voice wasn’t terrible but it wasn’t amazing either, acting gave me the giggles, trying to make my hands do different things at the same times just wouldn’t happen no matter which instrument I tried to learn and as for dancing, well that’s pretty much just exercise, and who wants to do that for a living?
Fast forward a few years to my mid-teens. I rebelled. Black nails and make-up, rainbow-coloured hair, fishnet tights and ‘fuck my life’ T-shirts – that was me. However, like any scary-on-the-outside, good-girl-on-the-inside teenage faux rebel, music was my life. I might not have been able to make it, but I could certainly surround myself with it. No more of the cheesy 90s pop that I loved growing up, instead I started listening to proper bands that played proper instruments.
I would go to the local venue a few times a week and check out unsigned bands from all over the country, stopping by the quiet little Yorkshire town where I grew up just to have another leg of their little self-funded tours.
I would watch the bands and then hang out chatting afterwards, and hitting it off with the musicians was just something that came easily to me. Maybe this was down to the fact that – as my Great-Aunt Dot put it – my grungy, punky outfits were ‘suggestive’ and gave off ‘the wrong impression’, but I think it probably had more to do with the fact that we shared a love of music.
Hanging around with these unknown musicians gave me a taste for the music industry (and a passion for band boys) so I started following big name bands around, doing anything and everything to meet them, have my photo taken with them and ask them to sign my CD/T-shirt/body part. This only increased my desire to be famous and to surround myself with famous people – it was a case of befriending the unsigned bands, sitting back and waiting to see if any of them ‘made it’. Of all the friends I made back in those days, some quit their bands, cut their hair and got real jobs but others stuck with it – one of the bands I know is actually getting pretty big at the moment which is very exciting.
By the time I was eighteen, I was tagging along on tours – low budget, of course – sleeping in the back of vans and converted old buses. I’m not even embarrassed to say it, but by the time I’d finished school, unlike most of my other friends, I didn’t want to get a job or a house or a husband – I just wanted to have fun. So, after my A-levels I took a gap year and became a professional hanger-on and I just loved it. I also ditched the scary teen rebel look, trading in my brightly coloured ’do for sexy blonde highlights, and that’s when I became a slave to fashion, rather than dressing like an actual sex slave.
Sadly, everyone has to go home sometime, and one day I arrived at my parents’ house to find my mum and dad waiting for me, armed with a question: what are you going to do with your life? The truth was that I didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I decided to go to university – because, as bad as it sounds, that would buy me three more years of messing around. I wasn’t some ambitious teen, packing my bags for uni with big dreams of becoming an architect or an artist or an astronaut, so the selection process was a little random. I decided to do journalism, because it sounded glamorous and could potentially involve celebrities. It turned out to be the best decision I have ever made because during my third year I got to go to ByteBanter for my work experience. To this day I don’t fully understand what the heck they do – they’re some kind of techy news website – but I enjoyed my time there and I really clicked with the editor, Eric Tucker, or ET as he’s known around the office. When I turned up on my first day it was like being transported to the future – or teleported to the future, as ET corrected me when I said this out loud. Everything was chrome and black leather, there were all kinds of machines making lots of noise, lights flickering like crazy and the desks were just a mass of gadgets – I had entered geek world, and it was everything I thought it would be. The first thing I noticed was that there weren’t any female employees. I remember asking ET if any women worked there and he replied: ‘most of these guys haven’t ever spoken to a girl, let alone worked with one’.
They might not have realised it, but a lot of the guys working there were accidentally cool. They were rocking the geek-chic look – you know the one, braces, thick-framed glasses, bow ties – I’m fairly certain that if they walked into a branch of Topman, they would blend right in, not that any of them would ever go near Topman.
Most of them wouldn’t talk to me at first but some were friendly. They didn’t make me feel stupid for not understanding HTML or JavaScript (which, sadly, has nothing to do with coffee) and they could have easily put me in a corner sharpening pencils (I made a joke about this at the time, they don’t have pencils) but they didn’t. Instead they gave me things to write about like iPods and music download services and, unsurprisingly, I managed to write about my favourite thing: bands. To make a very long story very short, at the end of my time there ET was so impressed, and so happy that almost all of the office had at least spoken to a member of the opposite sex, that he offered me a job, starting as soon as I’d finished my degree. I didn’t think he meant it, but as soon as I graduated I gave him a call on the off-chance and, just like he said he would, he set me up with my own little department. Two rooms of their huge office were assigned to my project – a main office for my team and a little private office for me. The ByteBanter guys would build and maintain an online magazine for me, but I was in charge of everything else.
If the ByteBanter office was futuristic, the rooms they gave me to use were practically prehistoric. The decor reminded me of a film noir detective office – old wooden desks, proper filing cabinets, frosted glass on the doors and even a coat stand. Anything that wasn’t actually made of wood was a similar colour.
I managed to poach Jake – my favourite member of the ByteBanter team – to come and do the day-to-day techy stuff for me and recruited my best friend from uni, Emily, to help me with the writing and there you have it, that’s how I became editor of Starstruck, an online magazine.
The Devil, The Succubus and The Rockstar
Pushing my way arse first through the ByteBanter double doors, I dodge my way through the desks to where my office is, saying my good mornings to the nerdy guys as I pass through – although I think that ship has sailed now.
I have a go at opening the Starstruck door with my forehead, with no luck, but thankfully someone at a nearby desk notices and helps me out.
‘I’m here, I’m here,’ I chant victoriously as I arrive with the new coffees intact.
‘Well, look what the cat dragged in!’ Emily teases.
‘I’m late, I know, but you wouldn’t believe what happened on the way over here,’ I begin to explain, handing out the drinks.
‘What could have possibly happened that would make the ten-minute walk from your flat to here take two hours? And is this a skinny latte?’ Vicky asks rather rudely, and yes, I am technically her boss.
I ignore her question about my lateness, but as for the latte – what is the right answer? I’m so not in the mood today. It took me two attempts to get her that damn coffee and if she doesn’t drink it she will end up wearing it.
‘No?’ I reply, although it sounds more like a question than an answer.
‘Excellent!’ She snatches it from me without the same thank-you that I received from Emily and Jake.
‘You know what they say, Nicole,’ Vicky persists, ‘the early bird catches the worm.’
‘Ah, but the second mouse gets the cheese,’ I reply.
‘Yeah, but it’s covered in dead mouse,’ she
