Judging Alex - Take Two (The Interview That Almost Came Back)

How many cops is it possible to talk to in lifetime? 

Since having my iPad taken on Sunday night in Miami, I have been through about five US states and a dozen officers, which is more than I have spoken to in over 50 years of living in the UK (that number, by the way, is three). If you add my court case against my LA landlord last year, I realise I speak to US law enforcement officers more often than I speak to members of my own family.

   

For the missing Blackberry, I had to go through American Airlines (no joy), Burger King and Chili’s restaurant at LAX, and half the LAPD, whose response was “Ma’am, let me tell you what we do and what we don’t do . . . “ In essence, that boiled down to: they don’t take details, they don’t take a report, they don’t give reference numbers and, as became abundantly apparent, they don’t like speaking to foreigners, even though I put on my very best British accent.

   

And so to the iPad loss and the Judge Alex interview stored in Voice Memos. Blimey, that was another tale altogether. Miami police don’t cover Miami. There’s Miami mainland, Miami Beach and any number of individual pebbles forces, each with its own people, and, as I not so quickly discovered, somewhere near La Goya Street up near Orlando, where my Find My iPhone told me my iPad had been located.

   

You can imagine my excitement. “Jaci Stephen’s iPad has been found” said the e-mail. I whooped with joy; I cried as many tears as when I lost it; my palms sweated, anticipating the joy of the black leather case back in my hands. But then . . . that was it. Nothing. I sent messages to it. I begged for its safe return. I even told them they could keep the thing – just send the Voice Memos to iTunes. I went to US White Pages and rang rather frightened strangers, demanding that they return my equipment.

   

But now it was located, I was back to square one. Which police force would have the unenviable task of going to go round to the address and beating up the person who has made my life a misery over the past four days? Certainly not Orlando’s “We have a lot of cases to deal with” force, and very much not LAX’s “Ma’am, let me . . . “ Yep, mate, I know. You ain’t gonna help me.

   

It’s certainly not like it is on the telly. There, I would meet with the lovely Olivier Benson from Law and Order Special Victims Unit (okay, that’s sexual attacks, but someone very much like her) and they would have my case sewn up, with me the victor, in about 43 minutes.

   

I tried Apple Support to see if they could extract the Voice Memos from the lost iPad. Well, they were about as useful as a maggot in a Granny Smith’s. 

I tried iTunes Support. Let’s just say a couple of contact lenses strapped to Katie Price’s breasts would have provided more support than the lot of them put together.

I even contacted Stephen Fry, who knows about all things Apple, and even he directed me back to iTunes or the Genius Bar. I forgive him; he has other work to do.

   

As the days go on, there are more bits of the interview coming back to me, although Judge Alex wants to check over what I print, as he thinks perhaps his memory might serve the piece better than mine.

Blame it on the sun. Blame it on the excitement. Blame it on the wine. 

Blame it on Apple, who hid the Voice Memo back-up I always use in my iPhone in something called Utilities. And also their ios6 system, which fails to store Voice Memos.

   

Blame it on the US police force. Blame it on iTunes. Blame it on thieves who go around nicking other people’s property with no thought as to how it might affect them or their livelihoods.

   

I know I’ll get over it; after all, nobody died, nobody got pregnant, and apparently that’s a good barometer these days (although both those things would have got me to Olivier Benson a darn sight quicker).

   

But it still galls me. 

Knowing that on 590 La Goy Street, Florida 32908, my iPad is sitting, lonely and depressed, in someone else’s arms. It was only an iPad 1 and I know I can buy a 2 or a 3 to replace it, but it’s those Voice Memos I’ll never get back. 

They say the apple never falls far from the tree; in this case, the Apple is an ocean away and I’m still heartbroken.

   

Cox’s Pippins to the bastard who has it.

    

   

Judging Alex - Take One (The Interview That Got Away)

My screams could be heard above the sound of the waves crashing onto South Beach. 

The tears springing from the geysers that used to be eye sockets were producing enough salt water to fill South Beach twice over.

I sobbed, I begged, I grabbed anyone with a badge and poured my heart out.

