Star Struck Read Online Free Page B

to change this year. He was definitely going to get his own place. He loved his mum and dad dearly but his mum had a habit of vacuuming at least three times a day and other people’s legs had less rights than the vacuum in her domain. As a result Andy always had bruises on his ankles where his mother had feverishly gone at them with the Dyson. He wanted his own flat and the right to never vacuum again if he so wished. Withington was populated with students and young professionals and, although Andy had left school at seventeen, coming from an area like this made him feel that he had to do something exciting with his life. He couldn’t spend the rest of his life pulling pints in the bar where he had worked for the past four years, listening to students rattling on about how drunk they had got the previous evening and pretending they didn’t revise.
    Andy had always wanted to be a cameraman. And when his uncle Norman had said that he knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who’d once worked on
Coronation Street
, Andy had taken his number and made enough enquiries – and sat through enough interviews that led to nothing – to get himself a job as a runner on the new series of
Star Maker
. A runner was – as the title suggested – someone who did most of the running around that was required behind the scenes on a TV show. The job of a runner wasn’t suited to anyone with prima donna tendencies. You had to be prepared to do anything, Andy had quickly learnt. He had heard some horror stories from other runners – one girl had told him that she had to organise a different prostitute every night for a ‘happily married’ star she had worked with. But until this week Andy hadn’t really had to deal with any egos. He had just got on with his job and had been responsible for shepherding the weird and the wonderful as they came in their droves to audition for
Star Maker
. He loved the opportunity he was being given and couldn’t believe that he was paid – albeit a pittance – to go to work every day and do something he enjoyed. But in the past few days that feeling had changed, ever since he had been given the role of general dogsbody to Jason P. Longford.
    Jason P. Longford was thirty-six, good-looking – if a little David Dickinson on the colour chart, gay but pretending to be straight for his housewife audience, and ruthlessly clawing his way to the top of the TV tree. He had landed the roll of
Star Maker
presenter, ousting Bramble Bergdorf, the pretty but ineffectual daughter of a rock star, who had hosted the show the previous year. This was Jason’s ticket into the big time and he was constantly looking for his next opportunity to upstage all around him but for some reason, one which was lost on Andy, he was a huge hit with the public. Yesterday and today Andy had found himself obeying an exhausting list of demands from Jason. He rattled off conflicting orders like machine-gun fire: ‘Get me a latte.’ ‘I didn’t order a latte, I ordered a cappuccino.’ ‘Where is the running list for today?’ ‘I didn’t ask for a running list, I know exactly what we’re meant to be doing.’ ‘Wear green tomorrow, it’s my lucky colour.’ ‘Why are you wearing green? You look like an elf.’
    Today, as the audition room had filled with people, Jason had scoured it from behind a screen so that no one could see they were being observed, like a velociraptor hunting its prey. He had already pounced on a few people who in his opinion would make good TV: a man who had an industrial weed spray pack on his back and had been singing the theme from
Ghostbusters
and a girl who had brought her own dry ice machine. Now he was grabbing Andy by the elbow and dragging him towards a poor girl who had just fainted.
    ‘Plain Jane alert!’ Jason said, beckoning his crew to follow him.
    Jason had a theory that normal-looking people tried harder for the cameras, if they were pug ugly then even better. The girl who had