OverExposure

Hugo Rifkind

Description

All is not well in the big smoke. When a shadowt cat-burglar called Fingers starts stealing diamonds from London celebrities, Macaulay Lewis, a misfit news-hound, scents opportunity. If he can expose the thief, he might stand a chance of holding down his job with the paper. His ex-girlfriend mgiht fancy him again. He migh even get snapped by the odd celeb magazine himself. Fame glitters. But is it all really worth the cab ride home?Expose yourself to the flashiest, edgiest comedy of modern life in recent years.

Informations

• Publié par: Canongate Books
• Date de parution: 16 juin 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780857862846
• Langue: English

Extrait

OVER EXPOSURE
Hugo Rifkind was born in Edinburgh in 1977. Currently a columnist for The Times , he has also written for the Herald , the Sunday Times , the Evening Standard , the Mail on Sunday , the Daily Mail and GQ . He now lives in Camden Town, London. Overexposure is his first book.
Overexposure
Hugo Rifkind
First published in Great Britain in 2006 by Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
This digital edition first published by Canongate in 2011
Copyright Hugo Rifkind, 2006 The moral right of the author has been asserted
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 84195 942 9 eISBN 978 0 85786 284 6
www.canongate.tv
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Mr and Mrs Nipple have popped out to say hello
Which cretin wrote that?
My dad isn t a knife-wielding psycho.
You are going to paint me, right?
You lost a thin one. I m so sorry.
You re looking at it all wrong.
And you like that, do you? Being flexible?
Moreover
I just don t think I like you very much.
Tug MY diamonds.
Cme bck NOW. we hav nEWS.
You didn t even check it.
Are ye blind?
That s a little harsh
The dark and fetid reaches of pleasure
Fingers did it.
Miriam and Mordechai, that s us
It s only a small toe.
Is this a sex thing?
Unrepeatable things about hamsters
Your thoroughly superfluous arse
Who the hell is Mark?
That would be much better, dramatically.
And I didn t send one to you
Just describe the feet
I m not talking about the thief.
Take me somewhere sensational.
Overexposure.
I need buttons.
A tough match for an eleven-year-old.
An inquisition
Full medical back-up.
Foul, but free.
I just got sick of it.
There was a card, just like before
Everything?
What do you want?
It was all bullshit. Media hype.
You haven t got a story. You can t prove anything.
You might as well get them out.
Hello.
For Fran
Mr and Mrs Nipple have popped out to say hello
I t starts, on a Thursday, at the Gazette s Diamond Awards at the Mandarin Oriental. It is a glitzy affair, one that the articles in the papers tomorrow (and, indeed, the article that I have already written) will rightly describe as star-studded . Everybody is here, or rather, everybody who the Gazette believes to be anybody, and who didn t have anything better to do. Look one way and you ll see Sir Elton John in a large crown, followed by David Furnish in a smaller one. Look the other and you ll see Sarah, the Duchess of York, and her daughter Beatrice. Both wear strappy black dresses with diamond pendants, giving them something of the air of a coven. Liz Hurley and Arun Nayar are here, smiling showily near the entrance. He opts for the simplicity of a studded cummerbund, she does something sparkly with her garters. No one will notice, poor love. These days even the Telegraph prefers Keira Knightley.
Elsewhere, moving between the aisles of this extravagant buffet, other stellar heads bob and weave. There s Graham Norton, chatting manically with Ant and Dec. There s Vanessa Feltz and Ruby Wax working as a team, scavenging at the canap s like a pair of rotund meerkats. There s Victoria Beckham, trying to catch Elton s eye, there s Ewan McGregor, succeeding. There s Damon Albarn, Nicky Haslam, Ricky Gervais, Jonathan Ross. There s Jimmy Carr, Julien Macdonald, Nigella Lawson, David Jason, Cat and Edith, Nic and Nat, Geri and her damn little shit of a dog, Kate Moss, Peaches Geldof, Honor Blackman and that kid of George Best s with the raging libido. Everybody wears diamonds, or at the very least diamant , and everybody is frightfully pleased to see everybody else.
I m here too, of course. I ve battered my Jewfro into something more like Lenny Kravitz and less like Art Garfunkel and I m wearing a black tie and kilt combo. The kilt isn t my first choice for what is essentially a work do, but I was stuck. My dinner jacket, I discovered this evening to my horror, is still screwed up at the bottom of my cupboard, now covered in mould from the guacamole Liam Gallagher flicked at my back at the Brit Awards. I ve a plastic dagger in my sock with what looks like a diamond in the handle, but is actually a bit of glass. Nobody would mistake me for a celebrity, oh no.