   

Someone had taken my iPad. One minute’s visit to the rest room at Miami’s Fontainbleau Hotel was all it took for (according to the security cameras) a woman to rummage through my NATPE conference bag and make off with it – apparently telling staff she would return it the next day. She didn’t.

   

But the loss of the iPad is not the worst of it. My travel insurance will cover a replacement – just as it will cover the replacement cost of the Blackberry I had stolen last week. The horror, the horror, to quote Conrad, was what I lost on the iPad: my interview with Judge Alex. 

An interview that has been two years in the making and which filled over two glorious hours of Voice Memo. But thanks to Apple’s new IOS6, voice memos do not get backed up to the iCloud; it’s a bug, apparently, which doesn’t help me one little bit. 

As Voice Memo on the iPhone 5 I use as back-up mysteriously disappeared, I therefore was totally reliant on the iPad. And now have just the 35 minutes I managed to transcribe. It’s still over 4,000 words, at least 3,000 of which are me gushing over the man whose show became addictive viewing for me when I was living in LA; but Judge Alex’s gorgeous laugh has disappeared into the iCloud ether, and I am more than a little upset. 

I feel I have lost a limb. 

The irony is that had I not arranged to meet up with Judge Alex for a farewell drink prior to my returning to the UK, I wouldn’t have been in the very spot from where the bag was taken.

   

So, the interview is going to take a little longer to write than it would have done, and at the moment I am just trying to write down as much as I can remember about Judge Alex, who (for starters):-.

1.              Not only has a great laugh, but very good teeth. Very white. The kind of teeth you wouldn’t mind flossing if there was nothing on the telly.

2.              Has impeccable manners – standing up when I left/returned from the rest room (which, with my tiny bladder, was often; it’s a wonder he wasn’t in traction after all that movement).

3.              Is very funny, very smart and great company – just like the show.

4.              Has been a pilot, a cop and a judge. I like a man in uniform, so this was as if all my Christmases had come at once. I wouldn’t know which I’d want him to wear first, though. Sometimes a girl can have too much choice.

5.              Would really like to be on Dancing with the Stars.

6.              Likes red wine.

7.              Looks like a film star.

8.              In 2008 was voted the most trustworthy face on daytime TV and the second most trusted face of all TV celebrities (beaten by Dr Oz).

9.       Was once billed by People Magazine as one of the “sexiest men alive” (no arguments from me).

10.           Is not going to leave his family and come to live with me in Wales (he can be very mean).

These are just a few bullet points and there will be a lot more to come, once I am over jet-lag, and possibly even more if my iPad ever turns up, or if Apple ever solves what is apparently a big problem with this latest operating system. 

Otherwise, it’s just going to have to be a re-take, your honour. 

Or I’ll see you in court if they find the bastard that stole your laughter.        

   

A Globe In The Hand Is Worth Two In The Basket

An hour is a long time in a laundry basket.  

That was my concern when, looking for a secret hiding place to gatecrash the Golden Globes private party at LA’s Soho House, I started wishing I weighed the 50 kilos I was when I left the city just over a year ago.

   

The laundry basket in the Ladies’ rest room at Soho House is not very big. In fact, if I wanted to make it my hiding place, I had 120 minutes in which to lose at least two stone. With the club closing at 9pm for a private party with the show’s hosts, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, I had very little time to case the joint and perfect my crashing strategy.

   

I used to be very good at crashing parties. I once crawled through somebody’s legs to talk to Stephen Spielberg, who had just won a Bafta for Schindler’s List. I told him I thought ET was the greatest film ever made. ‘D’you know,’ he said, ever so kindly, given that he had just won his first major award for the holocaust epic. ‘I was thinking about that film last week - and I think you may well be right.’

   

I once crashed the Evening Standard Film Awards in London and spotted a rather lonely looking Al Pacino. We approached in a romantic movie kind of way, but all I could get out were the words: ‘I am your greatest fan.’ 

I am not sure whether that, or the three things I managed to say to Bill Clinton when I fought tooth and nail to reach him, were the most embarrassing. Then, I managed to stutter: ‘This is the greatest day of my life’, ‘You are the greatest man who has ever lived’ and ‘Can I have your autograph.’

