Personally, I Blame my Fairy Godmother

Oh God, I’d completely forgotten. That’s the trouble with airbrushing your past; the people you knew back then can sometimes seem like ghosts from a bygone age. OK, so the real answer to her question is that yes, that’s me, aged about fourteen, with my then best friend Hannah and her older brother Steve, who lived across the road from us and who were amazingly kind to me during a very rough time in my life. We were thick as thieves, Hannah and I; after we left school, we even shared a flat for a few years, which suited both of us down to the ground. We were both eighteen and she wanted her independence, while I had just lost my darling dad and had to get the hell out of our house for…well, let’s just say for personal reasons. Anyway, Hannah and I had a ball together. My life was slowly starting to turn a corner; I was working as a lounge girl in a bar at night so I could put myself through a media training course during the day, right up until I landed my first gig as a runner at Channel Six. Meanwhile Hannah was doing an apprenticeship in hairdressing and it seems like we just spent the whole time laughing and messing and getting on with our young lives. Steve worked as a handyman doing odd jobs wherever he could, but was always hanging out with us too, and it was just such a happy, joyful time all round. But then Hannah got married, I moved from behind the camera to in front of it and the last I heard of him, Steve had upped sticks and moved to the States. And so the three amigos drifted apart a bit. The way you do.

It’s no one’s fault or anything, these things just happen. You know how it is; you try meeting up whenever you can, but then realise that actually you don’t have all that much in common any more. And in an alarmingly short time, old pals become shadowy people who you exchange Christmas cards with and scrawl across them, ‘We must meet up sometime, it’s been too long!!’ But you never do.

God, I wonder what Hannah would say if she could see me now, given that this is exactly the type of show that we used to crack ourselves up laughing at, slagging off the D-list celebs desperate enough to go on them. ‘For feck’s sake, Jessie, what are you doing, dressed up like a dog’s dinner and throwing your home open to these eejits?’ most likely. ‘You look like a right gobshite.’ Hannah was never one to pull her punches.

I don’t get a chance to go with the interview answer though. Because by then Katie has snatched on another, even older photo that brings a whole new set of memories flooding back.

This time it’s an ancient, grainy shot of me aged about four, up a tree in our back garden at home, with my dad standing proudly at the bottom, arm rested against the tree-trunk, like he’s just planted it all by himself. I’m in a pair of shorts, with a dirty face, scraped knees and a plaster on my arm.

‘Oooh, look at little Jessie…such a cute little tomboy!! I think you must have been a daredevil even from a young age!’

Real answer: Funny thing is I can remember that photo being taken so clearly. It wasn’t long after my mum died and I remember spending all day every day up that tree. Coaxing me down was a daily ritual for my poor dad. He used to call me his little firecracker and would proudly tell neighbours and aunties that I was afraid of nothing. But then, losing your mum young makes you fearless. Because the worst thing that can possibly happen has already happened, so what’s there left to be afraid of? I can’t say that though, because, even after all these years, there’s a good chance I might start sniffling.

Interview answer: ‘Yes, Katie, that’s me with my darling dad, who passed away almost twelve years ago now.’

A pause, while Katie fingers the old photo frame thoughtfully.

‘And you’re an only child?’

‘Yup, certainly am.’

When I was younger, during interviews I used to do a wistful look into the middle distance whenever it came up about my being orphaned. I stopped though, when it was pointed out to me that actually, I just looked constipated.

‘But your father remarried, didn’t he?’

Shit. How does she know that?

‘Emm…well, I suppose he did, yes, but…’

‘And in actual fact, you grew up with your stepmother and two stepsisters, didn’t you?’

‘Well…the thing is…’

‘She’s called Joan, and her daughters are Maggie and Sharon. Isn’t that right?’

Sweet baby Jesus and the orphans, she even knows their names? OK, now the saliva in my mouth has said, ‘I’m outta here, see you!’ Come on Jessie, think straight. Right then. Nothing to do but brush it off. I mean, everyone has family skeletons in the closet they don’t necessarily want to talk about, don’t they? And believe me, this is something I never talk about. Ever. In fact the only person in my new life who knows is Sam and that’s only because he was giving me the third degree about my deep background and I’d no choice but to ‘fess up and tell all.

