The Generation Game Read online

  The Generation Game is inspired by Sophie’s childhood growing up in a sweet shop in Torquay. Sophie is the winner of the 2010 Luke Bitmead Bursary and the Yeovil Literary Prize. She currently lives in Teignmouth, Devon with her husband and three children.

  Legend Press Ltd, 2 London Wall Buildings,

  London EC2M 5UU

  [email protected]

  www.legendpress.co.uk

  Contents © Sophie Duffy 2011

  The right of the above author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available.

  ISBN 978-1-9082480-1-5

  eISBN 978-1-9082483-2-9

  1

  All characters, other than those clearly in the public domain, and place names, other than those well-established such as towns and cities, are fictitious and any resemblance is purely coincidental.

  Edited by: Lauren Parsons-Wolff

  Set in Times

  Printed by CPI Books, United Kingdom

  Cover designed by Gudrun Jobst

  www.yotedesign.com

  Author photo © Fiona Riches

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  Acknowledgements

  Please forgive any dramatic license in the representation of the show, The Generation Game, which I appreciate is a national institution. I would like to offer my genuine thanks to Bruce Forsyth, Anthea Redfern, Isla St Clair and the late Larry Grayson for having a special place in my childhood. This novel, among other things, is a salute to their services to showbiz. I hope that by the time of publication Brucie will have his knighthood [And as the book went to print, he did].

  Thanks are due to the following people for their support, feedback, encouragement:

  To Elaine Hanson and Tiffany Orton, Luke Bitmead’s mother and sister, for their belief in me and my writing. To Legend Press for their enthusiasm and hard work. To Debbie Watkins and Liz Tait, who’ve been there from the start, and to Katie Glover for her later appearance. To the original Wink who introduced me to The Generation Game.

  To my teachers, Jean Whatling, David Milnes, Jan Henley and Graham Mort. To Lancaster University MA cohort 2002-2004, in particular to Carol Anderson and Ren Powell. To Exeter Writers. To my literary godmother, Margaret James. To Louise Rattenbury for that early read. To Margaret Graham and the Yeovil Literary Prize. To Ruth Kirkpatrick for that trip to Bulgaria for research that had nothing to do with this book. To my house groups past and present. To Teignmouth Library Bookseekers.

  To my mum for her love, support and vacuuming. To my children, Johnny, Eddy and Izzy, for putting up with a distracted mother and her lack of vacuuming. To Niall for being with me all the way.

  To my two dads:

  Stephen Nigel Stenner 1933-1978

  and

  Ralph Albert Parry Pritchard 1924-2007

  Life is the name of the game

  Bruce Forsyth

  Contents

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  Chapter One: 1965 — Family Fortunes

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  Chapter Two: 1969 — Dragon’s Den

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  Chapter Three: 1969 — New Faces

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  Chapter Four: 1971 — This is Your Life

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  Chapter Five: 1971 — Shooting Stars

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  Chapter Six: 1972 — Saturday Night Takeaway

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  Chapter Seven: 1972 — The Apprentice

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  Chapter Eight: 1975 — Come Dancing

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  Chapter Nine: 1977 — Summertime Special

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  Chapter Ten: 1978 — Gladiators

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  Chapter Eleven: 1980 — Blind Date

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  Chapter Twelve: 1981 — Bullseye

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  Chapter Thirteen: 1982 — Have I Got News For You

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  Chapter Fourteen: 1984 — University Challenge

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  Chapter Fifteen: 1987 — Jeopardy!

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  Chapter Sixteen: 1992 — You’ve Been Framed

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  Chapter Seventeen: 1997 — I’m a Celebrity – Get me out of here

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  Chapter Eighteen: 1999 — It’s a Knockout

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  Chapter Nineteen: 2005 — Runaround

  Chapter Twenty: 2006 — I Love Lucy

  Chapter Twenty One: 2006 — Bob’s Full House

  2007

  2006

  Oh dear. How did that happen?

