Read The Original B of the Bang First Chapter
The original draft of B of the Bang was very different, I thought you might enjoy reading the first chapter. It made my wife dry heave, which I always think is a compliment.
B of the Bang - Chapter 1
Nana Edna had been in the cake for two hours and she was at breaking point.
She could barely feel her toes because the orange flight harness that sat under the stupid poofy ballgown was too tight and cut off the blood supply to anything south of her ribs. The extra-wide seatbelt that pinned her to the seat inside the cake was fastened too tight and rubbed against the tops of her thighs. The worst of it was that the entire cake smelled of Richard. Three weeks ago, she’d smiled as the malodorous props master had explained how the cake was built, how it was driven and she had endured an entire five minutes of his thoughts on why the battery placement mattered so much for a bespoke vehicle of this type. She’d nodded convincingly as he’d explained it was a highlight of his career to drive her 15 metres across a sound stage in a ridiculous remote-controlled cake.
“What a dull career you’ve had then,” she’d said in the confines of her head and smiled as the young man had had the audacity to request the inevitable selfie and had then slid his arm around her shoulders, depositing an almost-visible smudge of body odour. When you look at the picture he took, which later became quite famous, the face of Nana Edna was the sweetly-beaming visage of the icon who had sold more than 100 million cookbooks and taught the world to bake. What you couldn’t see in the selfie was that in her head she was imagining using a toffee hammer to crack Richard’s teeth one by one.
“Ok, we’ve got five minutes. Let’s go for rehearsal again,” came the voice of director Trevor Sant, from a small speaker by Nana Edna’s feet.
“Edna – you good?”
“Cool as a cucumber, Trevor. Enjoying my time in pastries, you should come inside sometime,” she heard the reluctant grunt of the director’s laugh and she smirked to herself in the darkness of the cake.
Beyond the cake lay the sound studio, a cavernous warehouse on the outskirts of London. A vast, bewildering space with doors large enough to admit a jumbo jet. It was a state-of-the-art location with built-in lighting rigs, flight towers, CGI capabilities and thousands of cameras, all fitted and ready to use. Somewhere in the eaves of the building lay the production gallery that Trevor currently inhabited, modern smoke alarms prevented him from vaping, so he was holding a carrot from the food table between his fingers like a cigarette. On the bank of screens in front of him he was monitoring the concluding moments of the first half of the Champions League final, but with a seasoned eye he was also tracking the shots of the various performers who were scattered across the sound stage. He took a drag on his carrot and wished it was a cigarette, or better yet a gigantic, skunk-stuffed joint, or maybe even a delicate glass crack pipe…no, it was perhaps a little early in the evening for squirrel. Later, perhaps.
Back in the dawn of time, Trevor’s idea for this advert had been to produce a Busby Berkeley-esque visual feast which would see a number of dancers dressed as benefits-related items such as pound coins, cigarettes and job centre signs and these would all be spinning around the various ingredients of a cake. The whole mixture would end up in a bowl before the reveal of Nana Edna whose radio-controlled cake would break through a Baking on Benefits show logo before hitting its mark, whereupon Nana Edna herself would fly out of the cake like a fairy godmother and deliver her line to camera. Throw in the remix of I Need A Dollar, a glitzy smile or two and the most ambitious live advert that had ever been attempted could wrap and the 18 million morons watching could go back to being anaesthetised by Chelsea versus Man City.
Trevor had regretted having the idea every day since.
It wasn’t just that the shots were complex, or that timing a live advert featuring 70 performers and an equal number of production staff, coming at the break of a live sporting event was the stuff of logistical nightmares, it wasn’t even that the show they were attempting to promote was a calculatedly offensive, hollowed-out husk of an idea that had superannuated eight series ago. It was Nana Edna. The doyenne of the doily, the narcissus of the non-stick pan, it was her that had made the whole experience rank among Trevor’s worst experiences in television, and given that this included four years directing puppeteers he felt that he had some scope for what constituted a bad time in television.
