But no time to wallow in my rough-hewn crapness – it was straight to work. My first glamorous job was to… type in copy! I sat in my best clothes and inputted an article on thrush. Then an article on the new celibacy. All the while I eyed a basket of Charles Worthington products. Would anyone be wanting them? Surely not? Don’t they get stuff like that all the time… ?
Then Morag interrupted my reverie. ‘I need you to do something important.’
I straightened up, my face serious.
And she was right, I thought, as I headed off to the newsagent’s. Keeping the workers in cigarettes and chocolate is very important.
And so passed my first morning. After lunch (sandwiches from the deli, I went for them), things hotted up when Morag took me to one of Dublin’s coolest hotels for a launch party for a groovy new clothes shop.
It quickly became apparent that I Hadn’t a Clue. First of all, Morag had to warn me off being excited. Apparently, that’s just not on. Then I got into trouble for wanting to be on time. Apparently, that’s not on either. Then when we walked into the hotel and an Adonis relieved me of my coat, she berated me for that also. You see, you never take off your coat because you want to give the impression that you’re just dropping in for a minute.
When we signed the visitors’ book, she ran a French-manicured nail along the other signatures and murmured, ‘Always check who’s here.’
‘So we know who to meet?’
‘So we know who to avoid,’ she corrected sternly.
And then we were in! There was champagne, there were canapés, there were semi-famous Irish people, there was a quite boring speech…
Before the applause had even died away, Morag was tugging me out of there. As we left they gave her a little parcel. Some sort of freebie! I turned an eager face to them and – after a slight hesitation – they handed one over to me too. I was thrilled. Thrilled.
Morag wouldn’t let me open it until we were well clear of the hotel. It turned out to be a T-shirt with the name of the shop and its Irish opening date. Morag was wearily unimpressed. Unlike me.
‘But will you wear it?’ she asked.
‘Well, no,’ I admitted. But that was hardly the point, was it? I mean, it had been free. I’d got a freebie!
Then we had to go for coffee. Morag was going to a charity dinner that evening and needed sustenance before she could face the traffic home to put on her fabulous frock and come back into town.
Sitting in the café, she suddenly sprang to her feet and pelted out into the street. In seconds she was back, with a man in tow. She introduced him as Donald, part of the design duo, Oakes.
‘Lend us a dress,’ she beseeched Donald, ‘so I don’t have to go home to get ready.’
‘Sure,’ he said expansively. ‘Call round to the shop and pick one out. But how will you manage for shoes?’
By way of answer, Morag pulled a pair of strappy sandals from her bag. Her emergency pair. I was EXTREMELY impressed.
Day Two
My first task of the day was one of monumental importance: I had to pick the winners for the mountain-bike competition by putting my hand in a sack and emerging with five envelopes. I let my hand hover in the darkness, willing it to pick the right people, the worthiest people. Morag watched wryly.
Then it was my great honour to ring the five lucky contestants and break the good news to them. To my disgust, all I got were answering machines – why couldn’t they have given their work numbers? Finally, on my fifth phone call, I got a real person and I must say, he did sound very grateful. I may have even detected a catch in his voice. He told me he’d been having a bad run of luck and that he hoped my phone call was a sign that everything was about to change.
After the high emotion of that, I inputted more text (all the while admiring the basket of Charles Worthington products) until it was time to leave for the National Spinach Week lunch. (I’m not making this up.) It was being held in a fancy-dan restaurant I’d always wanted to go to and it was, of course, lovely. My only quibble was that it featured a quite astonishing amount of spinach. A spinach-rich starter, spinach soup, a spinach-centric main course (with a side order of spinach) and – ahaha! – spinach ice-cream for dessert. If only I liked spinach…
Speeches followed, then a cookery demo – featuring guess what? – and it was mid-afternoon before we made our escape. After I’d dropped into M&S for a sandwich (I had to, I was starving), Morag whisked me into Brown Thomas for a make-up demo from an expensive cosmetic company. The girl demonstrated how to wear the new season’s slap – very interesting, far, far more complicated than I’d ever realized – then she parcelled up a desirable selection into a dinky little case and handed it to Morag. I turned my eager face on to the girl – well, it had worked the day before with the T-shirt. But nothing doing, no freebies forthcoming and I felt strangely sullen. I mean, the new shop had given me a T-shirt, what was wrong with this stingy lot?