Then there was Leonardo di Caprio - "I really love your work." My friend had persuaded me not to say "Phew! You survived the ship!" which had been my first choice of introduction.

   

In London’s Groucho Club, I came face to face with a rather handsome man and, in my capacity as a TV critic, promised him a meteoric rise to stardom. ‘Have you ever done any acting . . . I can spot people . . . I could write about you and make you a star.’ On and on and on. ‘D’you know what it is . . . You’ve got that real kind of Ewan McGregor charisma. What’s your name?’ ‘Er, Ewan McGregor.’

   

So, I know how to get into places and meet the stars. Sometimes, they look a bit frightened. La Toyah Jackson, to whom I had kindly given up my favourite seat on an Air New Zealand flight from the UK to LA, introduced me to “Mini Me” Verne Troyer onboard. The 2 foot 8 actor shrank so far back in terror at my gushing approach, he all but slipped into the seat lining.

   

The day before the Golden Globes last week, I introduced myself to movie supremo Harvey Weinstein. When Harvey enters a room, people stand to one side – he’s like Moses parting the Red Sea. His stunned expression made it clear I had broken some Hollywood code, like an errant Israelite trying to steal Moses’s thunder.

   

Having dismissed the laundry basket as my temporary home, I turned to the cinema, which was still open, following the showing of a movie. Perhaps I could stand behind the curtains? But would my feet poke out? What if they locked the cinema and I had to spend the night trapped in red velvet?

   

Was any of it worth the risk, anyway? I have been member of Soho House since the first week and am now an Every House member. How awful if I had it taken away because I was discovered in a laundry basket and was being carried out on a stretcher, having dislocated my back among the damp towels?

   

I decided not to risk it. I had already had my picture taken with Bradley Cooper, Sally Field, Benedict Cumberbatch, Toby Jones and Josh Groban at the Bafta Tea Party (which I managed to crash, courtesy of British TV producer Nigel Lythgoe – another of our exports who has made it big across the pond). 

I had just flown from Miami, where I had interviewed the divine Judge Alex, whose name fronts the best reality courtroom series on TV.

   

There is only so much hanging on a girl can do, and well into my Fifties now, I realise that dignity must come first. 

One day, I’ll be a prize-winner and I won’t have to go scavenging for hiding places just to get close to the coat-tails of others. They’ll be begging me to market laundry baskets. 

Trust me. I’m a gate-crasher.  

What is it REALLY all about?

Another two, this week. There are more and more of them, every couple of months. People whose names, just a year ago, had been in my diary for lunch. 

People who cancelled. 

People who I cancelled. 

All dead.

    

It’s called getting older. But I still can’t get to grips with the fact that I am next in the queue. I just can’t. I’m frightened. Yes, I am sobbing for my dead friends and relatives; I cry every week for the wonderful father I lost in 1990; I cry for my friend who killed himself in a garage, beside a bottle of vodka and a note for his parents; I cry for the death of my young cousin and the devastation that has wrought amongst our family,

How do we cope? How do we move on? What’s it all about? We still search for answers in the cliches.

For me, it’s not religion that gets us through, it’s things like this (in no particular order, as they say in the TV shows):-

My friend just laughed at a really stupid joke I made.

My mum, realising she gave me a bit of a hard time yesterday, gave me a cheery phone-call. And we never said what it was/wasn’t about.

Rhys Gosling, who came to fix my boiler, who did a really great job and did not rip me off.

I have people who love me.

I just realised I have an episode of Law and Order SVU series 14 to catch up on and I am in love with Olivia Benson (though not in a lesbian way . . . I don’t think).

The fact that I’m sitting here. Alive.

Going into my garage and seeing a hand carved wooden desk my parents gave me one Christmas when I envied my cousins’ supermarket equivalent.

I will be spending the winter in the sun.

I have a brain that, so far, I have used well (quiet in the stalls!).

I can read and write – a true blessing, and something those of us who can should do everything to spread amongst those who cannot.

I’m going to bed now – counting my blessings. And there are many.

And yet, and yet, the eternal question . . . What's it all about?

And do we want to know?

   

Dr Cowell and the Frankenstein X Monster

So, Dr Cowell, your creature has taken on a life of its own.

The beautiful experiment has turned into a monster and deserted you. Despite its good intentions, it continues to gather more victims in its wake, unsure who or what it is anymore.

It is a shadow of its once tiny but perfect self. Small wonder you are weeping and Tweeting.

  

There is more than a tiny similarity between the tale of Dr Frankenstein and his out of control monster, and Simon Cowell and The X Factor. Both perfected a formula; both loved their creation; and neither could predict the devastation that creation would cause, once it took on a life of its own and set itself free in the world.

  

On Saturday night, Cowell was in the US, where he is a judge on their version of the show and, when one-time favourite, 16 year old Ella, in the UK show was evicted, he Tweeted: “Unbelievable”.

  

Really? Earlier in the week, I had been on the phone to UK judge Louis Walsh and told him that Ella and James would be the next to go. Ella’s songs had not only been pitched for her in the wrong key (as Nicole pointed out twice), she looked a mess and was, bless her, boring. Go to the Welsh Eisteddfod in August, and Ella voices are ten a penny – and kids with more personality.

  

James is undoubtedly a huge talent, but he too looks a mess. The urge to promote “urban” on the part of the judges (in particular, Tulisa) will simply not wash with the ITV audience. They want one thing: entertainment; and if that happens to go hand in hand with talent, great; if not, c’est la vie de showbiz. It is something that the current crop of judges does not understand. It is something that Cowell once did, but does not seem to anymore.

  

Look at the so-called novelty acts that have gone on to make money, if not very lucrative careers as a result of their laughable appearances on The X Factor – Jedward, being the prime example. They can’t sing, they can’t dance, they are irritating beyond belief, yet they are recognised and audiences flock to them the world over. In the current X Factor, Rylan Clark is a veritable Tom Jones alongside them; Christopher Maloney (who, unlike Rylan, really can sing) is a veritable Pavarotti.

  

Every week, Christopher gets booed by the studio audience, yet he has yet to be in the bottom two. No, he is no Leona Lewis but he delivers what the studio audience at home want: good tunes, nicely sung, by a seemingly nice, down to earth bloke. Whatever the truth behind newspaper reports of backstage tantrums, the voting audience neither knows nor cares.

So he’s someone who, according to the judges, would be more suited to a cruise ship or a karaoke bar? Well, sorry, but that’s what the audience wants: accessibility. For all Louis’s protestations – “We’re looking for a recording artist” – the show is not, first and foremost, about finding the best singer; if it had ever been about that, it could have gone into every school in the country and picked out an Ella, or visited every “urban” hangout in Camden and found a James.

The X Factor is, and always has been, about giving people something to stay in for and to argue about with their family and friends on a Saturday/Sunday night.

  

The X Factor was never better than when Simon, Sharon and Louis were on the panel. Here were three people who were in the business, had been for donkeys’ years, knew it backwards, and were not afraid to speak their minds. Then came the glamour girls and, with that, the fashion competitions in the press, the backstage sniping, and the belief that they were bigger than the show.

  

Now, the show is lucky if it can find anyone who even knows the difference between a note that is too sharp or too flat; instead, they resort to the irritating American Idol-ism “It was a bit pitchy”, which means nothing to your nan sitting at home with a sherry on a Saturday night (Simon, who is not a trained musician, still knows in his gut when a note is just plain “wrong”).

  

Even worse is the “You nailed it”. Not one of these judges even comes close to Cowell’s remarkable astuteness and ability to say, in one sentence, exactly what is right or wrong. Louis, whom I love, still interacted better with Simon and Sharon than he has with anyone else. In essence, Simon has the ability, as a judge, to nail it.

  

Is it too late to save The X Factor? To bring the monster back from the seeds of its own destruction? I fear it is. The studio audience used to be a reflection of the audience vote; now, they are little more than puppets in the hands of the judges, who must bear some responsibility for the appalling attacks and even death threats on Christopher Maloney.

