How to be Famous Read online

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  HOW TO BE FAMOUS

  Alison Bond has worked in the film industry for nine years. She started her career at ICM as an assistant to a maniacal boss with a superstar client list. She later became an agent at the Casarotto Company representing screenwriters and directors, before leaving to write her debut novel.

  HOW TO BE FAMOUS

  ALISON BOND

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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  Published in Penguin Books 2005

  5

  Copyright © Alison Bond, 2005

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  Except in the United States of America, this book, is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  Thanks to Judith Murdoch for kicking this into shape and giving me the courage to aim high; Louise Moore and everyone at Penguin, whose enthusiasm made this experience such an adventure. Also thanks to Rebecca Winfield and Camilla Ferrier for their salesmanship. I am indebted to the brilliant people who took a chance by employing me and taught me everything I know about this business: Michael Foster and Fiona McLoughlin, Tracey Hyde and Jodi Shields, without you I would still be clueless. For their constant support and for helping in the most practical ways, as only families can, thanks to my loving parents for saving the day when I burnt out my computer and my brother Ian for giving me the keys to his Brixton penthouse in which to write. And to Manuel Puro, the first to hear every idea and read every page, thank you for every word of it.

  HOW TO BE FAMOUS

  1. Be Sure That Fame Is Really What You Want

  2. Believe You Are A Star

  3. Enjoy The Journey

  4. Neutralize Negative Influences

  5. Do Not Fear What You Do Not Know

  6. Avoid Overcomplicating Your Goals

  7. Network

  8. Learn When To Blend And When To Sparkle

  9. Accept That Your Life Will Never Be The Same Again

  10. Never Give Up

  Be Sure That Fame Is Really What You Want

  Think about it. At this point you still have a choice. You can be famous or you can live the rest of your life in peaceful anonymity. Are you sure? Because once the wheels on the fame machine start to turn it is impossible to go back. It’s there for ever, like a scar.

  1

  ‘Oooooh, I feel love, I feel love.’

  Lynsey sang along in her dream. Cocooned in a nocturnal fantasy of nightclubs and satin she was a disco superstar. Then she woke up and realized what she was listening to. Not the dance-floor classic but the synthetic imitation emanating from her mobile phone.

  ‘Hello?’ Her voice cracked like an adolescent boy’s and too late she looked at the clock on the wall. Too late because had she looked at it before answering her phone she would have realized that anyone likely to call at seven thirty in the morning was unlikely to be someone she would choose to speak to at that hour.

  ‘Hello, Lyns! Just wanted to catch you before you went to work.’

  ‘Hi, Mum,’ she croaked. She rubbed her sticky eyes and stumbled to her feet, plumping up the pillows she had crushed and smoothing out the creases on the Conran couch that probably cost more than she would earn in the next six months.

  ‘You sound phlegmy. Are you getting another cold?’

  ‘No, Mum.’ She put her hand over the mouthpiece and cleared her syrupy throat as quietly as possible. It almost made her retch. Thinking about the word ‘phlegmy’ didn’t help either. Who said phlegmy before breakfast? It wasn’t even a real word.

  ‘Are you still there?’

  ‘Yes, Mum. Still here.’

  ‘I wanted to talk to you about your birthday present. Now I know you said you wanted some bed linen, did you mean a duvet cover? I was looking at some in Auntie Pat’s catalogue…’

  Lynsey’s mind caught up with her body. Her spirits sank as she looked around her, forced to accept that she had woken up in her office for the second time this week. Not strictly her office, more the inner sanctum where her boss worked; he was the one with the couch, but she could see her desk from here. Not for the first time she wondered why she bothered to spend half her scant pay cheque on London rent when she spent the huge majority of her life in the office. Was it not enough she was here for twelve or thirteen hours every day? Now it was nights too? She should be at home with an extra hour’s sleep and a proper pillow, but because a cab was always too expensive and a night bus was always too unthink-ably awful she was here. Again. And she had meant to go home, she really had. She hadn’t even meant to stay that long at the afterparty but time seemed to contract until hours went speeding by like express trains. Next thing she knew it was three in the morning, she had consumed alcohol on an empty stomach and the idea of the couch, the wide, luxurious couch that, let’s face it, probably had better support than her ailing mattress – well, the thought of the couch just around the corner had been too much to resist.

  Lynsey walked over to the window. Today she lived in Soho.

  She recalled the events of the previous evening like cinematic flashbacks. There had been champagne, of that she was certain, perhaps a little too much. She had danced. She had danced standing on a chair. She’d had a long rambling conversation with a stranger all about herself, about her dream of living by the sea and her fervent hopes for the future. She cringed and hoped she hadn’t embarrassed herself.

  ‘So what do you think?’

  Oh no. Mum. Still talking. Waiting for an answer. ‘Um, lovely,’ said Lynsey.

  ‘And when should I get them to send it? Days are no good, are they? Unless it’s this time, but I don’t know if they’d deliver this early, what about the evening? But you’re going out, I suppose, on your actual birthday, so what about the day before? Are you going out?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘On your birthday. Are you going out on your birthday?’

  ‘What?’ said Lynsey, shaking the sleep from her head and sending the faint whisper of a headache through her temples. ‘My birthday’s not for another month.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So I haven’t decided. Probably. Probably I’ll go out on my birthday.’

  Lynsey didn’t encourage planning. She found that the more plans you made the more room there was for something to throw you off track, to get you doubting your course. Less thought, more action. Split-second decisions were life’s elixir. No, on the whole, planning was not encouraged.

  Her mum launched into her proverbial lecture about the lack of responsibility and structure in Lynsey’s perfect world. The words were different but the message was always the same. Wh
at are you doing with your life? When are you going to settle down? We don’t understand how you can live like this. We worry.

  Too late Lynsey knew that she should have simply said yes. Yes, Mum, I’ll be going out on my birthday with a bunch of friends I’ve just invented to a restaurant I’ve just made up and I even know what I’m going to wear. But she hadn’t said yes and now she had two options. She could defend herself and get into an argument before eight o’clock in the morning or she could take it on the chin, absorb the pressure until her mother ran out of steam. Hopefully it would all be over soon.

  Her mum ripped through Lynsey’s lifestyle like a hurricane, her miserable flatshare and her job that didn’t even sound like a real job. She complained that it was too long since Lynsey’s last visit and even longer since Lynsey’s last boyfriend.

  Lynsey could have tried to explain how she was hardly ever in her flat and how she absolutely loved her job and how Manchester was just too far away for one night and how she was finally, after futile years of quiet desperation, truly happy to be single. But Lynsey had tried to explain so many times before that she knew it would be quicker and less painful to ride out the storm. So instead she stretched out each of her limbs in turn, checking for drunken bruises of which there were none. A fruit smoothie would take care of her head.

  ‘And this call is costing a fortune. Why don’t you get a landline? We’re not made of money. I can never talk to you for more than ten minutes at a time.’

  Think you just answered your own question there, Ma.

  After saying goodbye Lynsey crept out into the corridor towards the executive bathroom. To the best of her knowledge she was the only one who ever used it. It had been installed when her boss was going through a keep-fit phase a couple of years ago and jogged to work. Since then he’d decided that his gut gave him stature and jogging gave him heartburn.

  The warm spray of the shower soaked her short blonde hair as she scrubbed off last night’s make-up. She noticed that her tan was beginning to fade. It was time to fabricate a dental appointment and get misted. Seven seconds to transform a deathly pale into a healthy glow. Fake tan was the new fresh air.

  Lynsey worked for London’s most ferocious talent agent, Jim Taylor, at CMG London. A glorified recruitment agency for the showbiz set. Jim had four assistants and Lynsey was unlucky number four, which basically meant that as well as putting up with Jim’s irrational temper she had his three bitchy sidekicks to deal with. Sometimes Lynsey would get a sense of how easily she could slip into being bitch number four and had to fight the impulse to dispense with polite but unnecessary words just to save time. Bitch number one, Stuart, a camp would-be actor who considered himself above all menial tasks, laughed when she said ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and told her to toughen up.

  The bitches weren’t all bad, just different. She had never met anyone like them before. They were fascinating. The most intriguing thing about them all was their blasé attitude to the glamour their jobs gave their lives. Sometimes Alice, bitch number two, a terribly ambitious trust-fund type, said she’d had enough, the stress wasn’t worth it and pointed at the frown line between her eyebrows as evidence. This happened frequently. Alice loved to complain. At these times Lynsey wanted to shake Alice’s head to force her eyes open and make her see how lucky she was. How being stressed over flights to Cannes had to be a better deal than being stressed when the economy took a dive or when the queue at your supermarket check-out was getting out of hand. Lynsey wondered if she would ever become so nonchalant. Alice could spot an Oscar-winning actress walking down the corridor at CMG and not even look over to see what she was wearing. Meanwhile Lynsey would suddenly find a reason to leave her desk just to be able to exchange smiles with a real live movie star. It was fun. She loved that it was a job requirement to keep up with gossip and rumour. If an actress was pregnant it could impact on another deal; if a big American actor signed up for a particular picture it would suddenly become a hot project. When it came to lifestyles of the rich and famous Lynsey knew no shame. Yes, she read Screen International now, but she would always read the back page first. As fat as Lynsey was concerned it was only the glamour that made the paperwork worth it. It certainly wasn’t the money.

  Lynsey emerged from the shower fragrant and refreshed, transformed from late-night-stop-out to capable assistant in her chain-store imitation of designer threads. Last night’s smoky, sweaty outfit was piled into the washing machine in the office kitchen.