  Last time I looked, I only had myself to worry about. Now I’ve got you. Another person. Yesterday you were hidden away, tucked up inside me, completely oblivious to what lay ahead. Now here you are, floppy and exhausted, the biggest, scariest journey of your life over and done with. All screamed-out and sleeping the way babies are supposed to on a good day.

  So what now? Where do we go from here, you and I? Backwards, I suppose. To the beginning. While you are quiet and still and here in my arms. Before they chuck us out and send us home.

  Home.

  But where to start? Where is the beginning exactly?

  Long before the bags I packed full of nappies and cream and teeny-weeny babygros. Before the hairy ride in the taxi over the speed bumps of East Dulwich banging my head on the roof while the Irish cabbie recited his Hail Marys. The tracks I played on my iPod, full blast to drown out the noise I couldn’t help making. The Best of The Monkees. Hearing those voices and tambourines took me back to a time when I had a best friend in all the world who I thought I was going to marry. Who I thought would be there forever. Who taught me that everything changes. (A Monkees compilation was as far as your father got involved in your birth. That and the quick leg-over that was lost somewhere amongst the ravages of my fortieth birthday.)

  Long before then. Right back at the beginning, my beginning, way back when I was held for the first time in my mother’s arms.

  Were my fingers ever that small? My toenails? Was my skin ever that smooth and wrinkled at the same time? My hair that fluffy? My grip that tight? My nose that squashed?

  Did my mother hold me and wonder these very same things?

  I can’t answer these questions.

  And try as I might, I can’t tell you everything that went before. Everyone I could’ve gone to for help, for answers, has gone, is lost – in one way or another. But I’ll tell you what I can. I’ll tell you about the people who loved me. Who brought me up somehow, against all odds.

  I’ll tell you about Lucas, the boy I was going to marry.

  I’ll tell you about your father (though I’d rather not).

  And I’ll tell you about a little fat girl called Philippa.

  I’ll tell you my story. Our story. Because there’s nothing worse than wondering. Knowing is always better.

  Chapter One: 1965

  Family Fortunes

  On the 29th day of July, 1965 I arrive in the world – a brightly-lit poky delivery room high up in St Thomas’ Hospital – amid a flurry of noise. The doctor is shouting at the midwife, the midwife is shouting at my mother and my mother is shouting so loudly, her screams can probably be heard across the Thames by the honourable gentlemen in the Palace of Westminster, possibly even by the Prime Minister himself, if they weren’t
on their holidays. In fact, my mother is so busy screaming, she doesn’t seem to have noticed that I am already here. But I am. I have arrived in style, waving a banner, heralding my birth. I am happy to be here even if she isn’t so sure. I’d put up some bunting and have jelly and ice cream if I could.

  (It is years later before I find out the truth: that I am in actual fact yanked out of my mother with a sucker clamped to my head, her (ineffective) coil clenched in my tiny fist. I am lucky to be here at all.)

  I spend the first week being manhandled by stout nurses in starchy uniforms. They poke me and prod me and tip me upside down for no apparent reason. They bring me to my mother every four hours (‘Baby’s feed, Mrs Smith! Left side first!’) and whisk me away again to be comprehensively winded and gripe-watered before I’ve even had the chance to take a good look at her or to have loving words whispered in my newborn ears. Instead I have to lie on my tummy in a little tank in a large room. I am one of many. The others cry a lot. I give up and join in.

  When I am seven days old, I am brought to my mother’s bed. It is empty. She is sitting in a chair next to it, reading a magazine. She looks quite different fully clothed. She has long legs and red lips and green eyes and smells of something other than the usual milk. The nurse hands me over hesitantly, as if I might explode in the wrong hands. But these are the right hands. My mother’s hands.

  ‘Time to go,’ she whispers to me after the young nurse has gone. ‘You’ve been here long enough.’And she embarks on her plan to smuggle the pair of us out of St Thomas’, swaddling me in a yellow blanket despite the sweltering August heat (‘Always keep Baby warm, Mrs Smith!’). Not an easy operation as the sergeant major of a sister is of the belief that new mothers are incapable of doing anything more strenuous than painting their fingernails.

