So nearly a star...

Yesterday my friend Sue and I walked our dogs through the deeply muddy woods round the reservoir and commiserated on our weeks – my inability to write anything lucrative, her problems with pets: one of their rabbits died and the family are all in deep mourning, particularly the children.

However, she had to go and see a client who had nine jobs to offer, and duly set off, arriving at a huge mansion with those big black gates you see in films. Picture CCTV, razor wire looped over the high brick perimeter walls, and behind the gates were two massive Dobermans, but these were American Doberman; half as big again as the ones we get over here.

Being a wimp, I would have turned tail and run, but Sue is made of sterner stuff and was rescued from the jaws of death by The Boss who took her on a guided tour of his estate. This covered several hundred acres and housed a variety of tarantulas, six Arab horses and several birds of prey.
‘How big – like buzzards?’ said Sue, her voice rising to a squeak.
‘Bigger,’ came the reply.

At this point she cursed the fact that she didn’t have a mobile phone and wondered if she was going to get out alive. The children would be motherless, her dear husband sobbing over her coffin – and all because she'd been torn to pieces by a buzzard the size of a house, or at the very least as big as a vulture.

‘What did he do?’ I asked, ever nosy and beginning to wish that I’d gone. I could have taken notes, put him in the next book.

‘He said he made horror films,’ Sue said. ‘Hence the tarantulas and things – oh yes, and rats.’ I gulped here. I really don’t like rats. Neither did Sue by the look of her face. ‘But he said they don’t harm the animals,’ she said, looking faintly green. ‘They just run across the set.’

At this point Sue said she looked down at her feet, wondering if any vermin were going to shoot across the floor, and tried to find out more about this man. It turned out that he’d made a lot of money out of these films and asked if Sue liked that sort of thing.

‘I’ve shivered behind the sofa with the rest of them,’ she said, diplomatically. (I’ve watched one horror film in my life and that was one too many. Couldn’t sleep for weeks.)

Delighted, Mr Hammer Horror then gave her several videos to take home – three lots of trilogies – so she has her viewing cut out for the next few weeks. He also mentioned he’d had the likes of Christopher Lee over for the weekend – they flew over in their helicopters. As you do.

At this point, Sue got a whiff of Stardom. ‘I thought he might want me in his next film,’ she said. ‘So I pursed my lips and looked at him, sort of like this.’ She made a Marilyn Munroe type pout. ‘But he took no notice.’

‘They usually have a ravishingly attractive woman in horror films,' I said, remembering the trailer I saw for King Kong.

‘That's what I thought,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘After all, I’ve got experience. I’ve been in Oliver.’

Sadly at that point his phone rang and he had to go. And she was so close to being famous…....