My Nan and I watched New Faces of 88 on the sofa with Zim,Zar and Zel next to us. We had our dinner trays on our laps. My Nan had Zar close to her because she was unwell.
She has come back from the dog groomer a different dog than from when she’d left.
Her eyes were now irritated. A vet later told us that they had probably been burned with a hairdryer. He had come across it before. Zel would later go blind.
Apart from that, we sat quite satisfied with ourselves. Stacks of white voting envelopes were waiting to be deposited in post boxes around Bournemouth. We would go after the visit to Frank’s grave the next day. We had to get the timing just right to avoid raising suspicions.
We had also bought a new Matsui video recorder. It was half the size of normal ones which amazed us. How did the Japanese pack so much power into something small? It was like the country itself. How did you fit so many people in such a tiny space? My Dad had asked us to record the show. I remove the cellophane and insert a VHS cassette into its mouth. It whirs and readies itself. I press the red record button.
We are transported live to the Birmingham Hippodrome. We approach it from a helicopter’s perspective, searchlights traverse the sky, the orchestra transports us to the glamour of show business!! We are being taken away from our normal lives. Were in the theatre, and as the camera travels forward to the stage over the audience, Marti Cain our compere walks towards us. It is thrilling.
Who are the judges going to be, is the question on our mind. We catch a glimpse but can’t be certain.
Please don’t make it Nina, please don’t make it Nina. Don’t make it that bitch. She was the Simon Cowell of her day. TV critic of the News of the World, we had seen her destroy careers before our eyes.
Marti Cain effortlessly and seamlessly works through the show’s admin and and lets us know who has won from the week before. Whether the people at home voted the same way as the people with the audience. They always do. She shows us ‘Spaghetti Junction’. At the end of the show, the votes would travel through a spaghetti junction of lights you would see at a funfair ride and come to rest on a totaliser that showed who was in the lead.
Press your buttons now! Marti implores. It is her catchphrase.
I think we must have at least a theatre’s worth of votes just here, Nan?
My Nan is dabbing Zar’s eyes in cotton wool and water. She has lost interest in the show.
I wouldn’t trust her as far as I could throw her?
Who?
Who do you think? The idiot dog groomer. She’s done something to Zel
Do you think we’ll see Dad? I ask
Nan doesn’t answer. She is too upset about the dog.
Aren’t you watching?
Yes. He’ll be back stage.
With Diane?
The camera flashes up to the Royal Box where the judges sit, and there she is. She’s dressed in Pink, with long diamanté earrings. She has a very sweet round face, but she is a television villain.
Do you think Nan, that as Nina WORKS for the News of the World, and that that Dad is IN the News of the World, will help Lisa? Do you think it’s rigged?
The judges on that night’s show were as follows.
Nina Myskow, NOTW TV Critic.
Peter Skellern – a singer song writer.
Michael Vine, Producer and agent.
First Act was Terry Charnley – a professional pickpocket. He picks a normal person from the audience, makes them famous on the stage and then picks their pockets. It’s hilarious, but my Tenerife experience makes me think that they must be stooges.
I bet Mike is loving this one.
He’s absolutely superb I say with a sarcasm which is something that still feels new when I use it.
Next is a bearded impersonator Lenny Tandy. He does bad jokes and impersonations of the golfer, Sevve Ballesteros. Nina Myskow flicks out her stiletto blade.
I can’t believe it, he gets once chance on TV and then does boring sexist jokes that we’ve all heard before, that have no place on TV or today’s humour. It’s wrist slitting time. Honestly.
We cut to the green room. Lenny Tandy smiles but you can tell he’s not happy. He is smiling his way through his social death. Thrilling.
That’s where video ends. Suddenly we are in an episode of Howard’s Way. I must have recorded over Lisa’s performance… All I have left is the memory of what Nina says after Lisa does her act. I can’t even tell you what song she sang. To do that I would have to go to the ATV archives and Leeds and find the 1-inch video tape original.
When Nina Myskow watched Lisa Lee she said.
