The Overnight Fame of Steffi McBride

Chapter Five

'Luke Lewis?' I could hardly find the breath to speak. 'You're kidding.'

     'Why, is that a problem?' Dora asked.

     'No it's not a problem. Well, yes, actually it might be.'

     I'd only been in love with Luke Lewis for around five years, from when I was about twelve till I was at least seventeen, and when I say 'in love' I mean the whole weeping, screaming, tearing my hair out and hanging around outside stage doors passion. He was lead singer with West End Boys, who were just the most beautiful boy band that ever existed. I read somewhere they had more number one hits than Take That, Boyzone or West Life, I mean they were immense. During those five years I would have died for Luke if he'd asked me, but fortunately he never asked. In fact he never even saw me, walked right past my outstretched fingers every time I managed to get to the front of the pack. I never once managed to catch his eye from the stage, no matter how loudly I screamed his name. I even tried fainting at a concert once, but I just got carted off by some smelly middle-aged biker who insisted that I needed to have my clothing loosened and gave me a drink of water, which meant I'd lost my place in the front row by the time I got back.

     'I had a bit of a crush on him when I was a kid,' I confessed.

     'Oh well, now you'll have a chance to live out all those fantasies, because he's going to be your partner.'

     The celebrity singing show had become a reality. I'd been for a sort of audition, although they weren't that bothered whether the celebrities involved could sing or not since they were just as happy to have us make fools of ourselves in front of millions of people as to knock 'em dead. I could see they were quite surprised by my voice, which was a nice feeling, and once they'd realised I could sing they had sort of lost interest in the audition and talked more about the format of the show and the publicity they wanted to rev up around it.

     I quite liked the idea of the publicity because the anorexic story seemed to be running and running. Other pictures had appeared with bits of me airbrushed out, but the more I tried to point that out to journalists who asked, the more it sounded like I was covering something up. I was accusing the media of faking the stories, and they couldn't accept that, so the myth just kept on growing, even though they could see the truth with their own eyes when they interviewed me or watched Nikki taking her kit off on telly, (which she did most nights of the week what with repeats and omnibus editions and everything). I was beginning to see how the newspapers worked. Once they found a story that their readers were interested in they did everything they could to keep it going, just like our scriptwriters would keep a plot line going for as long as they could, only changing it when the public showed signs of getting bored. 

     Every journalist in the world seemed to have decided they wanted to be my mother, even the men, and they were all writing articles telling me what I should be eating and how I should be handling my fame and my career, worrying that I was getting too much success too soon and wasn't going to be able to handle it. I couldn't understand how so many people I had never met could have so many opinions about me. I only had one opinion about them, I thought they should all shut the f*** up. As far as I could see my 'successful' career consisted of remembering to set the alarm clock each morning and making sure I knew the lines by the time the cameras were rolling. We were doing three new episodes a week and Nikki was in virtually all of them, so when you added on the other jobs Dora was cramming in, I didn't have time for anything, including reading most of the magazines and articles, thank God.

    I asked Pete if he thought I was too thin and he got that sort of glazed, puzzled look he gets with most of the questions he's asked. It's not that he's thick or anything, it's more like the drugs have rearranged everything he's ever learnt in his head and he has trouble laying his hands on the right file when he needs it. Bless him.