Monday, February 18, 2008

Dead Famous

By bitingmylip

Kate Jackson hung up the phone with a sigh, the relentless rattle of Marissa Malfunction’s senior PR officer still ringing in her ears. A colleague nearby glanced over and cocked her head sympathetically. “That sounded like a difficult one,” she said. Kate nodded. “Bloody PRs. God, never try and interview a dead celebrity. They’re even more difficult to pin down than the live ones.” The colleague laughed as Kate shook her head ruefully and went to change the date for her meeting with Marissa (plus PR) for the sixth time that week.

Marissa Malfunction, formerly the beautiful blonde star of such films as Jack-Of-All-Trades and Can’t You See I’m Dancing?, now a ghost but still a class A celeb, was proving as elusive as befits the recently departed. Kate had only managed to get an interview in the first place because Marissa’s ex-fiance had ‘revealed’ to Who Cares! Magazine that Marissa’s ghostly reappearance following the tragic skiing accident that had supposedly killed her was nothing more than a publicity stunt. “Marissa thinks she’s so invincible she can even cheat death,” Jackson Aeroplane had been quoted as saying. “But the only thing Marissa’s ever cheated is the entire male population of the UK!”

In retaliation, Marissa had released a statement telling of her “supreme sadness” at Jackson’s inability to accept her amazing new look. Magazines across the globe had scrambled to secure an exclusive, offering Marissa disgusting sums of money to share the gruesome details of her accident and the incredible story of her resurrection. Having offered the most disgusting sum, Kate’s employers at Alright! Magazine had secured this most impressive of tell-all tales and as Showbiz Editor the story fell to Kate to organise.

Her editors seemed to think Kate would be incredibly grateful for this opportunity. Instead, she was rather irritated by it. Any excitement she had felt at the thought of interviewing a dead person had vanished when her questions had been vetoed by her editor (“you can’t ask her what it felt like to die! And please don’t ask anything about the afterlife. Stick to the usual. Fashion, sex, money and addictions.” This was Kate’s brief.) And then, of course, she had been given the runaround by Marissa and her super-efficient, super-evasive PR team. This was not unusual in the world of glossy celeb magazines but even in life Marissa had been one of Alright!’s more problematic interviewees. In death she was proving even more difficult.

Still, she had another date – and a location this time, which was promising. As she typed the name of the hotel lounge Marissa’s PR had suggested as a meeting place into her Outlook diary, Kate allowed herself to think ahead to the interview. After so much toing and froing, the thought that she might actually have to meet this woman – this ghost – hadn’t really entered Kate’s mind. But as she considered the fact that she was less than a week away (hopefully) from meeting a proper dead person, she shuddered. Difficult starlets, sly PRs, drug-addled rock stars who seemed to think all female journalists were only journalists because they wanted to shag drug-addled rock stars – these were the sorts of people Kate was used to dealing with. Ghosts and zombies had never been her thing.

She just hoped Marissa would still photograph well, being a ghost and all.

To be continued...

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