Day Three
No typing today, oh ho, no! Much more challenging work on the agenda – ‘headers’. You know the couple of sentences that are beneath a headline and above the article – that’s a header. Easy, you might think. Wrong, wrong, wrong! Very, very hard. Much harder than it seems, you know. I spent a good hour and a half trying to come up with a snappy, grabby intro to a cookery piece. ‘If your custards are crap and your stir-frys are shite…’ No. Start again. ‘If your roasts are rotten and your soufflés suck…’ No, no, NO.
Eventually, Morag swung by and without even breaking stride called out two perfect sentences – lyrical, appropriate, effortless. Call myself a writer!
But no time to beat myself up. I was off on my own to the launch of a new range of tights. I made myself be ten minutes late, I held on to my coat, but as soon as they gave me a badge that said ‘press’ there was no holding back my excitement.
There was champagne, canapés and – I couldn’t help but notice – the same people who’d turned up to the other publicity events. The Liggeratti. Then, to my astonishment, the lights were dimming, and before I knew what was happening we were plunged into a floor show to showcase the new tights. Flashing lights and skirt-free dancing girls, and songs about legs: ZZ Top’s ‘Legs’ and Rod Stewart’s ‘Hot Legs’ and much more besides. As the coloured lights played over my face, I experienced a chink of uncertainty. If I hadn’t been so sure that all this was highly glamorous, I might have thought it a bit naff and dreadful.
As I left, I promised a lovely mention in the magazine and the PR girl looked at me like I was insane. Too late, I remembered what Morag had told me. Never, ever promise a PR girl that you’ll give them coverage. Even if you’re planning to. Apparently it’s Just Not On.
I stuck my hand out for my free gift: a sweatshirt advertising the tights. To my shame I wasn’t impressed. Three days and already I’d become blasé.
Day Four
Proof-reading. Very, very important. Morag put the fear of God in me by telling me what had happened on one of the other magazines she’d worked on. A recipe for a Christmas cake should have said ½ pound of butter, but went to press as 12 pounds. Apparently, tens of thousands had to be paid out in compensation.
Handily for my book, one of the other girls chipped in with a horror story of her own – a knitting pattern had gone to press with a superfluous zero and mammies the length and breadth of Ireland ended up knitting jumpers whose sleeves were eight feet long.
Then there was a meeting to finalize that month’s cover. The graphics person moved text around and changed background colour and I made what I thought were considered, intelligent comments. My money was on the pink background. ‘It’s fun,’ I enthused. ‘It’s eye-catching. I’d buy it.’
‘Hmmmm,’ Morag said, then turned to the graphics person. ‘Go with blue.’
Right.
Day Five
The final day.
Made last-minute checks before this month’s issue could be put to bed. Ensuring that if the contents list promises that page sixty-
six has ‘Handbags are the new shoes – fact or myth?’ it doesn’t turn out to be the article on cystitis, that photos of Germaine Greer aren’t captioned with ‘Robbie Williams, our favourite cheeky chappie’, that sort of thing.
Then I sat in on a meeting with Morag and deputies while they flatplanned the next edition. This was both easier and more difficult than I’d expected. Some things are givens – like horoscopes and books pages. But other stuff – like interviews and features – is trickier. There has to be the right balance of serious and light. And if a rival mag has covered something or someone recently, it immediately becomes as untouchable as radioactive waste. Very, very difficult. They asked me if I had any suggestions. After pretending to give it some thought, I asked ultra-casually, ‘Will you be doing any hair-care pieces… ?’
My last duty was that evening – attending a big, televised fashion show. When I realized I was seated three rows from the stage, I tried to look world-weary and unimpressed. I suspect I made a bad job of it. Within seconds of the x-ray-skinny models starting their march down the catwalk, I was plunged into a fierce determination never to eat again. Other than that, I had a great time.
As I got up to leave, I tucked my basket of Charles Worthington products under my arm, but Morag had one final piece of advice for me. She murmured discreetly that I shouldn’t say that I thought the models wearing Dries Van Noten looked like they’d been at the dressing-up box. It Just Wasn’t On.
