Acquired Tastes was my first novel and some elements of the story were inspired by my time as a TV researcher and producer. However, I emphasise the word 'inspired'. None of the characters are based on real people. I went into TV in 1979, and worked on current affairs programmes about London’s Black and Gay communities, religion and women, the closure of mental hospitals and illegal gypsy camps among many.
However, after a few years, I was assigned to work on other, less serious programmes, including what was meant to be an all-woman chat show which provided some farcical moments like the man who disguised himself as a woman to get into the audience. How could security not have noticed him with his badly applied makeup, wig askew, towering several inches awkwardly above everyone else?
On another night, a guest taking part in a discussion suddenly slipped seemingly lifeless to the floor in front of a horrified audience, momentarily rendering the host of the show speechless. However, rather than dead, the guest turned out to be drunk. We had been told this guest might have a little problem so we had diplomatically guided her away from the drinks in the green room, but nobody had reckoned on her drinking before she arrived at the studio. It was a sobering lesson in never underestimating the effect of hot studio lights on alcohol.
And then there was the King Penguin who was to be the star guest on a pilot for a series about animals. Perhaps the news that it was to be the star of the show turned the penguin’s head because it refused to travel in a cage and arrived in a taxi together with its keeper. As the researcher assigned to look after this particular ‘guest’, what else could I do but take it to a dressing room? Unfortunately its keeper nipped off to the bar and left it alone whereupon it started to protest rather noisily. Hearing the strange sounds, a security guard barged through the door sending the penguin flying which is unfortunate, because penguins can’t fly. The bird was knocked unconscious, but not before it shat all over the floor in fright. It fell to me to revive it, clean up its extremely smelly mess and still get it to waddle into the studio and make its entrance on cue to thunderous applause. I think it was about this point that I began to reconsider whether life in television was really for me.
When I sat down to write Acquired Tastes, I intended to produce a 'serious' novel about television and the media in general. However, somewhere between conception and birth - perhaps still haunted by visions of a stunned penguin - the story took on a blackly comic edge and, as the characters in my book took shape, their antics became wilder and wilder.
Looking back, Acquired Tastes was ahead of its time - but only just. In creating a fictional late-night reality show on which people could act out their sexual fantasies, I pushed the boundaries of explicit sex as well as bad taste on TV further than I thought anyone would ever dare go in the early 1990s. However my fictional show has long been outstripped in the nature of its sexual content by real TV shows.
In the same year my novel was published, as part of the publicity for my book, I appeared on a programme whose set was uncannily like the set I had invented for Forbidden Fruit. The series was called The Good Sex Guide Late and it was presented by former punk singer turned actor and TV presenter, Toyah Wilcox. Since then there have been many other programmes in the same vein, including the recent Sex Box presented by Mariella Frostrup, during which couples had sex in a box before discussing it with studio experts. Having produced the Channel 4 show Right to Reply in the 1980s for which the Video Box was invented so that viewers could record themselves for TV, is it surprising that I sometimes suffer from a severe case of deja vu when I see what is on our TV screens these days?
However, after a few years, I was assigned to work on other, less serious programmes, including what was meant to be an all-woman chat show which provided some farcical moments like the man who disguised himself as a woman to get into the audience. How could security not have noticed him with his badly applied makeup, wig askew, towering several inches awkwardly above everyone else?
On another night, a guest taking part in a discussion suddenly slipped seemingly lifeless to the floor in front of a horrified audience, momentarily rendering the host of the show speechless. However, rather than dead, the guest turned out to be drunk. We had been told this guest might have a little problem so we had diplomatically guided her away from the drinks in the green room, but nobody had reckoned on her drinking before she arrived at the studio. It was a sobering lesson in never underestimating the effect of hot studio lights on alcohol.
And then there was the King Penguin who was to be the star guest on a pilot for a series about animals. Perhaps the news that it was to be the star of the show turned the penguin’s head because it refused to travel in a cage and arrived in a taxi together with its keeper. As the researcher assigned to look after this particular ‘guest’, what else could I do but take it to a dressing room? Unfortunately its keeper nipped off to the bar and left it alone whereupon it started to protest rather noisily. Hearing the strange sounds, a security guard barged through the door sending the penguin flying which is unfortunate, because penguins can’t fly. The bird was knocked unconscious, but not before it shat all over the floor in fright. It fell to me to revive it, clean up its extremely smelly mess and still get it to waddle into the studio and make its entrance on cue to thunderous applause. I think it was about this point that I began to reconsider whether life in television was really for me.
When I sat down to write Acquired Tastes, I intended to produce a 'serious' novel about television and the media in general. However, somewhere between conception and birth - perhaps still haunted by visions of a stunned penguin - the story took on a blackly comic edge and, as the characters in my book took shape, their antics became wilder and wilder.
Looking back, Acquired Tastes was ahead of its time - but only just. In creating a fictional late-night reality show on which people could act out their sexual fantasies, I pushed the boundaries of explicit sex as well as bad taste on TV further than I thought anyone would ever dare go in the early 1990s. However my fictional show has long been outstripped in the nature of its sexual content by real TV shows.
In the same year my novel was published, as part of the publicity for my book, I appeared on a programme whose set was uncannily like the set I had invented for Forbidden Fruit. The series was called The Good Sex Guide Late and it was presented by former punk singer turned actor and TV presenter, Toyah Wilcox. Since then there have been many other programmes in the same vein, including the recent Sex Box presented by Mariella Frostrup, during which couples had sex in a box before discussing it with studio experts. Having produced the Channel 4 show Right to Reply in the 1980s for which the Video Box was invented so that viewers could record themselves for TV, is it surprising that I sometimes suffer from a severe case of deja vu when I see what is on our TV screens these days?
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