Lies! Lust! Betrayals! How I dealt with Britain’s biggest divas
Falling out with Joan Collins. Fired by Patsy Kensit. A-listers who open the door naked. As a new TV drama lifts the lid on celebrity agents, one former talent manager says you don’t know the half of it
ONCE I was contacted by someone working with Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, who was looking for a new PR.
I had an impressive roster of highprofile clients at the time and a meeting was arranged at celebritycatnip restaurant The Ivy.
It was a hot day so I wore linen. When I approached the table where Fergie was sitting, she scanned me up and down and said with disdain, ‘Do you not own an iron?’ The smoothtalking agent in me thought, ‘Let it go, she’s a royal’. But the human being in me replied, ‘Darling, of course I own one. But there isn’t enough steam in the world to iron out the creases in your reputation.’
Her jaw hit the floor and I walked away with a smirk on my face that matched the crease in my dress. This may sound like a storyline from Ten Percent, the new Amazon Prime drama about a London celebrity agency, but it’s totally true.
The show, a remake of French lockdown hit Call My Agent!, takes us behind the scenes of the British showbiz industry, portraying a group of long-suffering agents hell-bent on keeping their clients’ careers alive.
Lies, lust, backstabbing, betrayal and diva-like behaviour are commonplace. As a real-life talent
Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes
ACTOR JIM CARREY
agent from 2000-2020, i can confirm that it is a pretty accurate representation of the industry. Yes, celebrities are, at times, that demanding and, largely (the Duchess of York aside), us agents put up with it.
As a teenager, i had a desperate desire to break into showbiz. i landed my first job as a camera assistant on top of the Pops (totP), which i subsidised by working as an extra on soap operas.
While working on totP, i struck up a friendship with claire Richards from Steps. She was by far the most talented member of the group and one day i told her this. claire then confessed she’d like to go solo and she’d hire me as her manager and publicist. it sounded pie in the sky, but that is exactly what she did and, hey presto, i was an agent!
i spent the next few years looking after pop stars before turning my hand to the acting world, adding soap actresses claire King (emmerdale), Beverley callard (coronation Street) and gillian taylforth (eastenders) to my stable. each of them loved my ideas about the direction in which i thought their careers should go and appreciated that i was prepared to defend them.
i understood that being famous makes people feel vulnerable, because everyone knows who you are but you don’t know them.
i soon discovered that one of the most important parts of being an agent is protecting a client’s reputation. over the years it put me in some very strange situations.
the most memorable was when a crook tried blackmailing an actress i represented who’d become embroiled in a sex-tape scandal. Back then, there were no laws preventing this, so i ended up arranging a sting.
i hid under the table with a tape machine to record evidence of the man taking a payment from the actress and then threatened him with the police. the tape was returned the next day.
By 2006, i was representing half of the Loose Women. Denise Welch suggested i take on coleen nolan, her co-star, and put us in contact.
coleen’s first words to me were, ‘every agent i’ve ever had has either been dodgy or crap — how do i know you’ll be different?’ i asked her to give me two weeks. in that time i secured her work worth £500,000. everybody wanted a piece of her. Knowing how to build a celebrity’s brand is the key to good management.
i then asked coleen if she would consider reforming the nolans. She laughed and said it would never happen, but within a year we’d arranged an arena tour that made millions. it was at the press conference for the tour that i met Bernie nolan for the first time, where her first words to me were: ‘i hate you, i hate the songs and i’m only doing it for the money.’
‘Blimey,’ i thought as the journalists trouped in. She proceeded to get drunk on wine and repeat this line while the other sisters tried to pretend she was joking.
By the time the tour had finished, however, Bernie and i were the best of friends and she asked me to manage her professionally and personally. i secured her a slot on itv’s new show Popstar to operastar, and with coleen having fun on Dancing on ice, two women who were considered to be past their best by the industry were back on prime-time tv.
however, this created a huge amount of jealousy among their peers, with one of coleen’s Loose Women co-stars referring to her as ‘the media wh***’ when she walked into the morning meetings.
her misery was compounded a thousandfold when Bernie, whose career was now at an all-time high, found a lump in her breast which turned out to be cancer. Within two years she was dead.
When both Dynasty legend Stephanie Beacham and Lethal Weapon actress Patsy Kensit contacted me at the same time about representing them, it was a real wow moment. it showed how far i’d come as an agent.
After four divorces, Patsy was keen to build her coffers back up. her first words to me were, ‘melanie, i want to make lots of money — and fast!’ So that’s what i did. We made millions with Patsy.
Stephanie just wanted to do fun photoshoots. She wasn’t interested in the money, she just missed the glamour of the 1980s decadence. one shoot we did with Stephanie for hello! involved £20 million worth of diamonds. there were security guards everywhere.
the crowning glory of Patsy’s comeback was meant to be a ghostwritten autobiography, which i secured for a colossal fee.
Unfortunately, Patsy didn’t confide in our agency that shortly before the launch she’d undergone an emergency hysterectomy.
this meant that she hadn’t been able to prepare for the book’s publicity tour. She went on this morning and revealed she hadn’t read her own autobiography.
All hell broke loose and the book bombed. But Patsy and i soldiered on and, after securing her another colossal fee, she entered the Big Brother house in January 2015.
After behaving with dignity and grace, which isn’t what the tv executives were after, she was evicted within three weeks. She promptly fired me with some flowers and a card saying, ‘it’s been great, but i think it’s time for a change. Love, Pats.’
