The Waiting Room

I had expected to wait for ages before I heard anything. How wrong I was. Having posted the letter everything suddenly zoomed forwards, a mere two days after making the application, I got a call asking me to come in for interview the following Tuesday.

So barely a week after sending out my CV, I found myself sat in a generic waiting room at Channel 3 with 4 other candidates. All of us were nervous. None of us were talking. I don't know who was setting up the interviews, but a more diverse set of people I could not imagine.

First of all there was I, sat wearing a pin striped suit with white shirt and (admittedly rather 80s) red "power" tie. (At that time I hadn't quite grasped the dress code for TV). Initially I wasn't feeling too confident, until I surveyed my competition.

Opposite me sat a young looking girl who was a walking emoticon: her blonde hair was tied in bunches and she had on stacked trainers with white tights, a pink tutu and a pink t-shirt with a large red sparkly heart on the front in sequins. Her eyeshadow was pale blue and she was sucking a lollipop in the best school-girl manner. I just knew she had a fluffy topped pencil in a luridly coloured, furry pencil case in her silver baby back-pack. She looked about as professional as Baby-Spice.

Next to her was an equally "professional" looking androgynous man. He was gamine dressed head to toe in black, topped off with a bright red patterned ethnic skull cap. The whole look was finished with a goatee beard, some very severe round glasses and a well-worn copy of Kafka in his hand.

On the same side of the room as me was a much more likely candidate. She was an extremely well dressed woman of 25 or so. She was wearing terrifying secretary chic: tight black pencil skirt, tight pin-striped blouse (at least I wasn't on my own with the pin stripes!) black fishnet stockings and black patent high-heels, which bordered on the S&M Madam. Her glossy chestnut brown hair was tied in a professional chignon and she was wearing the archetypal seductress red lipstick and tortoiseshell glasses. Did I say I was feeling more confident? Well I was petrified of her.

The final candidate was sat on his own on the left hand wall. I shan't beat around the bush - he was absolutely gorgeous! Swarthy dark brooding looks, with curly black hair. Full lips and a body to-die-for, he was just far too sexy to have walking around any office, you would never get a stroke of work done.

I snapped out of my reverie as an assistant came into the room, carrying a clipboard and wearing a headset. I had only a moment to think that he looked looked more like a runner than an executive, when he called out:

"JB? Can you follow me please", so follow I did.