Confessions of a Showbiz Reporter

Working premieres as a journalist can be fun simply because of the buzz. You can almost taste the expectation in the air, as you stand behind the rope, all your colleagues squashed up against each other (it helps to get on with other showbiz journos for precisely this reason), each of you excitedly uncertain as to what the next couple of hours will hold. In London there’s a premiere roughly every week. The majority don’t get the kind of blanket national press coverage that publicists dream of. But when they work, they really work, for both the film companies and the attendees. Liz Hurley turning up to the premiere of Four Weddings and a Funeral in a dress held together by safety pins made her name. Borat arriving at his premiere in a cart pulled by Kazakhstani peasant women guaranteed Sacha Baron Cohen a million column inches. And, while Julia Roberts forgetting to shave under her arms for the premiere of Notting Hill might not have been a planned publicity stunt, it got that movie more attention than the PR company could have dreamt of. Somewhere, some film producer is still counting his money and silently thanking a dippy LA maid for forgetting to pack Julia’s razor. So, while many premieres come and go uneventfully, some change the face of showbiz. Who will turn up? What will they be wearing? Will the star of the movie stop and talk or not? With a well-known TV presenter usually hosting the night’s events from a stage in Leicester Square and whipping the audience into a frenzy with promises of imminent arrivals, it’s impossible not to feed off the energy of the night. Fans scream. Paparazzi flashes light up the night. Familiar reporters line the carpet with their cameramen, all hoping to get the best interview of the night. The red carpet has a magical pull. But as a journalist, there’s also a downside; once the curtains go up, we have to go straight back to work. When the final celebrity has arrived, the final flashbulb has popped, the final interview wound up, it’s back to the office we go to write up the night’s events. The guests? Oh, they’re in the cinema having a great time watching the film and thinking about how many free drinks and nibbles they can neck at the party afterwards. But me, I’m quickly shoved back into the real world; working late with only my computer screen and mug of cold tea for company, and listening back to the endless soundbites, trying to sniff out a sexy story from it all. As a showbiz reporter you get close to an extremely opulent and glamorous world – but never quite close enough. Which is why, when my first proper invite to a premiere arrived, I went a bit over the top …

I couldn’t believe it. I had been working as a journalist for just over a year, and was well versed in the art of standing behind barriers on red carpets, waiting in the freezing cold for Celebrity X to turn up and possibly say a few words into my microphone. But now I finally had in my hands what I’d always dreamt of: a proper invite to a premiere. I looked at it again; even the gold lettering embossed on the thick cardboard was enough to get the butterflies in my stomach flapping like crazy. In just seven days I wouldn’t be like all my colleagues, crammed into what’s charmingly called the ‘press pen’ for hours. Oh no. I would be leaving my recording gear happily at home. My time as a voyeur would be over. I would be on the other side, glamorously swishing up the red carpet and mingling with the VIPs: a proper guest at a film premiere and party.

I had to start preparing. The bank of snappers gathered on their ladders might want to take my picture as I arrived; I had to look my best. I studiously practised posing in front of my bedroom mirror before I went to bed each night, drifting off to sleep with the imagined sound of a hundred camera shutters chiming melodically in my head.

Why was I invited? Errrr … That never really crossed my mind, to be honest. I’d had a couple of articles published in the magazine by this point, and I must have thought that I was making a name for myself. This was most likely a reward from a thoughtful film company for a complimentary story. In truth, the whole thing had made me a little ditzy. I wasn’t used to special treatment. Suddenly, uncharacteristically, all I cared about was being thought of as ‘someone’ for the night – the mysterious girl on the red carpet that gets the crowds whispering …

‘Who is she?’

‘I’ve no idea. But if she’s got an invite, she must be famous.’

‘True. Over here strange lady! Over here! Sign my autograph book and let me have a photo taken with you!’

