It was surprisingly easy for Bobby Bloomer to climb over the railing of the rooftop restaurant of the ten-storey hotel and hurl himself over.
He was dead the moment he hit the ground. His splash on the pavement made a different kind of splash in the next morning’s newspapers. Bobby was the best-loved television personality of his generation at a time when there were only four channels.
We all thought we knew Bobby. At night his cheeky grin introduced gameshows watched by tens of millions. At weekends he chatted-up stars of music and screen.
And then a journalist ‘just doing my job, folks’ spilled the beans. Readers pursed their lips and tutted while devouring every word.
The first shock was the parties: wine, women and song. He might have survived that (didn’t everyone fantasise about such things) but the hard drugs did for him. Bobby was still reeling when we heard he liked to dress as a schoolboy for Miss Whiplash to cane his naughty bottom. TV executives sent him on gardening leave. He was still big business, too valuable to lose.
It was the Nazi stormtrooper party (more cocaine involved) that banished Bobby to the wilderness.
The obituaries were kind, talking of flawed personalities: the man behind the mask.
In his wake, other stars sparkled then faded but none shone so brightly.
Bobby was soon forgotten, his family allowed to move on, until exactly 25 years on, a TV channel continues to make money from him: ‘Scandal: Bobby Bloomer.’
Words: Richard Rooney
Illustration: A.I.
Flash Fiction 250
Flash Fiction 250 