was on the verge of ringing the police when I found a letter on my doorstep telling me it had actually been repossessed. Course I was way too morto to tell anyone the actual truth, so I decided the best humiliation-avoidance tactic was to stick to my original ‘stolen car’ story. Which I would have got away with too, only Emma Sheridan, my best friend and co-presenter at work, bounced into the production office a few days later and told me she’d just seen my ‘stolen’ car in the forecourt of Maxwell Motors with a big ‘For Sale’ sign stuck on it. Definitely mine, she insisted, sure how many other bright red Z4s are there on the road with lemon-yellow leather seats?
So I was rightly rumbled and had to confess all, but the thing about Emma is that she’s not just a showbiz pal, she’s a genuine pal. In all the years I’ve known her, there are two things I’ve never, ever seen her do; repeat gossip or eat chocolate. As discreet as a nun in a silent order about her own private life and yet the only woman I know who’s honest enough to admit to Botox. Bless her, when I came clean about my money woes, she even offered me a cash loan to tide me over. So now, whenever anyone asks me when I’m getting a new car, lovely, loyal Emma laughs and waves it aside and tells me it’s nearly cheaper for me to get cabs all the time.
Whereas the actual truth is, the way things are going, I’ll probably end up walking everywhere from now on. Barefoot. In the lashing rain. With newspaper tied with twine around my feet and bloodhounds baying at my heels. Singing the orphans’ chorus from Annie, ‘It’s the Hard Knock Life.’
Worse, though, I think, as a fresh wash of anxiety comes over me, is that there doesn’t seem to be any end to my money troubles. Ever. You see, with myself and Sam, there’s always the next night out, the next weekend away, the next trip abroad. Easter is only round the corner and we’ve already booked to go down to Marbella which I can’t afford and yet at the same time, can’t get out of.
Honest to God, I sometimes feel like I’m stuck on a never-ending financial hamster wheel where I’m constantly stretching my almost-melted credit cards just to keep pace with him. I’m not even certain how it happened, but somehow I’ve got sucked into a world where appearances are everything and it’s like I’ve no choice but to spend big just to hold my own against all my new, posher, wealthier friends.
This house being the perfect example. The logical part of my brain, which let’s face it, I don’t hear from all that often, tells me that it’s completely mental; the place is ridiculously expensive and way too big for me, but when it first came on the market…hard to put into words, but it was like all my childhood fantasies finally coming true. I just had to have it, simple as that. So now I’m a lone, single person renting a five-bedroomed mansion which I can’t even afford to get the downstairs toilet unblocked in. Christ alive, let it be engraved on my tombstone. ‘Here lies Jessie Woods. Fur coat and no knickers.’
On the plus side though, I really have made a heroic effort to economise this month. In fact, I distinctly remember suggesting to Sam last weekend that there was no need for us to bother eating out in Shanahan’s on the Green, where the starters are so tiny, they’d leave a fruit fly gagging for more. Instead, let’s stay in and I’ll cook, I gamely volunteered. Well, the man nearly had to pick himself up off the floor he was laughing so hard. Honest to God, he was still sniggering two full days later. I’m the world’s worst cook and have the burn tissue to prove it. And for some unfathomable reason, no matter what I do to food, it always ends up tasting like wood. Wood, or else feet.
But the point is that I’m trying.
Take last month’s New York trip for instance. It wasn’t even my fault. Well, not really. You see, Sam and I are really matey with this other couple, Nathaniel and Eva, who are old buddies of his, dating back to his school days, and we always pal around in a foursome with them. They’re lovely, gorgeous people, but…the thing is, they just have so much more money at their disposal than I have. Nathaniel is chief executive of his family’s recession-proof beef export business and basically keeps himself on a Premiership footballer’s salary. He and Eva have been married for years and have two perfect twin boys, with an army of nannies to take care of them, leaving Eva with a lot of free time on her hands for weekends away, charity lunches and shopping trips abroad. Which is actually how that New York trip came about in the first place; it was their wedding anniversary and nothing would do them but to organise this lavish trip to stay at the Plaza, where they got married. And of course, Sam and I, as their closest friends, were invited along. Now I know Sam would gladly have offered to pay for me if I’d asked, but he knows me well and knows I’d die rather than do that; I’m so much happier paying my own way. OK, I may be up to my armpits in debt, but at least I have my independence.
There’s a fair chance I could end up in the bankruptcy courts, but I have my pride, which as my dear departed dad always used to say, is beyond price. Poor darling Dad. The best friend I ever had. There’s not a day that goes by where I don’t think of him and miss him so much that it physically hurts. But at the same time, half of me is glad he’s not around to see the insolvent, overstretched financial disaster that I’ve become. ‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be,’ he always used to say and every time I hear his soft voice repeating those wise words in my head, honest to God, the guilt feels like heartburn.
But can I just add this? In my defence, on said New York trip I did suggest we stay in a cheaper hotel, or even rent an apartment between us all, but Sam just laughed at me and I didn’t want everyone to think I was some tight-fisted ol’ cheapskate, so, instead, I did what I always do. Put it on the Visa card and decided to worry about it later. Because the very, very worst brush you could possibly tar any Irish person with is to inflict them with the Curse of the Meany. You know, someone who doesn’t stand their round. Who goes out with no cash, then expects everyone else to subsidise them. Or, worst of all, someone who hangs around with rich people and automatically assumes they’ll just bankroll evenings out and expensive dinners and weekends away, etc. And correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that why credit cards were invented? To help people like me who may have…cash flow issues. In fact, now that I’m thinking about it a bit more logically, if my accountant is going to get arsy about this month’s Visa bill, then I’ll just remind her that I have a job. My lovely, lovely job, that I adore so much that I actually look forward to going into work. A really good, well-paid, telly job too. And these days, sure that’s like the Holy Grail.
Come to think of it, I don’t even know what the big deal is. I mean, it’s not like the bubble is about to burst or anything, now is it?
I just need a new accountant, that’s all.
Twenty minutes, one strong Americano, two Solpadene and three Berocca tablets later and I’m standing beside Katie, feeling an awful lot sparkier and up-for-it. More like myself. Even if on days like this, I almost feel like my nickname could be Solpachina.
‘Oooh, look at you! You look fabulous!’ Katie squeals in my ear. Which we both know is just a well-meant but polite lie. However, I will say this, the make-up girl deserves a BAFTA for at least managing to make me look like I didn’t sleep the night up a tree, before being savaged by werewolves on the way home; the only thing which might possibly account for the nesty, Russell Brand-esque state of my hair when I first opened the door to the camera crew earlier this morning.
‘Right then,’ says Katie, lining herself up in front of the camera, with a load of framed photos strategically dotted on the piano between us. ‘Ready to go?’
‘I’ve been ready for the last two hours, actually,’ the cameraman growls impatiently back at us, coughing and spluttering like a Lada.
Lovely. It’s going to be one