Vacuous, I know. But what can I say? I’ve never been fame-hungry, but I have always been fascinated by unlikely celebrities; people like Chantelle Houghton, the girl-next-door that posed as a star and ended up winning Celebrity Big Brother. During my short time as a showbiz reporter, I’d already come to realise that sometimes the main difference between ‘the stars’ and ‘us’ is attitude. The stars believe that they’re worthy of fame, and as a result, it comes their way. It’s all about conviction. I’d had very little opportunity to actually put this theory into practice, until now, with a red carpet to walk, where I could try it out.

The days before the big night seemed to last a lifetime. I even had to work another premiere in the run-up, and enviously watched the guests saunter up the red carpet without a care in the world. Very soon, I reassured myself, that would be me. I’d bought a new outfit for the occasion, something that was high street, but could never be described as ‘just another dress’. With a low-cut neckline and swishing fishtail, I was out to make a statement. The day before, I humiliated myself by putting on paper knickers and allowing a stranger to spray me mahogany, to give me that LA radiance. Debuting the whole ensemble in front of my housemate Erica that night – who as my ‘date’ was also primping and preening like a TOWIE girl – I couldn’t help but think back to the disparaging comments I’d had about my showbiz obsession back at college. Of course, interest rates and global warming are much more urgent topics of discussion than the latest blockbuster in the grand scheme of things, but nothing could compare to this for pure excitement. Showbiz should be exciting. Empty it may occasionally be, but is there really anything wrong with simple fun? Back at university, Erica and I had bonded over a mutual love of Ewan McGregor nude scenes and perfecting the moves to ‘The Macarena’, so I knew she’d be my perfect companion. The last person you want next to you at a premiere is someone who takes it all seriously.

Leicester Square seemed extra packed that night; clambering through the crowds to the start of the carpet proved especially difficult in four-inch heels, one of which I’d already managed to get unceremoniously stuck in the groove of a London Underground escalator. I was starting to feel a little sweaty from the exertion, and began to dream about the kind of chauffeur-driven limo that transports most celebs to premieres. I just had to hope I could pass off my hot flush as ‘glow’.

Eventually we reached the security men who were guarding the sacred carpet from the great unwashed and, after flashing my tickets at them with a degree of smugness that even I was surprised by, we were let on to the crimson runway. It stretched ahead of us for about 100 metres, stopping just short of the cinema doors – but now was not the time to pull a Usain Bolt, I would be taking this slowly, savouring every second. On our left were fans and autograph hunters, many of whom would have been camped out since this morning in order to get a good position. On our right, the journalists, familiar faces largely, but they looked different from this angle, as if they were more bored than excited. But I didn’t want to be reminded of my day job. I took a deep breath, blocked them out and began my journey.

And then came the deafening sound of … silence. As we strutted up the carpet, the colour drained even from my fake-tanned skin as I found myself being firmly put into place. No one shouted my name. No one took a photo. And, of course, from my colleagues in the press pen, there was not one request for an interview. All I saw on their faces was an expression that said ‘Who does she think she is?’

I soon started to quicken my pace, desperate to get the whole experience over with quickly. I’d hoped to feel, just for a moment, like a part of the celeb world; in the end, I’d never felt further away from it. While a red carpet might feel like home for the famous, the screams of fans serving as a validation of their work, for someone unknown like me it is the loneliest place in the world.

Eventually inside, I had another humiliation to suffer. I bumped into a girl from a rival magazine, like me she was there as a guest, and was chatting to a group of people I knew from a local radio station. They’d been sent a whole bunch of invites too. Still dressed in their work clothes, they looked me up and down, smiled sympathetically at all the effort I’d gone to, then carried on their conversation. A journalist trying to be glam was obviously ‘so not cool’.

Since that night, I’ve learnt an important lesson about premieres: eventually everyone gets invited. Of course, film companies send out wads of tickets – they want the event to look busy and buzzing. It wouldn’t do to have empty seats at a premiere; after all, they don’t want their star to look out from the stage as they introduce the movie only to be greeted by the sight of a half-full auditorium. So us ‘regular’ people in the media get invited. We’re needed only for our bulk.

