Read the book: «TV Stars!»

To be honest with you, I didn’t really know what to expect from the drama class. I kind of hoped it would be like Fame Academy with loads of cool kids strutting about, but that kind of thing is never really going to happen in Cuddington!

“So what do you think we’ll be doing in this class?” asked Rosie, looking about her nervously. We were waiting outside the hall with a few other people. The doors were locked, which wasn’t a good sign.

“Never mind what we’re going to be doing, are you sure there is a class here?” said Kenny, looking a bit fidgety. “I’m going to give this another five minutes, then I’m off!”

“It’s only six o’clock now,” said Fliss. “There’s no need to be so impatient.”

“I hate waiting around,” Kenny replied through gritted teeth, and went to climb the tree behind the hall.

“Well that’s not going to impress the drama teacher very much, is it?” sniffed Fliss. “I don’t know why Kenny always has to be such a fidget.”

It’s true that Kenny is kind of impatient and wants everything done yesterday, but I guess we were all getting a bit twitchy. It’s the ‘fear of the unknown’, as Dad sometimes says.

I looked around at the other people waiting. Most of them were about our age and most of them were girls. I recognised quite a few of them from Brownies. There was a small group of older children who all seemed to know each other too. One of them looked very like one of Tom’s mates, Daniel. I kind of wanted to go up to him to say “Hi”, but I felt too nervous and wimped out.

Suddenly there was this enormous bang and a sort of spluttering sound. A really battered old car had come to a halt just outside the hall.

“Hey, look at that!” whispered Rosie.

“It looks as though it’s going to fall to pieces at any minute!” breathed Frankie.

We were all busy staring at the car when this bright red shape stepped out of it and stood in the road, beaming at us. It was a woman with loads of purply-coloured hair piled on top of her head.

“That, my darlings, is known as making an entrance!” she laughed. She had this incredibly deep voice and the most fabulous earrings, which looked just like birds hovering above her shoulders. The group of older children burst out laughing and clapped really loudly. Fliss looked both embarrassed and annoyed with them at the same time.

“Ah thank you, my loyal fans!” The woman shrieked with laughter. “You know how I love an audience! Now Daniel, can you help me with my things? You too, Sophie. And the rest of us had better get inside.”

She marched up to the door and tried to push it open. It wouldn’t budge because it was locked. We all knew that, but she just didn’t seem to believe it. As she heaved her body against it, everybody had a good look at her. She was wearing all these floaty layers of clothes. Her skirt came to her ankles, and so did the long waistcoat she was wearing over the top of it. They were both bright red, but her top underneath was orange. I’d never seen anyone wear colours like that together before. When she turned round to smile at us we could see that her lipstick was a deep red, and she had painted black lines above her eyelashes. She looked kind of exotic.

“Do I have the key?” she asked, as if that was something we should know. I guess we all looked a bit blank, because she started to rummage in her enormous handbag.

“I suppose I must have, let me see now!”

All sorts of things started spilling on to the ground: a fat notebook with all its pages hanging out, a Mickey Mouse purse, three lipsticks (one without a top), a chequebook covered in gooey red stuff (lipstick probably) and finally a fat bunch of keys.

“Ah, here we are!” she said triumphantly, holding them up for us all to see. “Now which do you suppose opens the door?”

“We’ll be here all night!” muttered Kenny, who had reappeared at the sound of all the commotion.

Frankie and Rosie looked as though they could hardly believe their eyes. But they weren’t giggling or anything, which is what we normally do. They looked totally engrossed. Fliss was looking a bit apprehensive, but then when you have a mum who’s as organised and colour-coordinated as Fliss’s, I expect seeing someone so outrageous is a bit of a shock to the system.

By this time Daniel had stepped forward, found the right key and opened the door.

“In we go, in we go, in we go!” sang the woman.

When we were all finally in the hall she introduced herself.