Of course, Nana Edna was outwardly sweet with everyone. Of course, Nana Edna was a legend who had almost single-handedly invented television cookery. Of course, she was a one-woman multi-million-pound industry of TV programmes, cookery books and branded mugs, rice cookers and oven gloves. But she was also one of the biggest sexual predators that Trevor had worked with, and that included his four years working with puppeteers, a sub-genre of people who make a living from putting their hands into orifices. Trevor shuddered again as he remembered the first evening rehearsal where he’d leant over to adjust her mic and she’d grabbed him by the cock, her withered hands squeezing with a power that suggested that she probably didn’t have to ask her husband to open jars for her. “Oooh, cool as a cucumber,” she’d leered, as if she was testing the ripeness of a courgette in the veg aisle.
“Floor manager, cue cake please and flight tower. Dancers to start positions please – this is our final walk-through, save your energy please everyone, this is just to hit marks and test the talent release again.”
Trevor watched from on high as the dole cheques, sugar cubes, cigarettes, blocks of butter and spoons rotated without energy across the stage. For the first time, he dared to imagine the end of the advert, it loomed before him like the finish line of a marathon of shit. Maybe there would even be a few industry awards for attempting something ambitious, rather than just letting the geeks spray CGI everywhere. He wouldn’t insist on awards though, he’d settle for it all being over and a well-earned lost weekend with lots of delicious crack.
“Cue the crack,” he said into his headset. “Cake, cue the cake.”
He watched as the cake sped into position and stopped exactly where it should. The cables from the flight tower followed along, spooling out the line as needed. As the soundtrack of I Need A Dollar swelled to a climax, all of the dancers pointed towards the cake and with a modern take on jazz hands they indicated the top of the cake, which opened seamlessly. Trevor released a pent-up breath of tension. Nana Edna emerged looking triumphant in a giant ballgown with a large wooden spoon as her wand. The internal logic behind her role as a fairy godmother was confused, but it largely stemmed from the fact that they needed to dress the vicious crab as something. Edna raised both of her arms and with more than five decades of presenting experience, her eye found the centre of the live camera.
“Mixing bowls are on the dole - let’s bake with benefits.”
Trevor let the old bag hang in the air for twenty seconds longer than necessary as she mugged for the camera, knowing that with every second the harness was probably disappearing further up her arse crack.
“…and cut! Good work everyone – return to position, nearly showtime.”
Nana Edna looked furiously towards the gallery as she was lowered once more into the cake and took her place on the bucket seat inside.
“Great work Nana Edna,” Richard exclaimed. “If you could just fasten the seatbelt then I’ll take you back to position one.”
“Yes, yes, I’m doing it Richard,” Edna snapped. “Give me a minute.”
“Everything ok?” Trevor asked over the speaker. He looked up at the screen showing the football and saw the referee bring the first half to a close. The screen displayed the score and the channel cut almost immediately to the adverts – they were clearly keen to maximise the time they had for the lucrative adverts. Three minutes until showtime.
“I didn’t appreciate being pegged out like washing on the line, thanks Trevor,” Edna said with venom.
“Sorry Edna, you were perfect, but we’re just making sure that lighting have got all the cues they need, only one more time now then you’re free as a bird.”
“Right, I’m strapped in Richard, take me back.”
“Ok, but…” Richard said.
“Also, Edna – could you just repeat your line for me please?” Trevor asked. “It should be, “They’ve got mixing bowls and they’re on the dole, let’s bake with benefits.” Are you ok to do it just like that? Not a big deal but otherwise the producers will be on to me.”
“Of course, Trevor – anything else you want to heap on the shoulders of an 85-year-old woman before you leave her dangling in the air like a Germolene-scented kite?”
“Edna – the sensor isn’t showing the seatbelt is quite done up,” Richard’s nervous voice cut in.
“Right! OK! There! Is that it? Is it done now? Ow! I clipped my cunting leg!” Edna screamed, her voice sounding alarmingly high pitched in Trevor’s ears.
“Sorry Edna, it’s still showing as unfastened, health and safety won’t let me move the cake until the light is on.”
“Here! It’s done! Can you see that? It’s always health and safety with your generation, isn’t it? You should be the healthiest and safest generation of all time, but you never seem that healthy or safe do you?”
Richard saw the light come on indicating that Edna’s seat restraint was locked and quickly reversed the cake to its starting position, braking a little too sharply as it reached its mark. A loud thwack emitted from the confines of the cake. Trevor quickly checked the internal cake camera and with joy he saw Edna grimacing, holding the back of her head.