Erica gave my hand a reassuring squeeze as we walked down the aisle. We took our seats – just regular chairs at the back of a cinema I’d sat in many times before. The sheen was rapidly vanishing from the evening. More people, all of whom looked as if they’d come straight from the office, took the seats around us. The only ‘celebrities’ visible in the vicinity were a dance duo who’d found minor fame on a TV talent show a couple of years earlier. While the ticket may have said that we must be seated by 6.45 p.m. sharp, at 7.20 p.m. we were still no nearer to watching the film. We sat there waiting, uncertain what to say, munching loudly on the free packets of Maltesers that had been placed on our seats. I started to feel nostalgic for the cosiness of my office, with my dazzling computer screen and my trusty cuppa. Finally, after 45 minutes, the producer and stars of the film appeared on the stage to introduce the movie. But, as the lights went down, I saw them slip out of the fire exit with their entourages, heading off into the night to do something far more sexy and exclusive than watching their movie with a bunch of nobodies. I slipped off my high heels and curled up into the seat – as much as I could curl up in that bloody dress, anyway – wishing I could just go home.

Thankfully, I wasn’t allowed to. The film, which to add insult to injury, was terrible, wrapped up and Erica virtually dragged me up to the waiting buses that were shipping us all out to a party venue down by the Thames. I knew that I was about to get a talking to.

‘Holly Forrest, you listen to me. You might not be a superstar and the movie that you took me to might have sucked big time, but that’s no reason for our night to end on a downer, okay? Let’s get on this bus, let’s sit on the back seat like naughty schoolgirls, then let’s go to the party and drink too much and dance like idiots. Are you with me or are you with me?’

I swear Erica could have been a sergeant major in another life.

So that’s exactly what we did. Until four in the morning, if you really want to know. And the best thing about all of it? Almost every celebrity we saw there looked miserable, unable to really let their hair down because they know it’s never good to be photographed looking worse for wear. But us? We could do whatever we wanted and no one would care – two deliriously drunk, happily carefree nobodies.

Home life

In the same way that I only really understood a lot of Absolutely Fabulous after I’d started mingling with similarly hilarious PR women, I only really ‘got’ a lot of romantic comedy films once I’d started to analyse my own life as a media girl. On inspection, my day-to-day existence looked a lot like the plot of a Katherine Heigl movie – without the benefit of actually looking like her. It’s no surprise that so many ‘chick flicks’ have their lead characters work in journalism (The Devil Wears Prada, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days and Confessions of a Shopaholic to name but a few). It’s a world rammed with confused women – women who, on the one hand, are desperate to prove themselves in a career by working every hour that God sends, but on the other wanting to lead a normal life: spend time with friends, have a relationship, maybe even a family. Of course, it is possible to do a bit of both. The fact that it’s not exactly easy, however, is the kind of dramatic conundrum that every rom-com screenwriter in Hollywood wets themselves with excitement about.

Take my friendship group as a case in point.

It’s a Sunday afternoon and I’m cosying up by the fire in my North London local with my friends, relaxing after a hard week (the previous Wednesday had witnessed the BRIT Awards – always exhausting) and enjoying a massive roast dinner. My housemate Erica is one of my oldest cronies, she’s the kind of girl I can talk to about anything. She works in the media too, though less on the journalistic side and more in marketing. At work she’s a ball-busting career woman who rules the roost. I’ve been to meet her at the office on a couple of occasions and seen her in action; her minions flock around her like an entourage around J-Lo. But when she’s at home at night in our flat, laid out on the sofa with only a slanket and a Kate Hudson box-set to keep her company, she turns into Bridget Jones. I know that she could morph into a lover, girlfriend, even wife, very easily, the transformation just one online date away. For the moment, though, she seems happy enough being the classic chick flick singleton for whom work is her only significant other.

Then there’s Ali, a fellow showbiz writer. She never stops either. Shops, bars, even doctors’ surgeries all have their closing times. Ali, however, doesn’t follow such specific hours. Her worklife is always ongoing, a 24-hour rollercoaster. It’s exactly that which led to her break-up from a boy she’d been with for four years. He just couldn’t stand the pace. Since the entertainment capital of the world, Los Angeles, is eight hours behind London time, there’s simply no other way to cover a lot of breaking news than to pull an all-nighter. Four years of sharing your bed with his girlfriend’s iPad was just all too much for him.