“My name’s Angel, and it’s fab to see so many of you here. Some of you I know…” (she turned to smile at Daniel and his friends) “but lots of you I don’t. So let’s all introduce ourselves to each other.”

First of all we had to go round and say hello to everyone and tell them what we were called and how old we were. Then we had to sit in a circle and take it in turns to introduce ourselves to the whole group. Rosie got a bit panicked about that and her words wouldn’t come out at all. She sounded as though she’d swallowed a dishcloth. Angel was really brilliant though, she didn’t get angry or anything. She was really reassuring and told her that it was OK to be nervous. Besides, a few of the other kids clammed up too.

Kenny wasn’t nervous at all. When she introduced herself, she said that the most important thing in the world to her was football. You could tell by the way she said it that she thought drama classes were just a bit of a laugh.

“You know, that’s really interesting, Kenny,” said Angel when she’d finished, “because I always think that acting’s a lot like playing football.”

Kenny’s ears pricked up as soon as she said that!

“Footballers train all week for one match, don’t they? Well, actors rehearse for a play and then they’re on, in front of a crowd. It’s the same adrenalin buzz. Actors have to react quickly to situations, just as footballers have to know which shot to make when two defenders are haring towards them.”

Kenny was definitely interested now. As long as something’s similar to football, it’s all right with her!

After that, Angel split us up into smaller groups. We all made sure that we were together, and Juliet, one of the older girls, came to join us.

“How do you know Angel?” Frankie asked her.

“She did a drama workshop at school,” Juliet told us, “and it was so great that I started doing the courses she runs at weekends and in the holidays.”

“Do you go to Cuddington Comprehensive?” asked Rosie.

“Sure do!”

“Do you know Tom Collins then?” I asked.

“Oh don’t tell me that you like him too! Isn’t he gorgeous? I think he’d make a really good actor. He looks a bit like Brad Pitt, don’t you think? I keep trying to persuade him to come along to the workshops, but he won’t!” declared Juliet with a giggle.

Kenny and Frankie were both sniggering. I couldn’t believe that my stupid brother could have such an effect on girls. I mean, Juliet looked normal enough, but there must be something seriously wrong with her if she fancied Tom.

But before I could say anything, Fliss shrieked, “Lyndz doesn’t like Tom – he’s her brother!”

You ought to have seen poor Juliet’s face. Talk about beetroot! She just didn’t know where to put herself. For the rest of the class she was sort of distracted and didn’t take much part in the role-playing we were doing.

When we left she came up to me and said, “Don’t tell Tom what I told you, will you? But try to persuade him to come along to the class next week.”

Yeah, right! Some hope! The last place he would want to be is somewhere with his kid sister. And I wouldn’t want him to come anyway. I was definitely going to go back though, because we’d had a totally cool time. Angel was great and everybody was really friendly. The others thought so too.

“That was so fab!” squealed Rosie, who had got over her dishcloth mouth.

“What did I tell you!” said Fliss smugly. “I knew it would be brilliant!”

“And Angel seems to know a lot about football too,” said Kenny admiringly. She started to speak like Angel, in a really deep voice. “If we go on like this we’ll be starring in the next blockbuster movie – no problem, darlings!”

For the next week we pretended to be Angel all the time. We even tried to perfect her laugh, which was sort of all thick like treacle.

The drama classes were our highlight of the week. We were doing something we were all interested in, and we were doing it all together. For once we were all happy and we didn’t fall out at all.

Well, surprise, surprise – that didn’t last for long!

For the first couple of weeks, everything we did at Angel’s drama class was completely new to us. I’d thought we might have to learn loads of lines for a play, and I’m no good at that. In school plays I always end up as a tree or something because I’m hopeless at remembering lots of words. Well, Angel’s class wasn’t like that at all. We did loads of improvisation exercises which were really great. Sometimes we split into twos, and one of us was a hairdresser and the other was the client who’d just been given a disastrous perm. Or we were in a big group and we had to act out an emotion, like being happy or sad, and everyone had to guess what it was and then copy what we’d done.