Whatever It Takes

Policewoman Daisy Cockram wins a radio contest, a weekend in London. In a club she meets married footballer Duncan McGillan with whom she is caught having oral sex in a parked car. An opportunistic desk sergeant alerts the gutter press who invade her privacy and put her on tabloid front pages. She is fired ,to the disapproval of her widowed father, a moralistic senior police officer. P.R. executive J.J. Merrick seizes the chance to cash in by selling Daisy's exploits - and topless photo shots - to gossip rags. "The punters want the goss on 'Big Brother', not the body count in Baghdad," he tells her. She becomes a huge (and talent-free) celebrity, dating washed-up soap actor Matthew Kenworthy, whose career she revives by their association. However, he is aiming for serious stage work and they argue in public, gaining themselves more notoriety. An interview with a clever broadsheet bitch, exposing her naivety, and Daisy's sister's reluctance to ask her to her wedding combine with secret photos of her snorting cocaine to put her out of favour. She over-doses. J.J. engineers a comeback, exploiting her favourite charity, but she is falling from popularity, and, despite submitting a secret film she has taken of a very nude Matthew in a threesome with her and another girl, she is old news. Caitlin, another would-be model, steals her thunder at the charity premiere and J.J. transfers his patronage to her. Daisy's time in the limelight is over. Such is instant fame in the twenty-first century.