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auburn hair.
    And there’s Ben with Richard, his best friend. The pair of them on holiday, Greece perhaps, suntanned faces, shorts and T-shirts, sunglasses, and arms flung over one another’s shoulders, grinning widely into the lens.
    And in pride of place is a photograph of a celebrity, a genuine star of one of Britain’s most popular soap operas. Cheesy as it may well be, this is the photo Ben is most proud of, for she is Laurie, one of his conquests, but we’ll save the story of Laurie until later.
    Ben lies back on his bed, crumpling the jacket of his suit, which he flung on the duvet when he got home from work, but this is a good sign, for while we know from his bedroom that Ben isn’t a slob we can now assume that neither is he anally retentive.
    He lies back holding the piece of paper he dug out of the box he pulled from under his bed. It is a script from the news, a script that Ben painstakingly transcribed in his shorthand, scribbling down everything the newsreader said, and now he lies back and reads the first words in his television voice.
    “Good evening.”
    Practice, practice, practice, Ben. All over the world there are thousands of young men and women, people just like Ben, who dream of being a television presenter. They ache for their fifteen minutes of fame, long to be famous for the sake of being famous.
    If they’re lucky, if they have the requisite long blond hair, flirtatious nature, and penchant for being wild, the girls may just make it on to the screen as presenters of some wacky new show. The men may, if they have the right contacts, also land on our screens as children’s presenters. But few have the dedication to do what Ben’s doing.
    Ever since Ben was a child Ben has dreamed of reading the p. 36 news. At university, studying for his English degree, Ben sat down with Richard and worked out how he was going to do it. He decided his greatest advantage (other than the dimples and white teeth, because Ben, although he is aware of them, doesn’t really think about them all that often) would be a background in journalism. He knew he could have got on one of the graduate trainee schemes that all the national newspapers seem so keen on running these days, but he also knew, from speaking to people who had already gone down that route, that most of their time was spent doing gofer work.
    And so he decided to look for a local paper. A local paper that wouldn’t pay very well, but would give him the required news training. A local paper where the news editor might have the time to take Ben under his wing and show him how to sniff out a news story, how to interview members of the public and celebrities, and win an exclusive interview through charm alone.
    A local paper where Ben might have a chance to rise quickly in the ranks, before moving to regional television. And from regional television he would move to network television. He would be an anchorman. He would present the news.
    Admittedly, at twenty-nine, Ben’s career hasn’t progressed quite as quickly as he had planned, but nevertheless he’s on course, and changes, he rightly suspects, are afoot.
    Naturally he didn’t tell the editor of the Kilburn Herald any of his plans when he turned up for an interview. He sat there and told the editor he was a newspaper man, he loved newspapers, loved the Kilburn Herald (for Ben had moved to Kilburn for the express purpose of working for the Kilburn Herald, a paper, he decided, at which he could make changes), had in fact spent years dreaming of working for the Kilburn Herald.
    He told the editor he was happy to start as a junior reporter, but that at some time, not too far away, he would be news editor. And the editor, being a rather vain and stupid man, was flattered by Ben Williams, and won over by the smile and the dimples.
    p. 37 But he wasn’t as stupid as all that. He realized the effect Ben’s good looks would have on the people he had to interview. And sure enough, from the very first