Becoming 'the face' of...
The problem with having an agent is that you have to make money for two. It's like having a pimp, but without the beatings (or the job security). Harry had no time for girls who couldn't make the grade, and the grade was to become 'the face of ...'. He had a girl who was the face of a well known personal hygiene item, another who was the figurehead for coach holidays and a third who was the face of a brand of tights, well the legs of a brand of tights, really.
Becoming 'the face of' was complicated. My parents owned hotels and pubs, so I had to avoid getting my face onto anything that would turn up where my parents might spot it. It was amazing how often I got offered a try-out for something that turned out to be a household item if your house had thirty-eight bedrooms, two bars, and an a la carte restaurant. I thought I'd cracked it with Purton's Surgical Supports, but Harry pointed out that being the face of 'You bend, we release - Purton's patent hernia ease' was not the finest career move for a topless model. Sadly, I had to agree.
I nearly ended up being the face of a brand of new snack food, flavoured with shrimp and featuring a fishing boat motif. The stock shots I'd had taken the day I purchased my bits and bobs had tripped me up; there I was, looking roguish in my shiny yellow sou'wester hat and not much else and Harry had shown it to the guy who was trying to find the right girl to epitomise their brand.
"She needs to be saucy, but not sexy," the client had said. "Funny, friendly, definitely more like the girl next door than a bit of posh, but not really like the girl next door either. A seaside beauty, but not, you know, end of the pier type of looks. Brunette, unless she's blonde, and we don't want freckles, unless they're cute."
You might think that Harry would despair, given that set of instructions, but like most agents, he wasn't gifted with imagination. He ignored everything the client said and just fished out all the pictures in his files of girls looking vaguely nautical. There were three of us he sent up, an elderly slapper in gumboots, Patsy draped in a fishing net, and me with my daft headgear. Guess who got a call back?
I did my best to throw the shoot. I painted on some freckles, using diluted coffee-coloured waterproof eyeliner, I pouted as sexily as I could, and I tried to look like I belonged on the end of the pier. Actually, that was the difficult bit. The only thing you found at the end of Sandown Pier was elderly fishermen in plastic raincoats with tobacco tins full of ragworm. Even my hyperactive imagination couldn't understand how I was going to make myself look like them for the camera. Unsurprisingly, the Shrimp Snack people didn't give me the job.
A couple of weeks later my chance came again. A deeply inferior brand of pub snack was looking for a face. This was my chance. I was about to go up for 'The face of Sunny Scratchings'.
It's not as bad as it sounds. Scratchings are salted deep fried pork rinds, not diseases caused by too much sunbathing. Even better, Sunny Scratchings were the rival to Porkies, the brand my father stocked, so the Sunny brand would never be allowed to cross our doorstep. Was I up for it? I was so up for it I'd probably have sat naked in a tub of the things just to prove my suitability.
In the event, no such extreme test was required. I caught the train to Widnes, a place beyond belief and certainly off the map of this Southerner. I was met at the station by Harry's double, who turned out to be the brand manager for Sunny. I climbed into his elderly car, which smelt of Pale Ale and roll ups. It didn't seem like the start of a meteoric rise to the heights of brand marketing.
Things got stranger. Instead of a photographer with a backdrop, reflectors, half a dozen cameras and a bored, stroppy assistant, I was introduced to 'the client' – a small bald man and 'the technical guy' who had nothing but a cardboard folder under his arm.
"Take your top off," said the brand manager.
"Where's the photographer?" I asked, trying to look calm and grown-up.
"Eee, we don't need a photographer to look at your front. We've all got eyes," came the less than reassuring reply.
I took off my blouse. I wasn't wearing anything underneath it. You never did when you were on a shoot. Underwear made compression marks on your flesh that could take hours to fade – and photographers were allowed to send away, without pay, any model who wasn't 'camera ready' at the time the shoot was due to start.
"Right then," said the client. The technical guy opened the folder, pulled out a hugely blown-up picture of a pork scratching with an italic pink 'Sunny' printed over it, and positioned it beside my chest. They all got close and peered intently at me and the scratching. I held my breath.
"That's it then," declared the client.
I buttoned up my blouse, got back in the car and was driven back to the station.
By the time I got home Harry already knew the results. My nipples were exactly the same colour as the overprinting on the Sunny Scratchings packet. I'd got the job.
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