Hemsworth brothers inviting me to a party.’
‘Brilliant,’ says the director. ‘Now could you try the fruit cake?’
Patty reluctantly pauses in her labour of love and looks at the cake.
‘I have to confess,’ she says, ‘fruit cake is not my thing. Nevertheless, I’ll give this a go.’ She takes a bite and her eyebrows rise in pleasant surprise. ‘Well, that’s not what I expected at all. It’s really soft and moist. It’s absolutely crammed with fruit and they taste as if they’ve been soaked in brandy. Now that’s the way to get your five a day I can tell you.’
‘OK — cut,’ calls the director. ‘That was great, Patty. I think we have what we need. There’s a lounge on the top floor of the building over the road. I’ll just do a very quick edit and meet you there.’
His assistant shows us to the lift and presses the button. We head to the very trendy building we’re directed to and then to the glass-fronted roof terrace, which must have been built simply to watch the sun setting. Outside, the sky seems enormous above the river. An expanse of fading blues and greens reflect in the magnificent mirrored buildings of the docklands.
We all make ourselves comfortable on plush sofas in an eclectically furnished lounge where a waitress takes our order. I love to people watch and could probably grab a tub of popcorn and settle in for the night in this bar. Beautiful young things earnestly discuss crucial subjects (or so it appears) and studiously try not to stare when a famous newsreader or television presenter walks in for their after-work drink. In my youth we’d have the cocktails lined up but this generation sip slowly through slender straws, their mobiles lie at the edge of their fingertips and they’re checked frequently. At first, you think a few of them are smoking but then you realize they’re vaping. No wonder they don’t drink much ― they don’t have a hand free.
The director joins us within the hour and sits in the middle, putting his tablet on the table.
‘I haven’t done any enhancements,’ he tells us, probably thinking that will mean something to us, ‘just put together the clips.’
He plays the video and Patty’s first performance as the bag of flour sales pitch begins.
‘I don’t look too bad,’ says Patty, and we agree she doesn’t.
‘It’s not bad for an amateur,’ says the director, risking physical violence for using the ‘A’ word. After all, as Patty frequently reminds me, she has been paid for her entertainment services.
‘You follow a script, express yourself and stick to your mark,’ continues the director.
Patty grins as if she’s just done a handstand, forward roll and got her first gymnastics badge.
‘But look at this.’ The director plays the hamper footage. It is full-on Patty: her facial expressions, her humour, her stories and her obvious love of food.
‘Your personality really comes through when you’re talking about something you absolutely love, like food.’
Patty looks at me and we both nod acknowledgement of that fact.
‘So I think with the right product,’ he continues, ‘you might be a natural in front of the camera. When you’re allowed to move around and be yourself, you hook your audience straight away.’
‘I do.’ Patty smiles.
‘So I’ll be letting Frankie know,’ adds the director, ‘that I could certainly put you in a few casting reels. I can’t promise anything, who they pick isn’t up to me, but we’ll see how it goes.’ With that he shakes our hands and leaves.
Patty screams with delight. ‘Can you believe it?’ she squeals. ‘I’m going to be on national TV.’
I can’t, but then again there is much about my best friend’s life that leaves me completely incredulous.