She would eventually rehire me a few years later when things hadn’t gone as she planned — that’s showbiz, and i loved working with her.
one moment that really caught me off-guard was the time i nearly created a catfight between Stephanie Beacham and Joan collins.
they’d been invited to do a tv advert together for Snickers, so you can imagine the headlines and publicity — two 1980s Dynasty icons reunited!
We arranged an interview with one of the newspapers and a totally innocent comment Stephanie made about Joan looking different without her make-up on got spun to look catty, which caused an almighty blow-up. i was in the middle of this.
Luckily, Stephanie forgave me. i don’t care what Joan thinks — i have met her several times and always found her quite cold, but i loved her sister Jackie who i met and was adorable.
in my experience, celebrities seem to be more inclined to get naked than the average member of the public. Several different daytime tv presenters used to open their front doors to me stark naked. my
I hid under a table to stop a client being blackmailed
Patsy wanted to make ‘lots of money – and fast’ I was in the middle of an almighty Dynasty blow-up
Coleen laughed at reforming The Nolans. We made millions Mel B caught me taking the mickey out of her lyrics
Joanna Lumley? Absolutely fabulous in every way
response was always, ‘Where’s your bloody dressing gown?’
Worse was to come. An A-list Hollywood actress, who I was meeting in North London, came down to greet me wearing nothing but Agent Provocateur knickers and some cream on each nipple. ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘How are you?’ ‘I’m fine,’ she said casually. ‘I’ve got this new cream that’s supposed to make your nipples taste really nice. Would you like to try some?’
‘No, thank you,’ I said and went out and sat in the driver’s seat of the car that was taking us to a premiere.
Regardless of how eccentric some of your clients might be, there will always be fans who are worse. Over the years I had to deal with some absolute nutcases.
Poor Coleen Nolan used to get more than her fair share of these, and one day she received a death threat that forced the police to evacuate her from her own home.
Then you have the sexual weirdos. Before social media, people used to post us photographs of their privates, or even, on one or two occasions, their pubic hair.
I’ve had memorable encounters with a couple of the Spice Girls over the years. I was invited to meet Geri Halliwell at a private appearance she was doing at a nightclub in London.
It was awful. Her miming was atrocious and after losing her mic headset she fell over.
At the after-show party, she asked me what I thought. I concocted a diplomatic response that I then used every time I saw something terrible: ‘Look at you! Seriously, what about that! Incredible! You are something else!’
Later, I was asked to do PR for a Julia Roberts film called Duplicity. At the premiere I was sitting behind Julia, who was luminous and so polite, but the film turned out to be a stinker.
When she asked me what I thought, I deployed my Geri line. I don’t think she bought it.
Then there was Mel B. Back in my TOTP days, Mel caught me singing along to one of her solo songs in between rehearsals. She thought I was taking the mickey out of the lyrics. She was correct.
‘’Ere,’ she shouted, in full-on Scary Spice mode. ‘Are you taking the piss outta my song, yer cheeky cow?’ I denied it, claiming I was singing along because I loved the track so much.
She demanded I perform it, in full, to prove my admiration. So I did, in front of the entire crew and entourage. ‘Eee, you love it, don’t ya?’ said Mel, grinning from ear to ear. Twenty years later, I bumped into her in the toilet at a dinner party. I was with another woman and we were both having issues with our dresses.
‘Oh, don’t mind us,’ I said to Mel as she walked in and saw us fiddling around with straps. ‘We’re not flashing. I don’t swing that way!’
‘Really?’ she said immediately. ‘Well, I bloody well do!’ She’s so outrageous, we all laughed. I asked her if she remembered me and, after staring at me for a few seconds, she said, ‘I almost punched you at Top Of The Pops didn’t I!’
We got talking over dinner and it turned out she was looking for a new manager. We started exchanging emails. It got as far as us verbally agreeing to work with each other, but then Mel sent me a lovely email saying it wasn’t the right time but she loved my ideas for her. So near yet so far.
Injustices take place daily in showbusiness, and one of the worst examples I encountered was when actress Beverley Callard was being treated appallingly by a new Coronation Street producer.
As she was one of their most popular stars, I couldn’t understand it, so I arranged a meeting with him to try to salvage things. He basically ignored us both throughout the meal so Beverley resigned, which secretly we both knew he wanted.
Not long after that Michelle Collins was installed as the new landlady of the Rovers Return. Sadly for Michelle, who is a fantastic actress, the fans didn’t take to her character and the backlash was vicious.
A new producer was installed a couple of years later and I immediately got a call asking if Beverley would like the Rovers Return back. Within months she was in her pub and Michelle was out. That’s showbiz snakes and ladders for you.
For balance, I should point out that there are some wonderful people working in the industry, behind and in front of the camera.
Right at the very top of the tree is Dame Joanna Lumley. I once worked on a night shoot for Absolutely Fabulous with her. At the end, Joanna went around the entire set and said thank you and goodbye to everybody there, including all the extras.
She remembered everyone’s names. What a class act — absolutely fabulous in every way. As was my time as a talent agent. I retired after my novel Ruthless Women, based on a fictitious soap opera by the sea, full of backstabbing sex-mad actresses and corrupt execs, became an international bestseller.
My latest, Guilty Women, is yet another tale inspired by that peek behind a studio door or velvet curtain that so few see.
And despite all the politics, bitching and ludicrous behaviour I’ve recounted here, I wouldn’t have missed it for the world!
Guilty Women by Melanie Blake is out now (£12.99, HarperCollins)