Pure Sex. She is pure sex and If you can bottle that you will make a million dollars.
It would have been pure music to my father’s ears.
You will remember from last week that I had asked my Nan the ultimate question about my Dad. Why was he a drunk? The answer I received made me grow up a lot. Below is the Exclusive that my Step Mom Gloria sold to the News of the World tabloid. It came out a week after the show.
You probably won’t be able to read it. So I have transcribed it below.
THAT NEW FACES BITCH DROVE MY MAN CRAZY
STUNNING New Faces star Lisa Lee was last night branded a sex-tease by the bitter wife of the man who launched Lisa to fame.
Heartbroken Gloria Hogg has been left penniless and alone after husband Mike spent thousands promoting the busty 19-year-old.
Gloria revealed: "He was revved up into a sexual crescendo after going out with her.
"I dreaded what he'd put me through when he came home.
"She never wore a bra and she teased him something rotten. It just sent him crazy and she loved it.
"But as soon as Mike came home he'd shout: 'You've got nothing! Lisa is everything you're not. She's so beautiful, you're just old and haggard. Lisa's worth £5 a minute for me and you're worth nothing."
"Then he'd have sex with me. It makes me ill just thinking about it."
Former model Gloria, 34, once enjoyed a champagne lifestyle with Mike while Lisa worked as a chambermaid. Now it's Gloria who has to clean hotel rooms while Lisa roars around the country in a flashy BMW car.
Gloria seethed: "My husband was besotted with her, but as soon as the cash stopped flowing she got fed up. Now he's a bankrupt alcoholic.
"Life became a nightmare when he became attracted to Lisa."
"Mike became a boozy lecher of a husband after taking up with Lisa," Gloria remembers. "I'd come home to find him fuddled with drink and muttering her name.
"Now he has no money. His sexy gear and great looks won him other women—but the obsession for that brassy, scantily-clad teenager was the final straw.
"The poor chap was obsessed with her—and she knew it."
Eventually, says Gloria, that obsession became so intense that Mike would fantasise over the teenager while making love to her.
"It used to turn my stomach," she said. "There were pictures of her everywhere.
"We'd have sex but I know she was on his mind while we were doing it."
When she appeared on New Faces last week, panelist Nina Myskow said: "What she's projecting is something very well packaged. You can do something with that."
Lisa now has a new manager—her rich boyfriend 21-year-old property dealer David Bickerman.
She hit out: "It's true that Mike put money into me but he didn't get an instant return. He's just a small town nobody with a bitchy wife and a drink problem.
"Just because he had a bit of money once he thinks he's Mr. Big. His wife is just jealous because she's lost all the cash.
"I DIDN'T sleep with him, but I can't help it if men think I'm sexy."
Mike, who walked out on Gloria and their six-year-old daughter Lucy in May, now shuffles around in old jeans and a jumper and lives in a pokey boarding-house room.
He said: "I spent £25,000 on Lisa. She was an investment.
"I was confident she could go far. She has a great voice.
"I wasn't besotted with her. I'm in business to make money and that's the end of the matter.
"If all this has stemmed from my dear wife, then I must say that she's a very vicious and vindictive woman."
The tabloid article was a in many ways telling the truth.
The strangest thing was how clearly, I could hear Gloria’s voice as I read. Lucy was now six! I hadn’t seen her in three years and here was the sad loss of that in newsprint.
I could hear the back of a fag packet calculations that my Dad made about how much money Lisa could make him.
There was no mention of Diane and Barry, I suspect that Gloria didn’t know of their existence.
There was no mention of Thea or me ether.
We were leftovers from a previous failed marriage and were off stage in this drama. I was surprised that the article said that my father had abandoned Gloria and Lucy.
Despite Lisa, despite Diane, he was still in love with Gloria. He would not have abandoned them.
Also it says that my father lost interest. This isn’t the whole story. The whole story is that my Nan had no more money to give him.
He hadn’t spent £25,000 on Lisa, she had.