A star is porn

If I’m honest, this whole crime novel writing malarkey’s not proving as lucrative as I’d hoped. In fact, I’ve yet to make a penny from it. Still, I tell myself, it’s early days. It was only seven years ago when I started my first novel.

It crossed my mind that perhaps it might be time to consider alternate sources of income, if and when they’re offered.

So when I got an email from Rowena, a fellow student I’d met on a creative writing course, asking whether I’d be in a film she was making, the offer struck me as timely.

I know I’m no actor, but her message ended with the persuasive last line, ‘There’ll be a small daily fee.’

Why not, I thought. After all, my mother still talks about my stage debut in the cameo role of Second Shepherd (Non-Speaking Part) in the St Mary’s Mixed Infants School nativity play, when I was five. Perhaps it’s time to unleash my inner thespian again.

Rowena had actually dropped out of the course I met her on. She’d now re-invented herself as a film-maker and was making what she described as, ‘a series of short iPhone thrillers, shot in b & w.’

‘They’re going to be immense,’ she enthused. ‘Very stylish, with lots of intrigue – though a bit intellectual. You look right for the part, you sound right for the part. All it will require is a little bit of angst!!!!’

She’d put together an ensemble cast she listed for me: Michele (‘a pro actress, who will help talk you through anything’), Johnny Desiree and Wino. They sounded a fun bunch, or at least they sounded like the sort of characters you might come across in chapter two of any Elmore Leonard novel.

She also listed the name of the producer she was working with: one Adam Kempton.

This Kempton chappie wanted to see photos of me to make sure I was suitable. Presumably he’d missed my nativity play debut.

I’m not someone who enjoys having their picture taken. I remember one critic once describing the Queen as having ‘a resting grumpy face.’ It’s one of the few things I share with Her Majesty.

But I was off to meet one of my writing groups, three other wannabe crime fiction novelists – Vicki Jones (known to us as Vicki J), Paul Durston, Jane Phillips and our only success story so far, Vicki Bradley (known as Vicki B to distinguish her from the other Vicki) whose brilliant psychological thriller Before I Say I Do came out in May and is currently at number 881 in the Amazon bestsellers charts for novels featuring Women Sleuths!

All of them had been on the same MA Crime Fiction writing course at London’s City University where I’d met Rowena.

I figured I’d ask one of them to snap some phots of me. Vicki B gamely agreed, despite being pregnant and currently getting around in some discomfort with a stick after spraining her ankle on a walking holiday. I suspect she regretted her offer, once she realised the contortions I expected from her.

As a reporter, working with photographers had been the bane of my life for many years as I hung around waiting for them to finish and hoping they wouldn’t eat into my allotted interview time.

Eventually I realised I might as well use the hours they were taking by learning some of the tricks of the trade. Rule one I discovered was to take pictures from ground level, looking up at your subject to make them appear taller and leaner. So it was I had Vicki B grubbing around on the ground snapping away.

Another handy trick I learned was that despite the conventional wisdom that saying ‘Cheese’ when you’re having your picture taken results in happy smiling snaps, saying “Money’ creates a more satisfying lip shape – although I did work with one creep who used to ask people to say ‘Cunnilingus’ at the moment they were pictured.

While we went about our business, a whole photographic crew from the Sunday Times set up just yards away. They were taking pictures of the West Ham football manager David Moyes, using all the paraphernalia associated with the modern lensman, lights, make-up people, those umbrella things they use to stop shadows etc.

The location we’d chosen turned out to be a popular one for photoshoots with the dramatic setting of a gothic-styled 5-Star St. Pancras hotel as backdrop.

With two photoshoots going on simultaneously, we were drawing a degree of attention from hotel guests and passers-by. More seemed to be watching Vicki B working with just the camera on her phone than the Sunday Times team with all their up-to-the-minute whizz bang technology, possibly because they’d recognised who Moyes was and were still puzzling over me.

‘We’re taking some promotional pictures for a porn film he’s in,’ Vicki B helpfully called out.

People nodded sagely and walked off, as if that’s exactly what they were expecting of someone who looked like me.

The pictures turned out surprisingly well. Judge for yourselves. One of what I’m reluctantly calling Vicki B’s ‘money shots’ graces the about page of this website.

When she’d finished taking them, we carried on with our writing group. After we’d wrapped it up, I asked Vicki B about her porn film quip.

‘Haven’t you ever seen any of Rowena’s films?’ she said. ‘The last one I watched had a nude man in it.’

Back home later I pondered over her words. Did people with names like Michele, Johnny Desiree and Wino sound like they’d involve themselves in porn?

Maybe.

I hadn’t actually seen any script for this production. I looked back at my notes on what Rowena had told me it would be: ‘Very Stylish, B & W.’

That settled it, I had nothing to worry about. Nothing said classy quite like black and white.

Mind you, I know nothing about porn. Do they make films for that in black and white too? I racked my brains. They used to be an oriental woman who’d come in the old Central pub in Upton Park before they knocked it down.

She’d brandish in your face a range of porn films she had for sale. Some of the titles are still lodged in my memory: Forrest Hump, Raiders of the Lost Arse, Missionary Impossible…

I’m sure they all of them boasted full-colour covers.

What about this producer fellow Rowena mentioned? Adam Kempton.

I looked him up. He’d worked on The Ninth Gate with Johnny Depp and something called Basement with Danny Dyer. That all sounded respectable enough.

My eye was caught by the title of something else he’d been involved in. Lady Godiva.

Hmm. A film about one of the most famous nudists in British history.

What was I letting myself in for?

I thought about what Rowena’s instructions to me, ‘All it will require is a little bit of angst.’

Ah well, in the circumstances I didn’t think I’d have any trouble managing that.