Welcome to the Real World by Carole Matthews Page A

that's entertainment! As long as it keeps pulling in the viewers, they'll keep running it.

    A mere five hours have passed while we've been standing in the queue, and we're finally nearing the front. Carl has kept me going by nipping off to nearby cafes to ply me with regular supplies of hot tea and chocolate. I wish I'd let him bring a couple of joints and we could have smoked them. Or even a hip flask of booze might have helped for Dutch courage. To do this stoned would be infinitely preferable than doing it stoned-cold sober. Already a stream of weeping girls have been dispatched from the bowels of the Shepherd's Bush Empire. Some are begging the high-heeled assistants for another chance. Some are rejoining the queue at the end, probably in the hope that the judges will be so addled by the time they perform again that they won't realise they've already seen them three hours previously.

    'Feeling okay?' Carl asks.

    'No.' My hair has gone flat in the damp air. My feet hurt. Inside my coat, my lovely chiffon top is getting crumpled.

    He puts his arm round me and squeezes me tight. I can feel the tingle of excitement running through him and wish I could share it. 'It'll be fine,' he says confidently. ' We'll be fine.'

    Will we? All I can do is wait.

Twenty-two

    W hen we eventually reach the front of the queue, one of the Identikit assistants asks us our name, so I'm really glad that we remembered to make one up. 'Just the Two of Us,' Carl informs her.
    She fails to swoon at our originality, but instead she hushes us lest we feel inclined to speak and then ushers us into a corridor, which takes us down to the backstage door. I hadn't considered that we might be required to perform on an actual stage. Apart from one summer when Ken the Landlord at the King's Head had a beer festival in a nearby park and Carl and IJust the Two of Usperformed on a sort of open-sided trailer from a lorry that formed a makeshift arena, this is the first time I've been on a real stage. My knees tremble with anticipation. Why on earth did I wait until today to make my debut?

    I can't feel nervous anymore, because I can't feel anything. We stand in the wings and watch the act before ours. It's a frighteningly young girlnumber 341also known as Amber who we've been chatting to for most of the day. Carl bought her a couple of cups of tea and they swapped a few ciggies, but not in a chatty-up way because she's only seventeen. I think he just felt sorry for her. Amber is a truly awful singer and my heart breaks for her. Even her mother wouldn't come along with her today because she thought she was wasting her time. Sometimes it's worth remembering that Mum is so often right. She strangles some Shania Twain number for a few bars until a voice from the darkened auditorium says, 'Thanks,' with a degree of boredom that must be very difficult to achieve.

    And then we're shoved in the back by the lovely assistant onto the waiting stage. I follow Carl's footsteps in a kind of trance, listening to my feet clonk on the wooden boards. Footlights blind me, but I can just make out the vast empty space of the theatre. The seats are long gone and, instead, there is a makeshift table behind which are the judges, seated on three chairs. Some minions wander round in the background.

    The assistant has followed us onto the stage. 'Three hundred and forty two,' she announces. 'Just the Three of Us.'

    Carl and I both look round for the other one of us. Perhaps they think we're being ironic. We should have stuck to plain old 342.

    'Just the Two of Us,' I correct and I hear a returning sigh out of the gloom for my pains.

    'Okay,' one of the judges says. 'When you're ready.'

    Fame Game speak for 'get on with it.'

    I can't make out the judges too clearly. The main man is usually one of the well-known pop impresariospeople whose manufactured groups have topped the charts for a number of years. There's usually some sort of fashion pundit, too, and I wonder what he or she