  But my mother, I am already discovering, is a skilful liar. She convinces a stranger in a pinstripe suit – lost on his way to visit an elderly aunt – that his time would be better spent posing as her husband and my father (the first in a number of such attempts). He is only too happy to oblige and, at a carefully chosen moment when Sister is making tea, the young nurse relinquishes Mother and I into his control. We follow meekly behind him, down squeaky corridors and ancient lifts until at last we are out through the front doors and into my first gulp of fresh air (well, semi-fresh, this is London after all).

  Mother gives the poor chap a cheery wave and a dazzling smile that makes it quite clear his assistance is no longer required and makes for Westminster Bridge, in her Jackie Kennedy sunglasses and killer stilettos, clutching me to her breast, like a fragile parcel she has to post. She hails a black cab all too easily and bundles me into the back of it while the cabbie deals with all our worldly belongings: a Harrod’s bag full of nappies and, more importantly, my mother’s vanity case.

  Inside the Cab we are bumped and swayed along the London streets at unbelievable velocity. It is not as comfortable as my little tank. Or indeed my mother’s womb where I was safe and happy, swimming about in her amniotic fluid sucking my thumb, listening to the drum beat of her heart, not a care in the world.

  At last we come to rest at Paddington Station. My short life as a Londoner is almost over.

  Some time later, I lie in my mother’s awkward arms on the train, hot and fidgety. We have a carriage to ourselves. She is feeding me from a bottle. I preferred it when she fed me with her own milk which tasted of grapes and hospital food, each time slightly different. It is all the same out of these bottles and I keep leaving pools of curdled cream on her shoulder as she pats me rather too vigorously on the back (‘Come on, give me a good one, pleeeasse,’). I have the hiccups and tummy ache. Doesn’t she know I am too young to be on the bottle? Doesn’t she know that breast is best? My mother tuts, wiping her eyes with her sleeve. Maybe she is a hay fever sufferer. I know so little about her. This is the first time we have been on our own together.

  Over her shoulder the world whizzes past the window so fast it hurts my little eyes, spins my tiny head. Maybe I am drunk. Maybe she’s given me too much gripe water to try and staunch the crying. She could probably do with a gin and tonic herself.

  After a fitful sleep the train jolts me awake as we pull into a hazy greyness otherwise known as Reading. Heavy doors bang and crash but we stay where we are, trapped together in our carriage. Mother’s green-lidded eyes are closed but it is unlikely that she is sleeping as her fingers appear to be playing an invisible piano. The journey continues as does the winding and the curdling and the sniffing.

  We do not get off at Swindon either, a new town with new hope. We carry on, via Bristol, heading south through Somerset and into Devon until we reach the coast. Sandy beaches, coves, and palm trees. The English Riviera. Torquay.

  ‘Our new home, Philippa.’

  My mother sighs – whether from relief or regret is anyone’s guess – before lugging me and the bags out of the carriage and onto the platform, where she stands for a moment looking wistfully back up the track. Then she turns her face to the sun and lets the warm breeze brush over her. She sighs again, taking in this new air. Air that will thankfully make me sleepy over the weeks to come.

  ‘Right then, Philippa, let’s go.’

  I don’t know where we are going. Of course, I don’t. It could be to one of the hotels on the cliffs or to one of the painted Victorian villas overlooking the Bay. Our lives are all set out before us and we could do anything. I could be destined to attend the Girl’s Grammar. To have tennis lessons. Elocution lessons. Cello lessons. I could be part of a happy family…

  Unfortunately it is 1965 and my mother is unmarried.

  So my first home turns out to be two rooms above a garage. Nothing flash – not Rolls or Daimler or Jaguar. No. The cars in the showroom below aren’t even new. There isn’t a showroom to speak of. Just a ‘Lot’ out the front, full of second-hand cars run by a bloke called Bernie from Wolverhampton. ‘Sheila and me came on our holidays here in 1960 and fell in love,’ he informs my mother, with a misty sheen to his eyes as he holds open our shabby front door to show us into our home. ‘We’ve never looked back.’

