It’s not often that you open a Christmas present, not from your carefully selected list made back in November, and are genuinely pleased with the thoughtful accuracy your benefactor has shown.
This was how I felt when I opened Ben Elton’s Chart Throb, on paper the book was perfect for me and as it was on paper I figured it would be perfect for me. Dead Famous is one of my favourite books and I’ve always been a reluctant fan of X Factor for being as sharp minded as I am, I'm always aware of a certain level of editing and unseen antics in the show's production process.
The first few chapters didn’t disappoint, even with my assumptions, reality TV editing it didn’t come close to the level Elton suggests in Chart Throb - and thinking about it, I reckon he’s probably pretty accurate.
And so once the initial shock of the level forward thinking and editing involved in reality shows dies away, the stories start to develop. And there were a lot! This could have been Elton’s attempt at parallelism with the story’s own structure and the nature of the subject matter, but considering Elton’s mockery of TV talent contests, it would be a backward choice to emulate its style even for stylistic purposes. All it really achieved was a lack of interest in any of the plotlines - it seems bizarre that a storyline as far fetched as the Prince of Wales auditioning for TV talent contest seemed to be completely forgotten about for most of the book.
Just as any of the plots began to gain momentum the reader is again subjected to a short story’s worth of ‘look how much editing goes into this’.
And there is nothing more irritating than a plot that's obligated to fulfil a destined requirement; three-quarters of the way through with just the audition stages over the reader is hurriedly and tiresomely talked through the final stages of the competition where not much really happens other than narrative duller than the reality TV contest itself. Definitely a case of “Oh shit, I’ve already written 300 pages and I haven’t got to the main bit yet”.
The ending was OK, but due to the lack of constant attention to any particular storyline I didn’t really care for what was happening and by that stage I was more concerned about putting the book back on the shelf.
I did enjoy the deliberately unsubtle references to X Factor and its judges, that definitely added a certain readability factor but in all once the initial interest of the processes of reality TV had been revealed there was little else to keep the pages turning.