Previously unpublished.
Planes, Trains and Ought-to-know-betters
It was six in the morning and perishing cold. I was in Newcastle-upon-Tyne station, waiting for the Transpennine Express to take me to Manchester. As the train inched into the station, the multitude on the platform surged forward and it became clear that I wouldn’t be needing my first-class ticket. Because, once again, the train had no first-class compartment. Ah, the joys of book promotion! I’d already spent ten days traipsing up and down the UK, publicizing Rachel’s Holiday. Even though Penguin had furnished me with first-class tickets for every journey, they were shag-all use to me if the train was like the Dart (Dublin’s version of the Underground).
And off to Manchester for Evelyn the publicity girl and me. The train was exactly like a Dart. Especially in terms of speed, catering trolleys and, above all, ‘comfort’ facilities (in other words, there was no loo). We stopped at every single station on the 220-mile stretch of track.
Things got good in York, when an entire department of telesales girls got on, on a works outing to the Coronation Street studios in Manchester. A girl who called herself ‘Mandeh’ sat beside me and told me her life story. I heard of her fiancé Nigel, whom she relieves of his wages every Friday night, so that if he wants to go out on the sauce he has to ask Mandeh for money. ‘Treat ’em mean,’ she muttered grimly. ‘Keep ’em keen,’ I finished for her. She stared at me in surprise. ‘Eeh, I never heard that before,’ she said. ‘How’s it go again?’
Next, Mandeh held forth in an extremely loud voice about the injustice of someone called ‘Emileh’ getting three Saturdays off in a row, while poor Mandeh hadn’t had a Saturday off in a month. ‘Like as like, luv, it weren’t pigging fair,’ she complained, staring hard at a cringing woman whom I took to be Emileh.
Many hours later, we arrived in Manchester. After I’d sprinted to the Ladies’ we were met by a plump, balding man called Ernie who drove us to a town about two hours south of Manchester, where I was doing a book signing. Ernie had driven all the ‘greats’ in his time, he informed me – Tom Jones, Abba, Engelbert Humperdinck, even President Jimmy Carter. ‘Although he wasn’t the president at the time,’ Ernie admitted. ‘But Tom Jones – I saved his life. Crowds of women, hysterical for him, and I got him away to safety. They’d have killed him. But what a way to die…’ Ernie suddenly went all wistful and silent.
The bookshop was in a pedestrian precinct, which concerned Ernie greatly. ‘I’m not sure I can get the car around to the back entrance,’ he said anxiously. ‘Normally I’d be able to get you in via the goods-inwards part, but I’m not sure we can manage it this time.’ Baffled, I told him that the front door of the shop would do fine and he blanched. ‘But the crowds,’ he said, panic-stricken. ‘I know! I’ve a blanket in the boot. We can cover you with that and Evelyn and I will rush you through. I’ll radio ahead and let them know you’re coming.’ His eyes were narrowed in anticipation and it was clear there was a film running in his head where the part of Ernie was being played by Clint Eastwood.
‘Marian will be fine,’ Evelyn spelt out gently for him. ‘People who come to book signings aren’t like people who go to Tom Jones concerts.’ Reluctantly, sulkily, Ernie gave in, and watched Evelyn and me walk the ten yards to the bookshop, shaking his head, prophesying that no good would come of this. And he was right, although not in the way that he’d anticipated.
Book signings are a tricky business. I’ve done some where a queue forms an hour before I arrive, and I’ve done others where no one comes at all. Like this one.
I sat at a mahogany table, almost obscured by unsold copies of Rachel’s Holiday, and fixed a rictus grin on my face for a very long time. I amused myself by watching the tumbleweed blow up and down the shop. Eventually, after what seemed like several hours, a man approached me. My heart leapt, then plummeted again when it turned out that he just wanted to know where the science-fiction section was. Many millennia later, an elderly woman came up to the table. ‘Where are the Diana books?’ she demanded. I explained to her that I didn’t work there, so I couldn’t help her. ‘Well, what are you doing sitting here if you don’t work here?’ She was outraged. Meekly, I tried to explain the concept of book signing to her. ‘So you’ve written this book?’ she finally grasped. ‘Well, would I like it?’ I thought of the scenes of debauched drug-taking and dangerous sex in Rachel’s Holiday, then I looked at the woman, at her grey, fleece-lined moon boots, her transparent plastic raincoat, her brown string shopping bag. ‘Yes,’ I said firmly. ‘You’d love it!’