Then there’s me. I won’t go into detail as to what I was doing when I got the call, late one Thursday night in June 2009, that Michael Jackson was dead, but let’s just say that jumping out of bed, throwing on some clothes and running out of the door swearing loudly isn’t exactly conducive to passion. Especially when you can’t even remember whose flat you’re in. Not my classiest moment, but if I’m called in to do a shift, I’m called in to do a shift. As I sat forlornly in the back of the cab that Thursday night, trying to smooth my barnet into something that didn’t look so obviously like ‘sex hair’, I could already imagine Drew Barrymore signing on for my biopic.

The media is littered with examples of what happens when work takes over. Stunning women, ladies who surely would be deemed ‘a catch’ by a multitude of men, are leading single lives well into their forties – not through choice, but through lifestyle. Sometimes, though, my colleagues just can’t meet a guy because they simply don’t have the time or the opportunity. Certainly, there are plenty of careers where the hours are long and erratic, but in the media – especially in showbiz – there’s one extra challenge for women: you’re on-call 24/7, in a work environment packed with more gay men than a Girls Aloud gig … Hell, even Katie Price would struggle to date with those odds.

Indeed, only my friend Danny has a serious relationship he can boast about, although not with another media-bod. Danny’s partner has learnt to deal with Danny’s career by simply not getting involved. His own career – a job in the City that Danny understands about as much as I do nuclear physics – is so far removed from Danny’s job in radio that they keep things fresh by blissful ignorance. Both know their lives require them to do certain things the other would never comprehend, and they just accept that. For some people, your partner not showing an interest in your professional life might sound odd but after several years of trial and error, believe me when I say Danny’s shown us all how it’s done. His home life isn’t constant chats about music or finance. It’s about other stuff that has no link to work. That’s got to be the healthiest way to keep alive a relationship two people so want to last.

Sadly, others find themselves on different paths. My friend Olivia was an events girl through and through, always seemingly at the end of her tether as she put together another showbiz bash or fended off another set of freeloaders looking for tickets to her latest party. She lived and breathed the job, albeit through a liver and lungs battered by regular intakes of gin and tobacco. Olivia would go home in the wee small hours, back to a flat with just QVC and a microwave meal to look forward to, despite having been working with glamorous stars and their publicists all day. That kind of contrast is one that seems even more painful when you reach middle age, as Olivia had. I think it’s this contrast that led to her breakdown. Burnt out and bored with being too sick to work, Olivia pretty soon felt that she had nothing to fight for any more. Within a few months it was all over. Her memorial service was a gathering of colleagues who not only missed their old friend, but were silently praying they didn’t end up like her. Sadly life doesn’t have the happy endings of a rom-com.

So when I find myself working late, slaving over a story about weight loss or a feature on fashion, I constantly give myself reality checks. Showbiz is a big industry and one that fascinates millions – but for most of the time, it’s just a bit of fun. Stressing over something that isn’t the end of the world is pointless. If you do, it could be the end of yours.

Freelance

I worked for the magazine that first hired me for three years before I decided to spread my wings and go freelance. Since that day, I’ve worked for anyone who wants me. When my friends joke about me being ‘a media tart’ it’s only really their cheeky choice of words that I can argue with. As a freelance showbiz journalist you’ll do pretty much whatever is asked of you, as long as you’re going to get paid for it. We dream of the easy, one-off, big money job – like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman getting paid by Richard Gere to swan around Beverly Hills – but, ultimately, we’re more streetwalker than high-class escort.

Okay, I think I’ll stop the hooker analogy there.