  

It would not have happened with Cowell on the panel. This is a man who knows showbiz – and, for all the money it’s made him and pleasure he gets out of it, knows it for what it is: just showbiz. At least, that’s how I remember him.

But has Dr Cowell, with his American profile and riches, deserted the UK X Factor and left us staring helplessly into the eyes of his monster?

   

It was, perhaps, inevitable. As Dr Frankenstein said, when his monster came to life: "The beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart." Or, as Simon Cowell might say: "Unbelievable".

  

Now, there are other monsters, other continents. But beware, Dr Cowell: they, too, will have lives and minds of their own.

And they may all come back to bite you.

  

  

Touched by an Angel

There are people who come into our lives who never realise how big a part they play; then, suddenly, they are gone, and you are left stunned with the shock ending: the disbelief that you have reached the last page so soon, when you thought there was so much more of the story to go.

   

This week, I went into the lounge on Cardiff railway station to await the 11.25am First Great Western train to London. I had not been there for some time and entered the lounge expecting to see Lena, who ran the morning shift. Lena, whose hair might be red or purple, depending on the time of year; who made your tea and coffee with the care of a nurse singling you out for special treatment.

   

She wasn’t there, and I did a double take at seeing Sue, normally on the afternoon shift.

  

“Did you hear about Lena?” she asked. I went cold. After being diagnosed with ovarian cancer at the beginning of the summer, Lena had passed away after just thirteen weeks.

I was, and still am, in disbelief, and can’t stop crying every time I think of this extraordinary woman. She wasn’t just someone who served the tea and coffee (“Chocolaty bits?” she used to ask, when I had a rare Cappuccino – and I took them because she liked to surprise me with a different design on the froth); she knew the minutiae of my life and supported me through some very hard times. That’s an incredible feat when you see someone for no more than 20 minutes before the train arrives.

   

Each time I re-visited Cardiff when I was living mostly in Los Angeles for two and a half years, Lena was always excited to hear of my adventures. But she also knew how homesick I was and, on one return visit, she gave me a silver daffodil pendant to remind me of home when I was away. The last time I saw her, she gave me a satin pouch containing tweezers, scissors and other essentials for my travels. She never forgot my birthday and, every year, gave me a card.

   

She always spoke so lovingly of her partner Fred and her daughter in America. She proudly showed customers pictures of her beautiful grandchildren and the holidays she had taken to visit them. She was also very proud of her dog, whose pictures she showed me on her phone.

   

Lena raised a lot of money for charity, most notably with an annual “sponsored silence”. Those of us who knew her knew how tough that was – she acknowledged it herself. She was thrilled when she started working on a Dr Barnardo’s committee and made me laugh with her description of meetings where she had to ask people to stop talking in initials, insisting that they explain the abbreviations so that she could understand what on Earth it was they were talking about.

   

I have never met anyone who could be so cheerful from the crack of dawn, and no matter how sad or unhappy I was when I entered that lounge at whatever time, I always emerged with a smile on my face.

   

On one return visit from the US, I told Lena about a very close friend who had suddenly died there, and I was in pieces every time I arrived at the lounge. As Lena had followed my adventure from the start, she was genuinely saddened by my grief as I poured my heart out. She always asked about my mum. She always sympathised with whatever my latest drama was, no matter how big or small. She helped me with my bags. She gave me water for the train. She said how lovely it was to see me. She told me to look after myself.

   

Every Christmas in the lounge, she had a new toy that would sing, dance, or wriggle to music – all the things I never want until at least mid-day. But to Lena, every moment was one filled with joy and not to be missed.

   

I missed her birthday card this year. I will miss the Christmas toys. I will miss her constantly changing hair colours. I will miss her stories and the love that filled her eyes when she spoke of those closest to her. I will miss the chocolaty bits on my frothy coffee.

   

Most of all, I will miss a woman who never complained, who cast a light on everything and everyone around her, and whose death seems so, so unfair.

   

Lena, you were a dear friend and I trusted you with every aspect of my life. A credit to First Great Western, to Cardiff, and the charities for which you so tirelessly worked, you were one very special lady. And I thank you for having been a part of my life. 

A bigger part than I think you ever knew.