Premier Leech by Neil Humphreys

Author:Neil Humphreys [Humphreys, Neil]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Marshall Cavendish Internationl (Asia) Pte Ltd
Published: 2011-10-17T10:57:12+00:00

NICOLA bit into her toast and cringed. It was hard and cold. She wasn’t the biggest fan of multigrain bread at the best of times, but her dietician had insisted on the rubbish. Nicola had pointed out, on many fruitless occasions, that she had lived on fry-ups with plenty of bubble and squeak and fried bread growing up in North London, and had never put on an ounce in weight, but it made no difference. She was a singer in Girl Power, and Girl Power singers were under the supervision of the dietician.

Nicola stared at the laptop screen as the latest messages from fans popped up in front of her. It was late, she was eating cold toast for dinner, she was alone, again, and in no mood to be sending notes out to her million followers. What did she have to say anyway? What could she say? She had spent the day with that dirty old man of a football manager—her husband’s employer, her husband’s biggest fan, her husband’s paymaster—watching him grope that reality TV star.

What was she even doing at the same press conference as Jo?

Nicola could sing. Nicola could write the odd catchy melody and a few infectious lyrics when the mood took her. Her media appearances were usually shared with genuine talent, authentic artists; not a pneumatic, plastic fantastic tanning machine, the original brown girl in the ring.

Nicola loathed Jo, but not only for the obvious reasons. She instinctively knew that Jo might outlast her. Jo would outlast both her and Scott. Musical tastes would change; fans would grow up looking for something with more substance and fewer dance steps. Scott’s mutinous legs would one day walk out on his football brain. Age could wither pop singers and footballers, but not reality TV stars. The most fake and manufactured people in Nicola’s business would endure because the watching public perceived them as “real” people. Their winning personalities would prevail. Popular tastes would not give up on Jo; they would shape her. She was already busily working her way through the list, charting her course through the ever-changing directions of public opinion. Lad mag slut, Page Three boobs, semi-naked stunts on red carpets, joining forces with minor celebrities further up the food chain, marrying into the English Premier League, tell-all wife, devoted mother, career woman and reality TV star; Jo had signed off on all of them.

Now she was one of Charlie’s Angels. That had to be worth a few photo shoots, some entertaining “ad-libbed” comparisons to Farrah Fawcett on her reality show and a few teary-eyed tales about friends with breast cancer. Jo would know someone somewhere who had succumbed to breast cancer. Jo always conjured a character she needed to reinvigorate her own storyline.

But Nicola didn’t want to be a Charlie’s Angel. Her management had told her not to put the tacky pink T-shirt on. Even her bandmates, who rarely spoke to her off stage these days, called her and said Girl Power shouldn’t be doing humiliating shit like this anymore.

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