The star of the show, even before anything happens, is of course Gemma Conrad. You ll have heard of her by now. On a normal night, she might not stand out - she s got a face you are sure you recognise, maybe from Big Brother , maybe from Hollyoaks , but one you can never quite pin down until you read the words Satellite TV Weathergirl in the caption under her photo. Tonight though she s making heads turn. A perky brunette, below the waist she s wearing a shimmering silver wrap-around skirt. Above, she s not really wearing anything. Instead, her entire bosom (no small area) has been plastered with individual gemstones. The highlight of all this, the focus point if you will, is the stone that was once known as the Glare of the Kalahari, now dubbed the Bushman s Thimbles.
The Glare, as most of Britain will read tomorrow morning, was the seventh largest diamond ever discovered. A hundred and ninety-six carats and hollow, it would have been almost spherical, were it not for a flaw that ran from pole to pole, leaving one hemisphere slightly misaligned with the other. Several years after its discovery (in 1866) the decision was taken to split the wonky sphere. This created two hollow cups, each weighing slightly under a hundred carats and each about the size of well. Each about the size of a weathergirl s nipple.
But not just any weathergirl. Stick 196 carats to the front of Ulrika Jonsson and you re talking stretched turkey meat and grazed knees. Gemma Conrad though, perky twenty-three-year-old Gemma Conrad, she s firm enough to handle these gems with aplomb. She s already been like that for about six hours though, poor girl. Our photographers shot her this afternoon for the front of tomorrow s paper, and she s had that lot stuck to her ever since. From tomorrow she s not just going to be a Satellite TV Weathergirl, she s also going to be ours - the new management having decided that even patches of cloud and drizzle can help sell a paper if they re fronted by a nice piece of tit.
This is very much the new management s style. Image over content is the new philosophy, and not just because it sells better. It s usually cheaper too. The bash tonight is a good case in point. Diamonds, sure, to celebrate the paper s diamond jubilee , but they ve left everybody to bring their own. The only stones that the Gazette has provided tonight are the thimbles on Gemma s modesty and the rock around the neck of Marge Randall, wife of our demonic new CEO. Even the editor s tie pin is on loan from Ratners. The rest of this evening suffers from a similar budget mentality. There s a buffet, not a meal. In the kitchens the wine comes in boxes and a large percentage of the caviar - I would bet my life on it - is actually fish paste. The only reason the hall itself looks vaguely showy is that some German princeling got married here last weekend, and someone persuaded the hotel not to clear up too fast. None of this has gone unnoticed by the celeb guests or the resident hacks, or indeed the sniggering rival hacks invited along from other papers.
Anyway, until 11 p.m. or so, shabby or not, everything is going according to plan. Graham Norton is up on the stage, cracking gags and inviting people up to accept or present various awards. It s all slightly spurious, this awards business. Nominally, being Diamond Awards they are meant to be given to people who have done incredible things over the last decade - made films, sold albums, presented game shows, lost limbs, that kind of thing. In practice, if you haven t made headlines in the last five years you haven t got a chance. Mainly it s actually a star vehicle for those who are presenting the awards - a host of young wannabes and gonnabes who are keen to make their name. Norton flirts with the men and asks the women deadpan questions about their vaginas. Gemma Conrad is presenting one of the last awards, the inanely-titled Mockney Diamond Geezer award, the nominees being Guy Ritchie, Jamie Oliver, Sir Michael Caine and, bizarrely, Kathy Burke. Clutching the envelope, she pushes her way through the throng of hacks and photographers at the bottom of the stage, and heads for the podium.
To my eternal shame I actually miss all of this. At this precise moment I am in the gents, sharing a pure skunk spliff with a member of the So Solid Crew, my ex-girlfriend Elspeth and a lanky former youth TV presenter who, for legal reasons, I should point out is absolutely not Jamie Theakston. Nevertheless, I gather things go as follows:
The weathergirl reaches the podium.
Gemma, darling, trills Graham. You are looking radiant. Quite the eyeful, if I may say so.
You may Graham, purrs Gemma, no poor mockney herself, you may.
And the nominees are?
Gemma flashes her weathergirl smile, and rips open the envelope. The nominees are, she says, and stops. The nominees no. I don t understand.
Poor lass, says Graham. Blonder than you look, aren t you? What does it say on the card, love?
Gemma looks bewildered. It says it says Thanks for the stones. Yours aye, Fingers .
Norton blinks.
And there s a picture of a hand, adds Gemma. What does it mean?
Oh my, says Norton, and looks down.
Gemma follows his gaze. What? What?
It means, says Graham Norton, ever the professional, that Mr and Mrs Nipple have popped out to say hello. You re looking a little chafed, dear.
Eyes widening, Gemma Conrad stares at her breasts. Her hands scrabble to cover them, but she is too late, too late.
The flashbulbs pop and the hall erupts.
And that s how it begins.
Which cretin wrote that?
I n the film that I have no doubt they must o