‘Well, you’ve certainly done your research, haven’t you Katie?’ is what I manage to come out with. Perfect answer. I even tag on the false TV laugh for good measure, because that’s how cool I am talking about this. ‘Ha, ha, HA!’ Then I go into distraction mode; anything just to get off this highly uncomfortable subject. ‘So, em, anyone fancy a coffee then? I’ve a lovely new espresso maker in the kitchen that I’m only dying to try out.’

No such luck though, it’s as if Katie smells blood here and isn’t budging.

‘Yes,’ she nods slowly and for the first time I can see steel in her eyes. Bloody hell, is all I can think, this one will make a brilliant investigative reporter in years to come. ‘In fact, I’ve done an awful lot of research on you, Jessie. For starters, your Wikipedia entry said that you went to school at the Holy Faith School in Killiney, but when I called them, they had absolutely no record of you at all. So they suggested I try their sister school on the Northside, who did have a Jessie Woods on file. Yes, they said, you’d been a pupil there right the way through secondary school. They were incredibly forthcoming with information, you know; they even had your old address on file. Which is how I eventually tracked down your family.’

No, no, no, please don’t use the F word. You don’t understand, I have NO family, I had nothing to do with those people and they have nothing to do with me…

‘Emm…or we could shoot out in the back garden if you like?’ I’m gabbling now, panicking a bit, while thinking, Curse you, Wikipedia. ‘Ehh…there’s a gorgeous water feature out there that looks lovely when it’s switched on. I mean, it’s a bit clogged up with dead leaves at the moment, but apart from that, it could make a great shot for you…’

‘In fact, as it happens, Jessie, I’ve already spoken to your stepfamily. We interviewed all three of them only yesterday. For the full afternoon. Fabulous interviews. And you know, they were all so generous with their time, we couldn’t have been more grateful. So, it’s in the can, as you might say!’

Oh no no no no no no no no no no no…

Chapter Three

I should fill you in a bit. Relations between me and my stepfamily are as follows: they can’t abide the sight of me and for my part…just when I think I’ve come to the very bottom of their meanness, turns out there’s a whole underground garage of mean to discover as well.

First up there’s Maggie; eldest stepsister, thirty-three years of age and still living at home. Honest to God, if you handed this one a winning lottery ticket in the morning, she’d still whinge and moan about having to drive all the way into town to collect the oversized novelty cheque. A woman with all the charm of an undertaker and the allure of a corpse, her philosophy of life can be summarised thus: ambition leads to expectation which inevitably leads to failure which ultimately leads to disappointment, so the best thing you can possibly do with yourself is not try. Just get up, go to work, come home, then spend all your free time, nights, weekends, bank holidays, the whole shebang, crashed out on the sofa in front of the telly, with the remote control balanced on your belly. Low expectations = a happy life.

Don’t ask me how she does it, but the woman actually manages to radiate sourness. In fact, as a teenager, I used to reckon that the ninth circle of hell would be like a fortnight in Lanzarote compared with a bare ten minutes in Maggie’s company. And that the only reason she didn’t actually worship the devil was because she didn’t need to; more than likely, he worshipped her.

Oh, and just as an aside, in all my years, I’ve only ever seen her wearing one of two things; either a polyester navy suit for work or else a succession of slobby tracksuits for maximum comfort while watching TV. Which for some reason, permanently seem to have egg stains on them, but I digress.

She works for the Inland Revenue as a tax commissioner; probably the only career I can think of where a horrible personality like hers would be a bonus. In fact, I was hauled in last year for a ‘random’ tax audit; all deeply unpleasant and I’d nearly take my oath that she had something to do with it. Wouldn’t put it past her. Be exactly the kind of thing she’d do just for the laugh.