  Advice we should all take on board.

  (Too late, too late, I’ve started so I’ll finish.)

  My second birthday. Mother (otherwise known as Helena) has baked me a cake in her Baby Belling oven in the kitchenette of our flat above Bernie’s Motors. The cake is big and chocolate and covered with spiky mint icing. It feels lovely when I smear it all over my highchair. I spend a lot of time in my highchair. Three times a day I am strapped into it for approximately one hour. Less if I manage to eat all my vegetables without throwing them at Andy, our kitten. I am not clever enough yet to hide them in my pockets but before the year is out I will cotton onto this trick. But so will my mother as she is the one who has to laboriously wash all of our clothes in the sink.

  Today, as a concession to my birthday, I am allowed to forgo my greens and am presented with a slab of cake. For all her airs and graces my mother lets me eat like a savage. She doesn’t allow me to use cutlery as this has previously resulted in minor injuries to both myself and Andy. I put my face into the cake. It is very sticky.

  Mother is not particularly house-proud but she shrieks when she sees me. Gripping her cigarette tightly between her red lips, she hoiks me out, depositing me at arms’ length into the sink. The rubber shower attachment makes light work of my face. It is unpleasant. The water keeps going hot and cold. ‘The boiler’s on the blink again,’ my mother wails, as if she was back in London. Not that she’d have spoken like a Cockney in Dulwich Village. For that is where she grew up, the posh bit south of the Thames. As for my father (I use this term in the vaguest of senses), I’m not sure where he came from. But I do know he was a dandy in a sharp suit and should probably have been avoided at all costs.

  My mother is a sucker for a fancy dresser and let this man take her to the pictures to see Goldfinger. They enjoyed it so much they went again the next night. And for several more nights. W
ith each subsequent screening she let his gold fingers travel a little further until Bingo! she is pregnant (despite her posing as a married woman to get herself fitted with the aforementioned, new-fangled and ineffective coil). Not the best move considering she was only eighteen and my grandfather was a judge with a reputation to keep. And not helped by the fact that my grandmother was recently diagnosed with an unmentionable cancer. Before Helena made up her mind whether to tell my father, it was too late. He was gone. A one way ticket to Peru.

  So that is why we left the capital and all the possibilities it held in the Swinging Sixties. That is why we ended up in two rooms above Bernie’s Motors in Torquay.

  Torquay was the only place my mother knew outside London. She had spent a fortnight’s holiday there as a child. She and her parents had stayed in the Palace Hotel. The judge spent his days sampling the local golf courses. My grandmother Elizabeth and little Helena spent their days doing all the things holiday-makers do: sandcastles and gritty ice creams, a show at the Princess Theatre, a coach trip to Widecombe-in-the-moor. My mother fell in love at the age of eight. This time with a place, rather than a man.

  But now it is my birthday. I am the centre of her attention. Once I am cleaned up, she sings me Happy Birthday in a husky voice (for by this time she is smoking at least forty Consulate a day.) I clap my hands and smile a toothy smile. She laughs and flashes the camera in my face. I wish she wouldn’t do that. It always makes me cry. And that is usually enough to set her off. For Mother, tears are always waiting around the next corner.

  A warm and windy day. Mother and I are going to the beach. She has bought me a windmill and stuck it to my pram – a Silver Cross chariot that is her pride and joy. But despite its size I am too big for it. Mother insists on using it even though my knees are approaching my chin. I should be encouraged to walk. I wouldn’t mind having reins but Mother says I am not a pet poodle. A Bull Mastiff, perhaps. Old ladies make comments like: ‘What a bonny girl,’. Or: ‘Isn’t she a strapping maid?’ Mother says I’m big for my age. But really I am overweight. Mother still feeds me countless bottles of milk even though I have a fine set of teeth and should long since have been on a trainer cup. Mother is clueless. She hasn’t read Dr Spock. She doesn’t have a mother of her own to talk to. The only contact she has with the outside world is the old ladies on the street. And Bernie.