#Zero. Neil McCormick

big hair, dimples and lively smile, Mindy was a weather girl riding the updraft, an impression compounded by newly installed breast enhancements. Mindy played not-quite-as-dumb-as-I-look blonde to Gordy’s statesman-about-the-house, tossing jokey remarks and laughing in all the right places, but there was a raptness beneath the make-up. She was making me nervous as we faced each other across a small potted plant and MacBook perched on a modernist glass table, items intended to symbolise the show’s unreliable mix of hard news and cosy chit-chat. Only a glass wall separated the studio from the busy news floor. By some trick of lighting it glowed white and opaque until a story broke, when it would gradually become transparent, revealing a vast room full of journalists frowning into computers and gesturing at rolling footage on flatscreens.

      Gordy famously made his name in the thick of the action, donning flak jacket and helmet to file reports from war zones. But in his new domestic niche, he was savvy enough to understand that it was early, guests were doing him a favour turning up at this hour and viewers were only half awake. He asked the kind of questions you could answer with a bashful grin and well-honed anecdote. Softball, they call it. Mindy was a loose cannon, though. I could tell she was dying to ask about Penelope and it wasn’t long before she lobbed one in. ‘With girls throwing themselves at you wherever you go, that must put pressure on maintaining a relationship.’

      ‘I have my security guards to keep them at bay,’ I smiled back.

      ‘As we’ve just seen,’ grinned Gordy, who felt it necessary to underline gags in case they went over the sleepy heads and low IQs of his target audience.

      ‘And what about Penelope, does she need security?’ smiled Mindy.

      ‘Penelope can look after herself,’ I smiled back.

      ‘So I’ve heard,’ said Mindy, raising one eyebrow knowingly, a look she must have practised for fucking hours in the mirror. Fuck them, fuck them all, grinning at you while they toss grenades. I noticed Gordy didn’t bother underlining that one. I wanted to kick over the fucking table and dump the ridiculous potted plant on Mindy’s head. I wanted to let out a banshee howl that would shatter the glass wall and carry on the wind all the way from New York to the Amazon jungle, where Penelope and Troy fucking Anthony would look up to see the burning eyes of monkeys gathering in the trees and know, with a chill in their filthy hearts, that I was on to them. But instead I winked at Mindy and said, ‘Do you think you could make it past my security? You look like you’ve got a few moves.’

      ‘Oh, I used to be a cheerleader, I’ve definitely got moves,’ she flirted, moving Gordy to interject with a jocular, ‘Come on, you kids, this is a family show.’

      ‘“Come On, You Kids”,’ I said. ‘That’s genius. That’s gonna be the title of my next song.’ And I started to sing, ‘Come on, you kids, let’s rock and roll, but keep it clean, it’s a family show,’ while Gordy and Mindy laughed indulgently and we were best of friends again, filling airtime until, at a prearranged signal, Gordy invited me to perform my latest single.

      ‘I actually didn’t know Zero played piano,’ wittered Mindy, just to say something while I crossed the studio floor, as if she had only just noticed the fucking great instrument set up by my advance crew. Oh this fatuous fucking showbiz universe, this brain-numbing entertainment game.

      ‘I’m not just a pretty face,’ I said, sitting down and laying my fingers on the keys, making the studio resonate with a deep, satisfying C chord. Nine million units of my debut solo album shifted worldwide, I played every fucking instrument on there, and still I got this crap. Didn’t these people ever read the credits?

      ‘He’s a very talented young man,’ said Gordy, as if he actually had the faintest idea what he was talking about. Gordy, who looked like he still listened to Andy Williams, maybe a little Neil Diamond if he was in the mood to get racy. Gordy, born middle-aged and proud of it.

      ‘This one’s for you, Gordy,’ I said, and ripped into ‘Never Young’, attacking it like the piano was a weapon of mass destruction, like the song could annihilate the world and rebuild it in its own image, right every wrong, end every war, cure cancer. Sometimes it happens. You lose yourself. And you know that is as good as it gets, you might never sing that song so well again. But as I hurled myself into the second chorus, I looked up to see Gordy staring into the middle distance, finger to his earpiece, mouthing something to his invisible controllers. Then the white glass wall slowly became translucent, revealing industrious figures in the newsroom. The floor manager was waving for me to wind up. I just kept playing, they could turn me down in the mix, the fuckers.

      ‘I’m afraid we’re going to have to interrupt Zero for news from Colombia,’ announced Gordy, putting on his gravest face as he stared into his autocue. ‘Reports are coming in of a second earthquake in the region, dealing a severe blow to aid efforts for the orphans whose plight has touched the world.’

      Next to him, Mindy had taken on the demeanour of a saint in torment. ‘Those poor children,’ she said.

      ‘Let’s go to our man at the MedellÍn orphan camp …’

      Those poor fucking children. I executed a dramatic descent back to the C and closed the lid of the piano. I hate leaving a piece of music unresolved.

      4

      ‘That went well, I think,’ said Flavia. ‘It hit all the spots. Great opening footage. You were charming, sexy – did you catch Mindy blushing, poor dear – it was a little bit edgy and you wrapped it up with a splendid performance of your song—’

      ‘Half a fucking song,’ I snapped.

      ‘Half a song is more than enough at this time of morning,’ said Flavia, who had Beasley’s attention. ‘It is not a music show, it’s short-attention-span chat, and the biggest sin is to give viewers an excuse to go and make a cup of tea. The MedellÍn thing was great, really. Newsy and dramatic, people will remember it. A number of stations have been cutting “Never Young” with disaster footage and something like this will drive that connection home, give the whole thing the zeitgeist factor.’

      Beasley, who had just got through threatening a hapless TV producer with a lawsuit, looked thoughtful. ‘You could be onto something,’ he murmured, whereupon the minions all started falling over themselves to second that motion.

      It wasn’t the fucking orphans that bothered me, though. I waved Kilo towards the toilets, stationing a meathead outside with strict instructions not to let anyone else in. Even superstars are entitled to privacy when they take a piss.

      ‘Rack up a line,’ I instructed Kilo. ‘Make it a high-speed railway line. Make it the fucking Tokyo bullet train.’

      I was never sure how much Beasley knew about the full extent of services Kilo provided, but not much got past His Satanic Majesty, so it was perfectly possible narcotic provision was part of the job description. I asked Beasley once why we had hired a Hindu homo from Hoxton and he said it was because I kept screwing all my female assistants and then requiring Beasley to replace them. Which was fair enough.

      I took the rolled-up note from Kilo’s hand and snorted greedily. ‘That’s what I’m talking about,’ I groaned, leaning against a sink while spots danced before my eyes. ‘Do you really think that went all right?’

      ‘It was wonderful,’ Kilo gaily reassured me, rolled-up note applied to one nostril. ‘Live TV’s always more exciting when things don’t go to plan. You were in your element.’

      ‘What about the Penelope thing?’

      ‘What Penelope thing?’

      ‘That bitch Mindy was going on about Penelope.’

      ‘She asked, like, one question.’

      ‘You didn’t see the thing with the raised eyebrow?’

      ‘You’re reading way too much into it.’

      That’s not how it felt when I was out there alone, in the cameras, under the lights, with