Chart Throb by Ben Elton Read Free Book Online Page B

that’s nine thousand five hundred hours. Assuming we worked a ten-hour day, that would be nine hundred and fifty days! That’s nearly three years we would have to be sitting there behind a trestle table saying, “I think you need to find yourself another dream,” to an endless stream of idiots, and that’s if we worked flat out without a break.’
    ‘I suppose it does all seem a bit improbable when you come to think about it,’ the Prince conceded.
    ‘Of course it is. People can work it out if they want to. They only have to do the maths. But they don’t want to do the maths and why should they? Any more than they would want to watch a film that reminded them that it was only actors reciting a script. We are an entertainment show. My researchers select the most interesting and entertaining personalities to bring before the judges. I am in no doubt, sir, that you would be selected, with or without my help. Just as I have no doubt that you will make it to the finals. Then it will be between you and the public. Your public. Your people. This is about the soul of the nation, sir. It’s 1940 and the barbarians are at the gate. Britain is holding out for a hero. Will you accept the challenge, sir? Will you be that hero?’

Shaiana
    For the hundredth time she began the sentence anew.
    How could she do it? Put down in ten words her hopes, her dreams. Her hunger to be a singer.
    I want it so much , she wrote.
    Even as she set down the words, she knew that they were hollow and uninspiring. Why would anybody care that she wanted it? Everybody wanted it. What was not to want? But did they want it like she wanted it? Did they want it so much ? That was why they had to choose her, because of how much she wanted it. They simply had to recognize her ferocious desire to show the world that she was not a nothing, a joke, a nobody. That was what made her different. That was why she could be a star. Because her performance would be fuelled by the passion of a thousand slights and sneers.
    I want it so much – five words.
    That left her with five more to write. Perhaps she could redeem her application with those. Come up with some brilliant, sparkling, seductive little sentence that would hide her pain and show her to be the brilliant, sparkling, seductive young woman she so wished herself to be.
    Instead, once more she wrote I want it so much.
    Now she had ten words. Or rather she had five words, twice.
    Shaiana reached for her pills and swallowed three. The bottle was nearly empty but she knew that she could get more. There had always been drugs in her life, drugs and booze. Even as a little girl she had never known a time when those bittersweet panaceas had not been part of the furniture in her family home.
    The pills helped but Shaiana craved a much stronger drug. She was certain that if she could just prove herself as a singer, if she could be a star and in so doing distance herself from the demeaning life that had created and defined her, then she would no longer need to find comfort and escape in those pills.
    Once more she tried to focus her tired eyes on the application form, as if hoping to find inspiration from the cold hard commands that she already knew by heart.
    I want it so much. I want it so much.
    With a start Shaiana realized she had written the words on the form itself. Up until that point she had been writing her sentences out in rough on a big block of ruled A4 that had once been intended to contain her schoolwork. Now, suddenly, she had committed herself.
    Not really, of course. She could download another form easily enough, she could download a hundred. But she didn’t. Perhaps this was a sign. Perhaps the truth was what she was meant to write. Shaiana took up the form, filled in her details, signed it, attached her photograph and slipped it into an envelope.

Emma and the Clingers, Blingers and Mingers
    Two weeks later the envelope was being opened at the offices of Chart Throb in London. The person opening