there’s never a preamble with Liz. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but did you or didn’t you just accept the use of a free sports car? Live on air? In front of six hundred and fifty thousand viewers?’
‘Well…yes, but…’
‘You are presumably aware that it’s an unwritten rule and an absolute no-no for a presenter to accept a freebie of any kind whatsoever?’
‘Emm…as a matter of fact, no, I wasn’t. But…’
‘I’m afraid I can’t accept your ignorance of the basics as any kind of excuse, Jessie,’ she barks, snapping open a bottle of water and knocking back a gulp. ‘After all your years of working here, you’re honestly telling me you didn’t realise you can’t just shamelessly use your profile to go around accepting free commercial handouts? Have you the slightest idea how it looks? How compromising it is for you and for the show? And, by extension, for me?’
‘But Liz, that guy just sprang it on me!’ I almost yell at her, my chest about to burst with anxiety. ‘I found myself saying yes before I barely knew what I was doing…’
‘In the last fifteen minutes, the phone lines have not stopped hopping, with a lot of people understandably furious about a national TV personality accepting such an extravagant gift while the rest of the country is in the throes of recession. The press department is in meltdown and the director general has just been on to read me the riot act about your stupid, thoughtless, selfish behaviour.’
‘But I didn’t know!’
Now, there’s a horrible pause and suddenly I feel like I’m locked into a death dance.
‘I’ve championed this show,’ Liz eventually says, more sorrowfully now which is actually far, far worse than if she yelled at me. ‘And God knows, I’ve championed you. Because no matter what we throw at you, you do it and come up trumps. You’re a looker, you’re virtually unembarrassable which is a huge asset in this game and you’re completely at ease in front of a camera. Most of all though, you’ve got something that can’t be bought or sold; the likeability factor. In spite of crap reviews saying that this programme has all the tension of an ancient piece of knicker elastic. In spite of my bosses saying Jessie Would was a carnival of frivolities that had had its day. That’s the exact phrase they used, you know. I fought like hell for this show and this is how you repay me.’
‘But…but…Come on, Liz, surely to God we can fix this! Can’t I just put out a press release saying it was a horrible, stupid mistake and that I’m really mortified and then…just give them their car back?’ I’m feeling a tiny bud of hope now. Because there’s no problem that’s unfixable, is there? And it’s not like I’ve ever messed up before. Never. Not once.
‘Jessie, you don’t realise. They’re lusting for blood like barbarians out there. I can’t be seen not to take immediate and decisive action over this.’
‘Come on, Liz…Everyone’s allowed to slip up once, aren’t they?’
‘Not on live TV they’re not.’
And like that, hope is guillotined. Now it’s like despair is circulating instead of air.
‘But I didn’t know I was doing anything wrong! Please Liz, please. Let’s just consider my wrists slapped…’ I’m actually begging her now, my voice faint and croaky with tension.
‘I’m afraid it’s not that simple.’
‘So I took a risk on this one and it blew up in my face. But you’re always encouraging me to take risks. I mean, that’s what makes me good!’
‘No, Jessie. That’s what makes you fired.’
This feels like a bereavement. And believe me, if there’s one thing I know all about, it’s bereavement. In fact, if it wasn’t for Sam, I don’t know what I’d do. It took me ten years to build up my career and ten minutes to bring the whole thing crashing down in flames.
It’s sometime on Sunday afternoon, couldn’t tell you when exactly, and I’m still in bed. Can’t move. Don’t want to either. At least here, in the safety of my own home, I’m not a national laughing stock. I’m doing my best to block out most of last night, but horrible fragments keep coming back to me in painful, disconnected shards. Word spread like a raging forest fire and before I barely had time to digest the news myself everyone, absolutely everyone, seemed to know. But then that’s typical of Channel Six; there’s times when it’s more like a colander than a TV station.
I remember bumping into a few of the audience streaming out after the broadcast and a middle-aged couple being very kind and concerned and saying they were relieved to see me alive and well. They thought something terrible must have happened to me and that’s why I never came back to finish the end of the show. I wish. Right now I’d kill to be lying on a hospital trolley with a few cracked ribs, but with my job and reputation still intact. Physical pain would be a doddle compared with this.
I can remember standing in the freezing cold outside the studio, frantically trying to call Sam on his mobile and not being able to get him. Then, just as I was howling hysterically into his voicemail, some of the studio crew came up to me and commiserated. Nice of them. Said it was an honest mistake which could have happened to anyone. Cheryl, the lovely make-up girl, even said sure, it’s only a storm in a tea cup, which would all blow over, Liz’s bark being famously worse than her bite. Which was kindly. Untrue, but still well-meant.
But a lot of the crew blanked me. A scary amount of them. The director just walked past me like I was yesterday’s news. Which I know I am, but still, it was bloody hurtful. Then, when I finally did get hold of Sam and was begging him to come and pick me up, one of the sound engineers who I’m really pally with, I’ve even got his family tickets for the show on more than one occasion, brushed right past me. Not only that, but then he flung a scorching look back over his shoulder that might as well have said, ‘Selfish, greedy, stupid, idiotic moron.’
I was probably only waiting about half an hour for Sam, but I can honestly say it was the longest thirty minutes of my entire life. Then of course Katie nearly danced over, beside herself with excitement, shoving her microphone into my face and asking me if I’d any comment to make about this ‘shocking new development’. I don’t even blame her; one minute she’s doing a run of the mill job trailing round after me, next thing a hot, juicy story just unexpectedly plops right into her lap.
Can’t tell you what the hell I said to her, but I do know it involved a lot of bawling, snivelling and gratefully accepting bunches of Kleenex from the cameraman hovering at her shoulder. Then, thank Jaysus, Sam zoomed up like my knight in a shining Bentley and I collapsed into the seat beside him, completely falling apart and heaving with sobs for all I was worth.
And now it’s Sunday afternoon, and I’m still in bed, surrounded by snotty tissues and with a thumping headache from crying all night long. I can’t sleep; every time I try, all I can hear is the whooshing sound of my career flushing down the toilet. I physically can’t move either. Like a butterfly that’s pinned down to a card. It just keeps playing in a loop inside my head, over and over again. I’m fired, I’m fired, I messed up and got fired and have no money and no job and what the hell am I supposed to do with the rest of my life?
The only person who’s
