Personally, I Blame my Fairy Godmother. Claudia Carroll

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СКАЧАТЬ money. Worst of all, though, is point d) in what’s become something of a monthly nightmare in this house: my Visa bill has just arrived in a worryingly thick envelope and is now plonked on the fireplace looking accusingly at me, almost daring me to open it.

      I’ll come back to that last point later. What’s immediately bothering me now is that the poor unfortunate make-up artist is having a right job of it trying to disguise the purpley bits under my saggy, baggy, bloodshot eyes, to make me look even halfway human. Because I’m supposed to be all glowing and healthy and radiant for this shoot, not pasty and washed out, with a tongue that feels like carpet tiles and a cement mixer churning round inside my brain.

      Then another horrible tacked-on worry; my agent would put me up against a wall and shoot me if he could see the minging state of me right now. In fact, it was his idea that I take part in this whole, lunatic A Day in the Life documentary, on the grounds that the TV show that I present is coming up to its season finale, which means my contract is up for renewal, which means, in his sage words, it’s time to ‘Beef up your profile and hope for the best.’

      The show I front, you see, is a light, fluffy, tea-time, family-friendly programme called Jessie Would, where people text in mad, wacky ideas for dares and then I have to do them. Yes, all of them; the good, the bad and the downright unprintable. So basically, my job is whipped cream and as said agent is constantly reminding me, this is not a good economy to be whipped cream in. Particularly not when you’re in debt up to your oxters, desperately trying to keep up this lifestyle with friends who insist on partying like it’s the last days of Rome.

      ‘Late one last night, was it Jessie?’ the lovely make-up artist whispers sympathetically to me, brandishing a mascara wand in the same, skilled way that a surgeon holds a scalpel. I manage a guilty nod back. Wasn’t even my fault either. In fact, if it were up to me, I’d have been in bed by half ten with a cup of milky Horlicks and two cucumbers on my eyes. Honest. But then you see Sam, that’s my boyfriend, got a last-minute invitation to a launch party that a sort of rival-frenemy-business contact of his was having and we had no choice but to go along. Long story, but basically Sam’s got wind of the fact that there’s a vacancy coming up as a panellist on one of those entrepreneurial TV programmes where people pitch business ideas, some terrific, some crap, to a terrifying gang of business experts, who subsequently either rip them apart or else rob their ideas and claim them as their own. Sorry, I meant to say invest in these wonderful commercial opportunities, ahem, ahem. Anyway, the guy who was hosting the launch party last night is already a regular panellist on this particular show, and Sam figured it would be the perfect way for him to network and get his spoke in early, as it were. And I’m not just saying it because I adore him, but he really would be wonderful on the show; Sam is young, charming, successful, has a finger in just about every corporate pie you can think of and genuinely believes that being good in business is a shamanistic power bestowed on the few. Plus, because he’s a high-profile economist by trade, with an occasional column in The Times and everything, he’s already done loads of bits and pieces on telly and one commentator even hailed him as something of a poster boy for the world of finance, ‘who manages the not inconsiderable feat of making economics accessible to the man on the street’. Blah, blah, blah. In fact, pretty much every time there’s either an interest rate hike or a bank collapse, some news show on Channel Six will be sure to wheel Sam out for keen yet insightful commentary on said crisis. Mind you, it helps that he’s outrageously good-looking, in a clean-cut, sharply tailored, chiselled, TV-friendly kind of way. Darcy-licious. Conventionally tall, dark and handsome, like one of the junior Kennedy cousins, right down to the thick bouffey hair, the toothiness and the tan. The kind of fella that even gay men drool over. He’s also incredibly hard-working, with about twenty different business interests on the go and basically hasn’t slept for about the last five years or so. Oh, and as if all that wasn’t enough, in his spare time he’s written a soon to be published autobiography entitled, and I swear I’m NOT making this up, If Business is the New Rock & Roll, then I’m Elvis Presley.

      Don’t ask me why he wants this particular TV gig so desperately, although he often jokes and says that you’re never closer to God than when you’re on television. I think for a high-achiever like Sam it’s just the next logical rung on the ladder, the jewel in the crown. Although, knowing him and his Type A personality, no sooner will he get what he wants, than he’ll stop wanting it and start chasing some other rainbow. Politics, maybe. He’s one of those guys that could basically turn his hand to anything and it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if he ended up running the country in a few years’ time. But for now, his one goal is to be a panellist on this investment show for budding entrepreneurs and knowing him, he’ll basically drill his way through concrete to make it happen.

      Anyway, I could talk about Sam all day, but I won’t. Suffice to say that like a good little Super Couple (the tabloids’ mortifying tag, not mine) I went along to the party with him, intending to only stay for just the one and somehow it ended up being 5 a.m. by the time we crawled out of there…

      The funny thing is, people think that Sam and I have this glittering, red carpet, party lifestyle; what they don’t realise is that it’s actually work. Honestly. OK, so it may look like our lives are one big, long bank holiday weekend, but trust me, it takes it out of you. It is also costing me a bloody fortune.

      ‘Stop looking over at the fireplace, keep your eyes to me, Jessie,’ whispers lovely make-up girl as she gamely dabs concealer into eye sockets which still haven’t properly opened up yet.

      ‘Oops, sorry,’ I mutter.

      Shit. She caught me staring up at the Visa bill. Which, now that I come to think of it, mightn’t be too bad this month, I desperately try to convince myself. Because I really did try my best to be good, cut back and live within my means, as my accountant put it during one particularly stern phone call which I’d quite frankly prefer to blank out, after she discovered that the interest on my credit card was more than half what I pay in rent for this house. And that’s only the credit card she knows about; I’ve another secret one, also maxed out, that I’m too scared to even mention to her, for fear the woman will have an anxiety stroke.

      ‘You don’t understand,’ I hotly defended myself to her. ‘Anyone who lives and works in the public eye has a lot of unavoidable day-to-day expenses.’

      ‘And what exactly would these “unavoidable expenses” be?’ she politely asked. The business-class flights for a trip to New York that I forked out for? The clothes and blow-dries and manicures and spending money which I needed for said trip? Not to even get started on the hotel we stayed in, which only cost about five times more than I could afford.

      Sam’s unstoppable drive and my chronic over-spending, you’ll see, are pretty much the twin kernels of my life right now. Tell you something else too; toxic debt-related anxiety and a thumping hangover make for one helluva lethal cocktail. As the sainted make-up girl lashes on more bronzing powder than you’d normally see on the whole of Girls Aloud, I do a few quick mental sums.

      OK. I’m three full months behind on rent. I can’t even remember the last time I wasn’t overdrawn. All I know is that the letters I keep getting from my bank manager are becoming progressively snottier and snottier. Phrases such as, ‘Central debt recovery agencies,’ and ‘You realise this will affect your credit rating for a period of XXX…’ have even been invoked. Shudder.

      And there’s worse. Far worse. Up until last week, I was the proud owner of a flashy, zippy little BMW Z4 sports car, cherry red with bright lemon-yellow seats, which I know makes it sound like a packet of Opal Fruits on wheels, but trust me, the colour scheme did actually work. Anyway, I got it on one of those car-leasing HP deals, where the idea is you drive off in a brand, spanking new set of wheels immediately, then pay it off by the month. Perfect deal for someone like me; live now, pay later. Trouble is, I got so scarily far behind in repayments that, one night last week after way too many glasses СКАЧАТЬ