I chose this life so I can’t complain. After a few years as ‘a staffer’ I’d met enough people in the industry to realise that I could make things more interesting by being my own boss. With the amount of time we spend talking to other journalists while we’re waiting around for stars to turn up at various events, it’s easy to keep up to speed on what’s happening employment-wise. I knew there was work out there, and my editor at the mag had promised to keep me on as a contributor. Plus, I’d already been offered work at another gossip mag. Working for two rival publications, however, isn’t exactly encouraged, so I created some pseudonyms which I’d use to cover my back (no, I can’t tell you what they are!) as so many freelancers do. Overall I couldn’t wait to go solo.

A typical day? It’s a lot less settled than it was when I was a staff writer. After getting up and scouring my favourite news sites – TMZ, MailOnline, Digital Spy – I’ll either get dressed and head out for an interview or meeting, or I’ll stay in my PJs and get writing. Resisting the charms of daytime TV is the real challenge. That said, on days when there’s not so much going on, though, it’s important to have a rest and spend time with family and friends. After all, you can’t rely on weekends to be free. Recently I’ve being doing some shifts at an agency that requires me to work through the night – it’s seriously tough. But knowing it’s only temporary makes it all a lot more bearable.

News agencies are a hugely important part of journalism, yet most people don’t even realise they exist. The fact is, so many things are happening in the world at any one time, no broadcaster or publication could possibly have enough reporters to cover them all. Instead, they subscribe to an agency service and use their material to fill in the gaps, material created by freelance journalists, like me. If an editor or producer has a space to fill in their newspaper or a 30-second hole in their radio news bulletin, a quick look at what the news agencies have sent over and their problems are often solved.

So it was that I came to have some of my interviews with celebrities used on TV, albeit with all signs of me totally erased. That’s the thing with working for an agency. You’re totally anonymous – a journalist with a one-size-fits-all style designed to appeal to any outlet that might want to use it. I actually liked the invisibility of, though. By the time I went freelance, my feelings about not wanting fame were solidified; I’d spent enough time around those who had it, to understand the restrictions it imposed on their lives. By now the last thing I wanted was to be one of those famous showbiz writers who splash pictures of themselves with celebrity ‘friends’ all over their articles. Working in the shadows, as I’d become accustomed to doing, you find that you still have a fair amount of influence, but none of the hassle. Sometimes becoming well known can be a career ruiner for a reporter. As soon as fame happens, interviewees become wary and put on more of a performance. Things get clouded.

Working as an anonymous writer for an agency also gives you a surprising amount of freedom. Now, at an interview, I can ask one type of question for one outlet and another type for a different outlet, knowing that I’ll get paid for each one. These days I may find myself at a lot of the same events that I attended as a ‘staffer’, but I now have multiple remits and several bosses to please – a great way to keep me on my toes and help me avoid getting complacent. When I was a staff member at the mag, I have to admit, I tended to sleepwalk through some of the stories. I knew I’d be coming back to work the next day, so where was the challenge? As a freelancer, though, you’re only ever as good as your latest story. Without contracts or written agreements, you can be unemployed in the blink of an eye. Intimidating it may be, but it also makes me try harder.

For a bit of extra pocket money, I also supply nuggets of gossip and information to showbiz sites. You might be surprised by how many reporters who are fully employed at magazines and TV stations also do this on the quiet. I’d illicitly done it myself a couple of times during my early career, but as someone always afraid of small print in contracts, I’d been wary of going overboard and ending up in trouble with my boss. Now I’m a freelancer, however, I can supply titbits to whomever I want. All journalists have their sources but many are also sources themselves. Knowing that a bit of information can put food on your table certainly keeps your senses keen.

The last few years haven’t been easy, though. As the financial world continues to hover on the edge of a meltdown that I really don’t understand, some work has dried up simply because companies can’t afford to pay any more; getting a staff member who is already on a fixed salary to do some extra work costs nothing. Paying me, on the other hand, is a luxury that some outlets feel they can do without.

Despite the dangers involved with being self-employed, I love it. It only makes the buzz of getting a story even more exciting, more of a challenge. My accountant may wish that I’d never strayed away from the organised world of a staff job and a salary, especially when he looks at the state of my book-keeping, but I wouldn’t change it for the world.