I also happen to know for a fact that behind my back she calls me Cinderella Rockefeller, which is absolutely fine by me. Behind her back, I call her Queen Kong. Then there’s Sharon, thirty-two years of age and also still living at home. Works as a ‘Food Preparation and Hygiene Manager’ at Smiley Burger (don’t ask). Honestly, it’s like the pair of them just settled down without bothering to find anyone to actually settle down with. Like, God forbid, actual boyfriends. The best way to describe Sharon is that she’s PRO Coronation Street/eating TV microwave dinners straight off the plastic tray and ANTI exercise/non-smokers/ anyone who dares speak to her during her favourite soaps. For this girl, every day is a bad hair day. Plus her weight problem is so permanently out of hand that I often think she must be terrified to go near water, in case she’s clobbered by a bottle of champagne and officially launched by the Minister for the Marine. Nor, I might add, are any of the tensions in that house helped by my stepmother Joan, who refers to the pair of them as ‘the elder disappointment’ and ‘the younger disappointment’. To their faces.

I don’t even blame Dad for remarrying and allowing a whole new stepfamily to torpedo into our lives; I knew how desperately lonely he was, how much he missed Mum and how worried he was about me growing up without a stable female presence at home. When Mum died I was too young to remember her and for years didn’t fully understand the enormity of her loss. Even now, I find it hard to accept; come on, dead of ovarian cancer at the age of thirty-eight? But back then, as a scraped-faced, grubby tomboy, permanently up a tree, all I knew was that suddenly it was me and Dad against the world. And, in my childish, innocent way, I thought he and I were rubbing along just fine; we were happy, we were holding it together. OK, so maybe a ten-year-old shouldn’t necessarily be cooking spaghetti hoops on toast for her dad’s dinner five nights a week, or doing all the cleaning while all her pals were out on the road playing, but it didn’t bother me. I’d have done anything to make Dad happy and stop him from missing Mum. I can even see what attracted him to Joan, to begin with at least. Years later, he told me it was a combination of aching loneliness and heartbreak at seeing a little child desperately struggling to step into her mum’s shoes and somehow keep the show on the road. Then along came this attractive widow; glamorous in a blonde, brassy, busty sort of way, with two daughters just a few years older than me.

Joan, I should tell you, is one of those women with the hair permanently set, the nails always done and never off a sun bed, even in the depths of winter. She looks a bit like how you’d imagine Barbie’s granny might look and can’t even put out bins without lipstick on (by the way, I’m NOT making that up).

With a chronic habit of talking everything up as well. Like when she first met Dad, she’d introduce him as ‘Senior Manager of a Drinking Emporium’. Whereas, in actual fact, he was a humble barman. How they first met in fact: she used to go into the Swiss Cottage pub where he worked for the Tuesday poker night games, only she’d insist on telling everyone she played ‘bridge, not poker’.

I’m not even sure how long Dad was seeing her for before they got married; all I knew was that one miserable, wet day, when I was about ten, he took me to the zoo for a treat, to meet his new ‘friend’ Joan and her two daughters. That in itself was unusual and immediately set alarm bells ringing; because he never took a day off work, ever. Poor guileless Dad, thinking we’d all get along famously and would end up one big happy family.

I was the only one who actually enjoyed the zoo; to the twelve-and thirteen-year-old Sharon and Maggie everything was either ‘stupid’ or else ‘babyish’. By which of course, they meant that I was stupid and babyish. I can still remember the two of them ganging up on me behind the reptile house to slag me off for not wearing a bra. Then, in that snide, psychological way of bullying that girls have, they said I was so immature, I probably still believed in Santa Claus.

Which, right up until that moment, I had.

I can date my childhood ending back to that very day.

Nor did things improve after Dad remarried. Turned out Joan’s first husband had been a chronic alcoholic who’d left her with even less money than we had, which of course meant that right after the wedding, she and the Banger sisters all came to live with us in our tiny corporation house. Me, Sharon and Maggie all under the one roof? A recipe for nuclear fission if ever there was one.

So Christ alone knows what tales they’ve told the film crew about me. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve got a Jessie doll somewhere in the house with pins and needles stuck in it. But if it comes to it, I’ve a few choice anecdotes I could regale them with myself. The innumerable petty tortures they’d inflict on me were worthy of the Gestapo; like using my maths homework as a litter tray for their cat, or else, a particular favourite of theirs, hiding my underwear so I’d have to go to school either wearing swimming togs underneath my uniform or else nothing. Then the two of them would gleefully tell the other kids in the playground, so they’d all point at me, roar laughing and call me Panti-free. I’m not kidding, the nickname stuck right up until sixth year.

