BWhen she was in her early 20s, Nicki Chapman worked as a television assistant at a record label. Her job was to promote the bands on the label’s roster by booking them for 1980s classics such as Top of the Pops or Surprise Surprise.
. She was passionate about music and good at her job. But there was one problem: the industry was a boy’s club and men wanted to keep it that way. She was once told, “You’ll never make it in this world, Nicki,” after she failed to laugh at a man’s joke.
As she sardonically explains in this easily digestible behind-the-scenes memoir, that prediction didn’t come true. Born in Herne Bay, a quiet seaside town in Kent, Chapman quickly made her name in the big city, moved to London and rose through the music industry, working with a who’s who of British pop talent, from Take That to Annie Lennox, the Spice Girls to Amy Winehouse. She later became a TV star herself, judging on entrepreneur and artist manager Simon Fuller’s prototype talent show Popstars and its successor Pop Idol. And while her fellow panellists Nigel Lythgoe, Simon Cowell and Pete Waterman turned into pantomime villains, Chapman was compassionate and caring. (She now hosts TV’s most wholesome show, Escape to the Country.)
To use a hackneyed phrase reminiscent of Pop Idol and its ilk, Chapman’s road to mainstream success was a rollercoaster. So Tell Me What You Want is full of amusing anecdotes – Bobby Brown going on an unauthorized absence before his Top of the Pops appearance in search of the perfect burger; Chapman getting stuck in a freight elevator with I Think We’re Alone Now singer Tiffany; the Spice Girls using Chapman’s red gingham bikini to tie up the male lead in their Say You’ll Be There video. Less amusing is her memory of the time she opened fan mail for Kim Wilde and found that the postman had included a package containing his sperm.
Things get even darker when Chapman writes about being locked in a male colleague’s apartment after a supposed date doesn’t go as he had hoped. Later, her contract states that she is not to be left alone with two unnamed producers after she has unpleasant encounters with them. Her account of being pushed against the wall and grabbed by the throat by a manager is made even more chilling by the fact that it is mentioned almost in passing.
Occasionally, Chapman’s narrative focus gets off track. We learn a lot of details about decorating her new house, for example, but not enough about the wild ride Hear’Say must have had after winning Popstars. That the book is written entirely in the present tense, almost like a diary, doesn’t help matters. Some key moments are quickly passed over, or in some cases viewed from a hindsight perspective that feels disingenuous. When Chapman talks about how people like Robbie Williams or Billie Piper were too young and overworked and their mental health suffered as a result – conversations that have only really begun in recent years – it’s at odds with the perceived “present” of the book.
It’s also odd that the narrative ends when Will Young wins Pop Idol in 2002. Rather than taking us behind the scenes of what happened next – Young and his rival Gareth Gates sold millions of records; Young came out as gay in a world of widespread homophobia in the tabloids; Pop Idol, for better or worse, kicked off the next two decades of TV talent shows – we are left in a kind of limbo, like a contestant without a record deal. But you can’t help but marvel at what Chapman has achieved. Her tenacity jumps off the page, especially in the early chapters, as she tries not to drown in a sea of male entitlement. There’s a great passage where she overhears her boss on the phone blaming her for a mistake she didn’t make. Rather than accept it, she tells him to fuck off. And what about the man who told Chapman she’d never make it? He later calls her to ask about a job at the PR firm she co-owns. “Did I hire him?” she writes. “Did I?”
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