Soul Beach

– of the stars of tomorrow.’
    The sponsorship jingle appears, showing a happy family sitting in a living room not that different from ours, with trays of steaming food. The teenage boy has bangers and mash, the girl a too-bright stir-fry; Dad has a deep brown stew, and Mum is about to orgasm over an orangey chicken tikka.
    Tasteful Dinners sponsor Sing for your Supper. Whatever your taste, you’ll find a winner with Tasteful Dinners .
    Then the gurning family fade away, and the opening music and titles fade up. I freeze. That music used to mean so much: the OTT, showbizzy theme promised that Meggie could become the star she was destined to be.
    I look at my parents. Dad has taken Mum’s hand, and she’s gripping it back.
    I wonder if Tim is watching. Or if the killer has tuned in. Or if they’re one and the same.
    The titles finish and the studio appears: red, black, gold, like the ugliest of nightclubs. The two presenters – a former glamour model and a middle-aged actor who used to do Shakespeare before choosing fame and wealth instead – smile brightly and read the autocue loudly with exaggerated lip movements, as though they’re talking to a deaf person. Perhaps that’s the only way you can talk after you’ve been injected with as much lip filler as they both have.
    It’s the usual spiel about talent and torment and tagliatelle. The ‘unique selling point’ of this dumb programme is that it links two viewer obsessions: talent shows and cookery shows. Each week, the kids cook for each other, eating together and making relationships that will be tested to breaking point by their ambition to win.
    It’s rubbish, of course. Meggie told us that no one in the house talked to each other except when the camera was running, and after they’d filmed the foodie segments, one or two of the kids would be straight to the loo to get rid of their dinner before a single calorie could be absorbed. Eating disorders never featured on the show, but they were there behind the scenes, as girls and boys fretted about every extra centimetre showing on screen and reducing their chances of making it to the final. Even Meggie went on a diet towards the end, she was made to feel so paranoid about her shape.
    And that makes me think of Triti.
    There’s a shot of the line-up for this year’s competition – fifty acts, altogether. Even this early on, as the camera pans, it’s easy to spot who is there for comedy value and who will survive the brutal ‘sudden death’ cull at the end of this first show. Half of them will have their dreams shattered tonight. Maybe they’re the lucky ones, because it seems to me that every person but one in this shot will have their heart broken for our entertainment. And some, like Meggie, could fare even worse.
    They cut to close-ups of the two presenters. Uh-oh. Serious faces. Here we go . . .
    ‘Of course, returning to your screens is a happy moment for both of us, but this year we’re also aware of a very real sadness,’ says the actor. ‘Absolutely.’ The model nods sincerely and her boobs jiggle in her slinky dress. ‘I know that everyone who loves the show as we do will be thinking tonight of one of our most talented and popular contestants. The girl who won our hearts from that very first time she sang. The girl who became known across Britain, and the world, as the Songbird.’
    The orchestra plays softly: the opening theme to Amazing Grace . The screen fills with a shot of Meggie from that first show, but they’ve done something to the video so that it looks softer round the edges, slightly faded. She looks as fresh and perfect as she always did – Lewis was talking crap when he said she wasn’t truly beautiful – but the effect makes her seem like a starlet from the twenties or thirties. Or an icon.
    ‘Meggie Forster was a unique talent,’ the actor intones in the same voice he must have used as Hamlet. ‘Taken from us tragically young. We will all be thinking of her throughout the series, but tonight in particular we wanted to mark her life and also what she did for us and our viewers on this show.’
    Yeah, I think. What she did for you was double your fee. The first series was a washout. It was only when the papers started raving about the Songbird in series two that people started tuning in, from Australia to Zanzibar.
    ‘Understandably, Meggie’s parents and sister didn’t feel able to join us here in the audience tonight,’ the model says, her round eyes