And there was never anyone to defend me, only myself, as Dad was always off working morning, noon and night, seven days a week, to support the whole lot of us. Bless him; in the days after he remarried I think he honestly believed we were a reasonably happy, if slightly dysfunctional family. Mainly because I didn’t tell him a quarter of what went on behind his back, on the grounds that it would only upset him. It wouldn’t be fair and hadn’t the poor man been through enough already?

Then one fateful day, not long after they first moved in, Maggie made a devastating discovery: we had no cable TV in the house. I’ll never forget her turning round to me and sneering, ‘So, what did your mother die of anyway? Boredom?’

Well, that was it. Break point. I lunged at her, punched her smack in the jaw and even managed to pull out a fistful of her wiry hair before Joan pulled us apart. There was murder, but I was actually quite proud of my scrappy behaviour, considering that Maggie was then and is now about four stone heavier than me.

Then, the same year I turned eighteen, three life-altering events happened in quick succession. I finally left school, got a place on a media training course in college and, just when I thought my life was finally turning a corner for the better, my darling dad, my wonderful, loving, long-suffering dad, suffered a massive coronary attack when he was in work and died instantly. It was Christmas Eve and he was only fifty-two years old.

So that was it for me. Toughened and hardened, I got the hell out of that house, or the Sandhurst of emotional emptiness, as I like to call it, moved into a flat with Hannah and now only ever see my stepfamily on 24 December, at Dad’s anniversary mass in our old, local parish church, purely for the sake of his memory and nothing else.

I try to get through it as best I can by treating it as a penance for all my sins throughout the year. I’ve even tried my best to drag Sam along with me for moral support/ back-up in case a catfight breaks out, but he always seems to have something else on. Mind you, I think the real reason is that he’s too terrified to leave his Bentley parked outside the church in case it gets stolen. Our corporation estate = not posh and I happen to know for a fact that Sam refers to it as ‘the land of the ten-year-old Toyota’.

It’s astonishing; even ten short minutes of tortuous small talk with my stepfamily on the church steps inevitably descends into a row. Honest to God, it’s like Christmas Eve with the Sopranos. It’s eleven years now since Dad passed away and they’ve never as much as invited me back to the house – to my house – for a cup of tea and a Hob Nob after the anniversary mass.

Well, you know what? Good luck to them. Whatever crap they’ve told the TV crew about me, I’ll do what I always do: laugh, smile and deal with it. And in the meantime, I choose to take the mature, adult approach; complete and utter denial of their very existence. Those people are firmly part of my past and I have nothing whatsoever to do with any of them. End of story.

The ‘At home’ part of the interview thankfully wraps up as soon as Katie cops that there’s just no drawing me out on the painful subject of my stepfamily, so the documentary crew pack up and get ready to tail me for the day’s feature presentation…me actually doing a bit of work for a change. Now, technically, I’m not really supposed to know what each week’s dare is; the idea is that when I’m told live on camera, the audience see me react looking shocked/terrified/ready to bolt for the hills/whatever. But the thing is, half the time you’d need to be a right eejit not to cop on to what’s coming your way.

So when the production office call me and tell me to be at the Mondello Park racing track in an hour, I’m guessing the dare won’t involve tightrope walking over the River Liffey. Which, by the way, I did have to do once and of course, much to everyone’s amusement fell into the gakky, slimy, rat-infested water below.

Anyway, my point is, working in TV is brilliant, but glamorous it ain’t.

‘Are you driving yourself, Jessie?’ Katie calls over to me as the crew clamber into the unit minivan, just as we’re all getting ready to leave my front garden and hit the road. Next thing, I can physically see her getting a ‘light bulb over the head’ eureka moment. ‘Oh, wait now, I’ve a fabulous idea! Why don’t we get a shot of you driving through the gates on your way to work? Where do you keep your car anyway? Do you park it in the garage? I’m sure you must drive something zippy and fabulous!’

Please, please, please dear lovely God, please don’t let them ask me to open up the garage door and see that it’s empty.

‘Actually…emmmm…I’m afraid…the thing is…well, you see, there’s a bit of a problem with my car…’ Stolen car story, remember the stolen car story…

‘In for a service, is it?’

