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| + Learn To Fly... With Victoria Beckham! | |
| Chapter 2:Girl
with a dream
'I'm going to be the richest, best-known and most beautiful model in the world.' No, not me - I never wanted to be a model, all that standing around being told what to do. It's what Jerry Hall is supposed to have told her mother when she was fourteen. But at least she probably looked the part, whereas when I said a similar thing to my mum I was a skinny, sallow-faced eight-year-old, with pigtails and a gap in my teeth big enough for a pea to get stuck in. But what did that matter? I was a girl with a dream. It all started when my mum took me and my sister to see Fame, the Alan Parker film about the Manhattan school for performing arts. It was 1982 and I was eight and a quarter. Sitting there in the dark was like being in a cartoon and a light bulb going on in my head. Suddenly I knew what I wanted to do — just like that — I wanted to be Coco, who not only danced like no one I had ever seen before, but looked fantastic, with wild frizzy hair and sang as if she would explode — 'I'm gonna live for ever, I'm gonna learn how to fly! High!' 'Mummy,' I said as we drove back home. 'Yes, Victoria.' 'Can I go there?' 'Where?' 'That school.' 'No, you can't.' 'Please, Mummy.' 'No.' 'Why not?' 'Because it's in New York.' Didn't my mum understand? I had to go there, I just had to. How would I get to be a star otherwise? I would ask my nan. She would give me the money to go there. And I had (pounds) 12 saved from Christmas and birthday money. I got the record instead. I wasn't the only one. On 17 July "fame" sung by Irene Cara went to number 1 and stayed there for three weeks. It was in the top ten for sixteen weeks. A few weeks later the spin-off from the film begun on BBC TV. Irene Cara wasn't in it any longer, there was a new Coco. But my other favourites were: a great dancer, a street kid called Leroy who never had any money, and a good-looking boy called Bruno with curly hair who played the piano and wrote songs. Even the teachers were nice. The only one I couldn't be bother with was Julie, who played the cello and was a bit smug. That Christmas, the kids from fame came over from America and Mum took me and Louise to see them at the Albert Hall. And this wasn't some touring cast, it was the real thing: Gene Anthony Ray as Leroy Johnson, Erica Gimpel as Coco Hernandez, Lee Curreri as Bruno Martelli, I know as I've still got the programme. The night before I didn't sleep. Louise did, but then she was three years younger than me. Just because she had red hair, people were always smiling at her. I knew the truth, she was really boring, she didn't understand anything. I lay in bed that night thinking that they might have a bit where the audience go up on the stage like they did at the Broxbourne pantomime every year, and then Coco would see me and might ask me to go to New York. I had literally never been so excited. We nearly missed the beginning because we didn't find anywhere to park and by the time we got to our seats I was near to exploding. Sometimes things you have been looking forward to that much are a let-down, but not this. Apart of the Broxbourne pantomime, which we went to every year -my mum and dad were always big on family traditions - it was the first live show I ever been to. The energy of the dancer, and being so close to them, totally hooked me. On the way out my mum got me and my sister Kids from fame velour tracksuits with gold lettering on the back. Mine was blue and Louise's was red. |
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