“Richard! Fuck! Be careful!” he said, failing to contain the merriment in his voice.
“Sorry Trevor – it’s…”
But Trevor never heard what it was. As if in a dream, he looked at the monitors and saw his stage on the TV. He’d spent so long looking at the scene on the monitor that it took him a fraction of a second to appreciate that this view was now also repeated on the live TV screen.
“They’ve…thrown to us early,” he said and nausea, misplaced hilarity and monstrous, monstrous fear queued up to be the first emotion to be recognised in his mind. “Action?” he shouted into the microphone. “ACTION! GOD! PLEASE LET THERE BE ACTION! EVERYONE DO THINGS!”
********
In a sitting room in a semi-detached house in Fulham, Brenton lay on the nausea-patterned carpet and wished for the thousandth time that they had a TV you could fast forward. Everyone in his class had TV that you could fast forward. Dan Reems said that his TV automatically skipped the adverts if you just said, “TV skip adverts”, but then he had also said that his dad was an airline pilot and earned two million pounds a year. The beer commercial on TV finished and Brent looked at the screen. It was showing a large stage and some gaudy glitter curtains. Even to his 10-year-old eye something about the scene was off.
Brent lifted himself to sitting and scooted his bum closer to the TV, earning a “down in front!” shout from his dad. What looked like a cake on wheels was poking out of the front of gold sequinned curtains that were rapidly closing. Some dancers were on the screen and they were looking around uncertainly. One was walking in a showbiz fashion towards the cake, when he reached the cake he flipped the curtains over the front of it and stood with his legs apart and his hands on his hips in an attempt to obscure whatever it was.
“You clumsy fuckwit!” came a clear voice over the screen. Brent felt that he knew the voice, but he couldn’t quite put a name to the clipped tones of the woman. He scooted even closer to the TV, some primal instinct in him sensing that what he was witnessing was important. The dancers started to spin and jump about the stage, but it all seemed disjointed, like they didn’t know where they should be. The pepper pot dancer didn’t appear to have her costume head on. Another fell over, but styled it out by rolling and scrambling to her feet. Suddenly a song started in the middle of the track at such an ear-shattering volume he could see some of the dancers recoiling because it was that loud. The voice returned.
“I don’t care if you did have to wait until some retard from health and safety gave you the green light. I’ve been sat in the darkness, smelling your fetid stink for two hours and I’m sick of it. Shut up Trevor. I’m sick of it all. I’m sick of sitting cramped in this ridiculous cake. I’m sick of Trevor…I said shut up. We haven’t started filming the series yet and I’m already sick of the contestants leeching off the production budget and their pity-party stories about boohoo poverty and boohoo dead mum. Richard – let me tell you - yours is the generation of excuses and reasons why not. If the financial vampires that are on this show could simply put as much work into getting a job as they do into thinking of reasons why they can’t work, then they wouldn’t have to moan about wealth inequality, they could simply be wealthy. Shut your fucking gob Trevor, you know it’s true.”
The song was getting even louder and most of the dancers were now shaking their hands in a circle. Without warning the cake lurched forward from where it was semi-obscured between the curtains. It seemed to be held in place by something, but suddenly it got free and vaulted forward. It happened so fast that it clipped one of the dancers dressed as a cigarette, who tried to spin out of the way, but still ended with one foot trapped under the cake. Brenton noted with respect that they still managed to do a singular jazz hand though, even as their other hand clawed to pull their foot free.
The song finished and a big grotesque silence emerged into the chaos. The dancers remained in place, terrified smiles plastered to their faces. Just off screen there was an ominous creaking noise and Brent saw a tower of scaffolding fall to the ground and crash onto the studio floor, narrowly missing the cake. As it fell, several wires were pulled taut and some of them snapped under the strain and poinged off-screen.
Just as it seemed they would all break, the one final wire emerged from the cake, attached to half of Nana Edna, who had finally reached her breaking point. As she was ripped out of the cake, a torrent of blood sprayed from where her legs used to be, coating the cake, the floor and the dancers nearby.
A title came on the screen: “Baking on Benefits – starts Wednesday at 8, only on ITV.”
Brenton turned to his dad who was on the sofa, his face stuck in a rictus of wide-jawed disbelief.
“Dad, please can we watch that?”
