I Am (not) a Camera

I recently entered myself into "Telegraph's Got Talent" where the company searches out future stars of Telegraph TV, but I don't think I made the cut.  As Lemony Snicket would have it, there was a series of unfortunate events.  They day could haven't started any worse when waking up with stomach cramps, the further development of acid reflux today dismissing the potentiality of stress-related (I don't do stress-y illnesses, I just get tired and take a nap).  At around 2.25 p.m., I caught the train from Chatham to Victoria, getting into 111 Buckingham Palace Road at 3.25.  Plenty of time one might think to prepare for an audition at 3.45.  Yet after passing the initial reception at the bottom of the escalators, to enter The Telegraph proper one must be escorted by an on-site worker.  The security guard called up and asked me to take a seat in the Sky Lobby.  Ten minutes elapsed and I questioned the security guard about my contact, to which he blankly said they had told him they were coming.  Another eight minutes evaporated and I made a personal call to the editor of the Court and Social to come and collect me, which she promptly did.
My contact was overseeing the auditions and, allegedly, was just about to come and collect me.  They were over-running (maybe not such a big surprise with '15 minute' intervals in the TV Studio) and I was left to ruminate on my script further.
Largely collated from several other sources of reportage, compiled into a cohesive whole and with a dash of my own quicksilver added, it went as follows:

Thousands of rush hour commuters in London were mired in chaos last Thursday after a major London Underground control room was submerged by a tsunami of cement.

Shortly after 1.30pm, a large section of the Victoria Line covering central and south London was closed following the incident.

Unofficial images appeared to show entire shelves of signalling and relay equipment submerged in cement, shortly after Transport for London announced that the southern section of the line was closed due to “flooding”.

The cement in question was fast-setting and some varieties can set hard within a couple of hours.

The embarrassing mishap occurred when engineering contractors, Bam Nuttal, who are working on a long-term upgrade of the station, poured concrete into voids in excavations for a new escalator control room when it diverted through to the signal control room below.

The Victoria Line is one of the busiest on the London Underground network, and the section closed during rush hour covered most of central London, including stops at Oxford Circus and Victoria.

Nigel Holness, operations director of London Underground, admitted: “These works involved the use of water and cement which leaked into the room, damaging equipment.”

A spokesman for the RMT union verbally banged his fist on a metaphorical table on Thursday: "We await further information but what we do know is that LU technicians are on site now, working flat out to clear up the mess and get services back on line, proving once again that it's directly-employed public sector staff who are needed to deal with this kind of emergency, making a nonsense of Boris Johnson's Tube staff cuts plans."

It has emerged that as soon as engineers realised what had happened and after they had stopped, as reported, ‘effing and blinding’, workers were sent on a supermarket sweep of nearby stores to buy bags of sugar to stop the cement from setting as quickly, leaving some outlets out of stock.

Sugar is actually a well-known retardant of cement. Sucrose, which is mainly found in beet and cane sugar available in supermarkets, is probably the most effective cement retardant.

This is the sugar most people will put in their cup of tea or, if they are being naughty, on their breakfast cereal.

Transport for London said engineers worked "tirelessly" through the night to repair the affected signalling equipment, shovelling out as much of the concrete as possible.

To paraphrase one source, it was a fudge-up of major proportions, yet despite fears the line could have been crippled for a number of days, it was back to normal service the following morning. 

Rumours that the affair was intentional to ameliorate any future zombie apocalypse remain unconfirmed.

FIN

This would be my first time using an autocue, so no matter how much preparation one put in, it would be still be an alien experience.  Many others though would be in the same coracle.  By the time, the grey-suited candidate had finished his pitch, the clock pointed to 4pm.  At last, destiny was upon me.  But of course the sessions were only meant to last until 4pm.  My contact, the head of Telegraph TV and the autocue coach (after a brief introduction with the latter when he related his youthful experience of the Medway towns), went their separate ways and one of the team of the head of Telegraph TV was hauled away from his desk to assist me.  There followed my ad  hoc coach being taught how to use the autocue pad by the sound technician - I can say the flow of the autocue script was not the smoothest and stopping at some places, the lighting obscured some letters.  At least, my stomach ailment was filed away in a recess of my mind as I slipped into the Zone.  

On my first read-through, the locum advised for my switches in voice emphasis to be dialled right back and read through the standard bits seriously and deadpan the comic aspects.  When coupled with being asked to speak up, at a level below shouting and with these instructions accepted grudgingly, all trace of my personality was whittled away.  Maybe I dwell too much on Anchorman 2 (Ron Burgundy being not the best role model); it remains though that while I gave it my best in the circumstances, I did not give it my best.  How the Telegraph TV team are meant to sift through the entries (extended into a second week next Tuesday and Wednesday due to overwhelming demand) if flashes of individuality are so subliminated, I would not like to judge.  I caught a glimpse of my grey-suited predecessor smiling - maybe that was between takes.  I can't confirm that I infused any such charisma into my delivery with the final take being my second run-through on the autocue.  I also lisped 'metaphorical' rather than make the 'ph' a hard 'f'' and replaced the word 'cereal' with 'table' by accidental auto-association, seriously denting the 'wink-wink' aspect of the phrasing.  My stand-in coach gave the usual pat compliments one would expect to my immediate criticisms of my own performance, a male Amanda Holden to my navel-height trousers Simon Cowell.  Even if the field had not been extended, my entry will be rapidly deleted from Telegraph TV's computers as being not worthy of further consideration.  C'est la vie.  I must redirect my energies elsewhere when this stomach bug permits me the strength and inclination to do so.