That time I cried in the back of a cab in front of Lady Gaga.
I make it sound like I got drunk or something and she was consoling me, but if you would like to find out how I got in this particular predicament in front of a now world-famous superstar in a jumble of words and mental pictures, then by all means read on.
Now, I’ve been doing this telly presenting lark for a while now, but there was a time when I was new to it and a bit shit, or shitter, depending on which way you look at it. See, it looks like fun and games when you’re sat at home watching T4, watching amiably sarcastic presenters mock you coldly with their dead eyes, it makes you think ‘I hate people just as much as they do. I could do that’, but actually it’s really hard and that dead-eyed look takes years of silent judgement from the corner of parties to perfect.
But you see, I didn’t know this. When an unsuspecting TV person asked me if I could TV present I just said ‘yes’ without even thinking and my audition tape was a 10-minute monologue about my friend Paul who had a disease called ‘Megarectum’ which meant that he couldn’t shit for ages and at Easter he still had his Christmas dinner in him. From that I got my own dubiously batshit show on some low-ranking cable channel that doesn’t exist anymore, which I co-hosted with my best friend who had just got out of mental hospital (and who had to wear a mask as she was still claiming benefits and didn’t want anyone to recognise her). From that I got an agent and a show reel and somewhere along the way I interviewed Lady Gaga.
Bear in mind that before this interview the only person I had interviewed was Jack Black. Which you know, is pretty cool except for the fact I was TERRIFIED. Despite all my research and planning I was convinced people would see me as a fraud and not really a telly presenter and they would tell me to fuck off. This was further impacted when I was lead into a room and sat in a chair opposite Jack surrounded by lights and backdrops and really important looking people. I was shitting myself. I checked my notes and tried to remember my questions, then looked up at him and realised he was staring back at me and looked stoned out of his MIND. I mean, he could have just been jet-lagged, but I was totally thrown. I just sat there and thought ‘Fuck. What the hell am I going to talk about?’. In the end I just questioned him about putting cocoa puffs up his arse when he was a kid, which looking back was kind of inappropriate seeing as he was promoting Kung Fu Panda (a kids film).
This was all for Myspace by the way, back in the days when they were big. I was some kind of dodgy agony aunt for them at the time, because you know, I must have reminded them of Claire Rayner or some shit with my gigantic appetite for life and helping people. It is here that I remind myself that making jokes about dead fat people is really un-cool. Sorry guys.
Jack Black’s childhood bum antics were surprisingly popular so after that I was sent to interview an up-and-coming artist I’d never heard of called Lady Gaga on the premise that we both had tattoos and were a bit weird so we would probably get on. My call time was super early as I had been told I’d be interviewing her in the back of a black cab. I’d been up all night researching so I was super tired, and like any diva worth their salt she kept us waiting so I had a bit of extra time to prepare. As I’m sat in the lobby of a really shit hotel that she wouldn’t be caught dead in nowadays (I think it was a Citadenes), I go through my notes and read through a sheet that her PR gives me, which was full of SO MUCH BULLSHIT that I scrap all my notes and decide to try and go the sarcastic route a la Simon Amstell because her PR spiel is so easy to pick holes in. It was literally just a page full of lies. I make more notes and think of loads of wicked questions that would be SO FUNNY, and then she arrives and I totally shit myself. Lady Gaga is SCARY.
It’s 10am, she’s immaculately dressed in a rubber pencil skirt and top, with the white hair bow thing and waaaay too much fake tan and all I can think is she must be freezing. I mean, I’m wearing some leggings and a crappy Dream Theater t-shirt and I am chilly as fuck. I mentally recant all my sarcastic questions and decide that NO, sycophantically giggling throughout the whole interview would probably be a MUCH BETTER tactic, seeing as I don’t have the seasoned skills of the Amstell and can’t think of anything better to do. I’m not quite sure what followed apart from that she reminded me of a robot in her carefully contrived answers. I don’t remember the actual interview apart from the part where I ran out of questions, got scared, started to panic, decided I was really out of my depth and began to cry. Mid-interview. In front of Lady Gaga. In fact, sat right next to her. I played it off, said I was tired or nervous or some shit and she was nice enough, but I knew I’d fucked up. Big time. Lady Gaga SCARED me. In fact, she scared me a lot, and I couldn’t figure out why until it was all over and my producer points out that not once in the whole interview did she give me eye contact, which seems like such a small thing, but when it’s not there… it’s like a fucking elephant in the room. Even now, and even though they edited my little episode out, I still can’t watch the video.
So there you have it, that’s my story. Interviewing celebrities is SCARY. I mean, obviously over time you get used to it in that you get a thicker skin and get used to not being liked (it’s kind of like modelling in that way), but overall the only good part is getting a picture you can show your friends, as all the rest is just excruciating and painful. Well, until you get better at it anyway.
xx
Good anecdote. Five stars.