Then I asked her what she was called so that I could sign the book for her. ‘Oh no, I’ll not tell you my name,’ she said triumphantly. ‘They say Big Brother is watching you. Well, he’s not watching me.’ Then she scooped up the book and left the shop without paying.
Time to go, but no sign of Ernie. Evelyn’s phone rang. It was Ernie. He was round the back, had finally managed to get the car there. I gave a last sorrowful look at the entirely empty shop, before being led through labyrinthine corridors and a grey metal fire door into the outside world.
Among the loading bays, bins and cardboard boxes, Ernie stood holding a blanket. He looked like a bull-fighter. ‘No!’ Evelyn shouted at him, as he made to bag me. ‘Ah, boo,’ Ernie pouted, putting the blanket aside and kicking at non-existent stones.
Back to Manchester. Radio stations, journalists, more bookshops, each visit delayed by half an hour as Ernie insisted on negotiating Mancunian traffic jams to bring me to the back entrance of wherever I was going.
Hours and hours later I finally got to bed. I turned out to be staying at the Granada Hotel, literally across the road from the Coronation Street set. (I had a quick look for Mandeh, but no sign.) The road was festooned with enormous, neon decorations bearing the faces of the Corrie cast. From my window it looked like Las Vegas. I fell asleep with the benign face of Curly Watts smiling in on top of me.
And before I knew it, it was time to get up and get the Dart to Nottingham.
First published in Irish Tatler, May 1998.
Fear and Loathing in Los Angeles
I’d never flown first class. Then my life took a turn for the unexpectedly glamorous when the Disney Corporation flew me to Los Angeles for three days (three days!) to discuss adapting one of my novels into a mooooo-vie. Virgin Atlantic first class was everything I had ever imagined and more. The seats were enormous and reclined so much it was just like being in bed.
Across the aisle there was a groovy bloke with dreadlocks and Shaft-type flares.
He wore his shades for the entire flight. ‘Who’s that eejit?’ I wondered. I later discovered he was Lenny Kravitz. As I snuggled up in my double-bed-sized seat, I experienced a pang for my old friend Paul Whittington who was also LA-bound, but in economy class on Air France. ‘There but for the grace of God,’ I murmured.
After we took off, the hostess asked me if I wanted to be woken for lunch. I asked her to wake me for everything, and so she did. A back massage, an eighteen-course lunch, a goodie bag of Molton Brown cosmetics, an Aero ice-cream, hot chocolate-chip cookies, fruit kebabs, cashew nuts, Fear and Loathing on my personal telly. When we arrived in LA twelve hours later, I didn’t want to leave. Even now, if I’m having a bad day, I pretend I’m back there and suddenly things seem copeable-with again.
In arrivals I was met by a chatty Hungarian in a limo. He got through cigarettes at a fierce rate and I subsequently discovered he was the last remaining smoker in LA – smoking is illegal in all bars and restaurants. While I tried to take that in, we passed a crowd of Hare Krishnas doing a lack-lustre chant outside Pan Am.
It was fearsomely hot as we drove along and the grey glare hurt my eyes. The sky looked like it could do with a good scrub with a wire brush. Abruptly I realized what was so odd – there were no human beings on the streets. The place had a strange science-fiction feel to it. And the shops were weird. Gun shops, spy shops selling surveillance equipment, liquor stores and many, many orthodontists. Half an hour later we got to my hotel, which was a bizarre and fabulous Art Deco tower on Sunset Strip (Sunset Strip!). As soon as the limo drew to a halt, an astonishingly handsome young man, with perfect hair, an exquisitely cut suit and a strange, orange, plastic-type look about him tap-tapped down the hotel steps and, with a deferential flourish, opened the car door for me. Meanwhile, at the top of the steps, another orange plastic young man had already opened the hotel door and was waiting with an over-obsequious expression. Yet another young man was eagerly wresting my luggage from the boot of the car.