Oh wait now, that’s miles better.

‘Yes, that’s right. It’s, emm, in for a service.’

Phew.

So Jessie Would goes out live on Saturday at 7 p.m. for thirty minutes with one commercial break; classic family-friendly, tea-time TV. The format is simple. Emma is in studio in front of a live audience, and does a lot of interacting with them, getting them to bet on whether I’ll actually manage to do the dare or whether I’ll fall flat on my face, then giving out sponsored prizes if they guess right. It can be pretty tricky to predict; my success rate would be about fifty-fifty. But then in the sage words of Liz Walsh, Head of Television and, I think, a fan of the show, seeing as how she’s the one who keeps on recommissioning it, it’s not about my succeeding or failing on each weekly dare, it’s about making a complete tit of myself every week, live to the nation. She reckons the secret of lowest common denominator TV is that it should always appeal to a kid of about twelve and then you’re laughing.

There’s not a day goes by that I don’t thank God for Liz Walsh. She’s an incredible woman and has been almost like a Simon Cowell-esque figure in my life. Tough as an old boot but with solid gold instincts that can’t be bought or sold. In fact, when I graduated from doing the late-night weather report, then spent the next few years doing random reporting from places where no one else could be arsed going, she was the one who first spotted me and decided I was ripe to groom for bigger and better things. Like so much else in my life though, this was as a result of pure chance and not being afraid to make an eejit of myself on a regular basis. Example: one time I was sent to cover the winter solstice at Newgrange and a giant granite crater, which had happily held up for thousands of years, chose that exact moment to fall on top of me, knocking me to the ground to much hilarity and sniggering from the background crew. I was fine, just a bit concussed, but did what I always do: got back on my feet, brushed myself down and laughed it off. Course, three days later, the clip had nearly eight thousand hits on YouTube and when I saw it back I had to admit, it was one of those laugh-in-spite-of-your-self, slapstick Buster Keaton-type moments. It even made it onto the annual Channel Six blooper show.

Funny thing was, the audience seemed to get a big kick out of the hapless, accident-prone side of me, so from those humble origins, Liz moved me to a ‘dare’ slot on Emma’s talk show and it all snowballed from there. But no matter what challenge Jessie Would throws up at me week after week, her wise words are forever ringing in my ears. ‘Fall on your face and get covered in as much shite as you possibly can, then haul yourself up and laugh it all off. Remember, that’s all they really want to see.’

And so we pull into the Mondello Park race track and, as it’s only a few hours to transmission time, hit the ground running. The Channel Six location crew are all here to set up for the live show while Katie and the A Day in the Life crew are still trailing me, so we’ve the surreal situation of one film unit filming another. Anyway, I get busy with the training instructor who fills me in on what’s ahead.

The gist of it is as follows: their resident Jeremy Clarkson will do four laps of the circuit in one of those Formula Sheane cars where you sit uncomfortably in a single-seat racer with your bum approximately three inches away from the ground, then I have to try and beat his time. All with not one, but two cameras pointing at me. It’s all very Monaco Grand Prix looking, chequered flags, the whole works and everyone here keeps referring to it as a ‘time attack’. Anyway, that’s the doddley part. The high blood pressure bit right after any dare is when I’m biked back into Channel Six at speed, clinging on to the driver for dear life, then race into studio while the commercial break is being aired, still panting and dripping with sweat. Whereupon a graceful, elegant Emma will interview me about the whole experience, the highs, the lows etc. Then we show footage of me doing the dare, looking petrified and to keep Liz happy, hopefully all caked in mud and crap. Then the ta-daa moment when Emma reveals how many of the audience thought I’d actually make it versus how many thought I’d end up in the A&E. Cue everyone going home with a prize, roll credits and administer Valium to myself and Emma. All done and dusted just in time for the Lotto draw. Before we go through the safety instructions, I slip off into a locker room to change into the scarlet red jumpsuit and safety helmet they’ve kitted me out with, but just as I’m standing semi-naked in my bra and knickers, the door behind me opens.

‘Jessie?’

I look up to see Katie, microphone in hand, camera at her shoulder, peering around the door.