  When Lynsey first started at CMG she had thought it was odd but generous that the office had laundry facilities; now she realized that if it didn’t she would never have the time to do laundry in her seventy-hour week and the CMG bosses were just ensuring that their staff were well presented. She had thought the same about the fabulous coffee. Now she was addicted to caffeine and hadn’t eaten breakfast at home in four months. It helped with the early starts.

  Fiona, bitch number three and not really a bitch at all but give her time, was the first in. She smiled and said hello and gave Lynsey a croissant, making Lynsey feel immediately guilty for the bitch-number-three tag. Strikingly beautiful with a glossy mane of blonde hair, Fiona made Lynsey regret her bleached blonde crop on a daily basis. She tugged at her wispy fringe. Maybe it was time to dye it once more; she’d flirted with black last month and it hadn’t worked out… maybe a softer brown with red highlights? If she only had the patience she would grow it long again. She opened her notebook and began making a list of tasks for the day. At the top she wrote ‘hair dye’.

  Alice arrived half an hour later, screaming into her hands-free mobile phone, the discreet earpiece making it look as though she was screaming at herself. Stuart was late as usual. His wide pupils and manic greeting made Lynsey wonder if he had even been home. Finally Jim Taylor arrived. You could hear him coming. If he wasn’t bellowing at someone important at the other end of the line he was bellowing at someone decidedly unimportant who was unfortunate enough to get in his way. He was an extremely ugly man. He must have been terrorized at school and that was why he had turned out to be such a bully.

  ‘List! List! List!’

  Jim had a list of numbers he had to call each day. The list was the most important piece of paper in the office. Jim had left it in a cab once and almost had a breakdown. Every night Stuart updated the list, carrying over the calls he hadn’t reached, adding new ones. This was Jim’s way of asking for it.

  Stuart, Fiona and Alice followed Jim into his office and shut the door, leaving Lynsey to answer the calls and take their messages. This was the routine. In an hour or less they’d emerge and bark orders at Lynsey one by one, giving her enough work for two days in addition to all the uninspiring press requests she handled that already took her a normal eight-hour day.

  The only time Jim spoke to her was to demand something and she was always eager to please. Staff turnover at CMG was notoriously high and all the assistants knew when they arrived at work each morning that any day could be their last. No notice, no warning, no pay-off, just go. Lynsey didn’t want to lose her job. It was the best thing that had ever happened to her. London and the film industry were like a dream come true. And she was good at it. She had been here almost a year and that was a long time for a slightly forgetful girl from the north. She wanted to work hard, learn a lot and go to as many parties as she could gatecrash. The standard of these parties could be ridiculously high. In the last month alone she had eaten caviar off an ice sculpture, drunk passion fruit champagne cocktails and eaten her first oyster.

  Yesterday she had received her first official party invitation. This envelope was actually addressed to her as opposed to her usual method of entry: giving a fake RSVP for some out-of-town celebrity and pocketing the subsequent ticket as she opened the mail. All the assistants did it, even the three glamour pusses she worked with. In fact, they had been known to suck up to Lynsey because she handled press and mail and so was always the first to know. Once she had persuaded olive-skinned Stuart to pre
tend he was Rutger Hauer so that she could be his plus one at the afterparty for some premiere.

  Seeing her own name on an invitation made her feel like she was special. Even if it was just a crappy chat-show launch that would probably mean zero celebrity count and a pay bar.

  Jim knocked loudly on the window that separated him from her office. He beckoned for her to come in.

  ‘We’re all off at one, remember? The company lunch. If anyone important calls then tell them I’ll call them back this evening. Everyone else can fuck off.’

  Jim was a very direct communicator. He didn’t believe in unnecessary words. As a result the office was not the kind of place you’d want your grandmother to visit, but at least you knew exactly where you stood. This was one of the things that made Jim Taylor the very best in London.

  The company lunch was one party that Lynsey couldn’t gatecrash. Someone had to watch the phones. Everyone acted like it was a grave responsibility and one that Lynsey should be terrified of facing. She was looking forward to the peace and quiet. How hard could it be to take a few messages?

  ‘But if Bob Rosenburg calls then interrupt me,’ said Jim.

  One of his clients, Melanie Chaplin, had been cast in a movie that Bob was producing and ever since then Jim had been desperate to speak to him and make nice. A potential new friend in a powerful place if he could just get his calls returned. He had left word twice and heard nothing. He didn’t want to call again in case he looked needy. For such a powerful man Jim was surprisingly paranoid.

  Melanie Chaplin was one of Lynsey’s favourite clients. Low maintenance and very talented. The best combination. It also helped that Melanie remembered her name. Sometimes Jim couldn’t even manage that.

  ‘If you can’t get the mobile then call the Groucho and have them get me, if you can’t get the Groucho then come and get me yourself, I don’t care, but if Bob Rosenburg calls you get me. Okay?’