MTV calling

I applied as a researcher and MTV gave me a screen test. I waited almost three months for MTV to react. It was July 1987 and I convinced I had not been chosen for the job. I decided to phone and ask what was going on. DD, the secretary of the then Executive Producer Liz Nealon, said that she was on her way back from the States with the final decision and I would get a call that afternoon. I was in a state of panic, but decided that there was no way I could leave the house as I didn’t have an answer phone. So I stayed put. I was called by Nealon who told me the good news. Although I was overcome with emotion I must have sounded totally depressed as she asked me whether I was at all pleased.

After I put the phone down I rang the people that had supported me the most, Anna, Sue and my Mum. Then I phoned the bank and convinced them to give me an overdraft. They agreed. Nothing like spending money before you get it. I decided that I would go to Paris with quasi-boyfriend Dave to see Maggie, an old friend. The weekend was disastrous. Dave was a walking drug disaster. He had been on heroin and although we had tried to have some sort of relationship it had never worked out. Drugs had always come in between. In Paris we fell out for what was to be the last time, and in many ways the weekend provided some closure with my past. I was ready to move on. Recently I found out he is a drug counsellor working in England.

When I got back to London I contacted Anna and decided to spend the last of the overdraft on a lunchtime piss up. We met at a local café, and drank ourselves into oblivion before going off to a joke shop to buy some stink bombs. We had been fired from a vegetarian restaurant two weeks before for not singing the Icelandic national anthem. We had been waiters in this restaurant for years, and when a group of Icelandic Buddhists came in they sang their sang their national anthem and we sang along as best we could without knowing any of the words. They weren’t too happy with us and neither was the boss. So we got the sack.

That day we were after revenge. When we got to the restaurant we were legless. We literally crawled up on our hands and knees and opened the door. It was shortly before opening time and we knew this would be the best chance not to be noticed. Although that really didn’t matter to us. We threw stink bombs into the restaurant then went to Anna’s house and ordered as many take-aways as possible by phone. A week later I was presenting the news on MTV: