Cable 7 Script - Sleeping Beauty

SLEEPING BEAUTY
Transmission: 23 May 1996
Cable 7 - Live
Are we sitting comfortably, boys and girls? Then I shall begin.
Once upon a time, not so long time ago, there was a King who longed for a son and heir. For years he searched far and wide for a wife with little success. True, he often had someone to cook him breakfast but it wasn't the same.
Eventually, despairing of ever finding a suitable mother for his children, he finally settled on a girl whom his mother would, if not approve of, at least tolerate.
And so it was that the King walked down the aisle beside a shy, virginal, compulsive obsessive with an eating disorder and a propensity for dramas. In fact, everything a queen should be!
Given the unsuitability of the union it is no surprise that the product of this dysfunctional merger should be a tad ... off centre.
As the young Princess grew up her parents were too busy indulging their own disfunctions to notice her flaws.
While her father talked to his plants and cavorted with his dog, and her mother vomited and threw dramas, the Princess ran out of ways to get attention and she finally had to play her trump card, prick her finger, fall asleep and wait until a decent, well balanced, suitable young man turned up to awaken her with a kiss.
It was to be a long, long night.
Finally realising that something was seriously wrong when the Princess' gym instructor said she hadn't been for a workout in two days, the King and Queen searched the palace and found her asleep. This was not unusual. But to have missed two days of gym workouts, this was unheard of!
Consulting with a bevy of top medical experts it was found that nothing but a kiss could wake her. But the kiss had to be from an unselfish person. And so began what the Princess had craved all these years; attention, 24 hours a day. The constant care was late but, hopefully, not too late.
The King announced to the kingdom that an international search was to take place for a suitable person to awaken the princess. Unseemly scenes were played out as the various contenders vied to be the one allowed to kiss and awaken the princess dubbed by the tabloids 'The Queen of Tarts'.
One was a high profile sportsman, famed for his ample thighs and odd shaped balls, he stumbled at the last hurdle by being spotted by the tabloids entering the sleeping chamber. He was banished and ridiculed throughout the kingdom.
Another was a respectable city financier who blotted his copy book when he developed a phobia about speaking on the phone and couldn't tell the king his plans to help his daughter.
Finally a hero emerged from the ranks of the unknown. Ted, a lowly nobody; neither rich, influential nor with a high profile presented the monarch with a solution.
Ted was a close personal friend of one of the Princes, Aidan, with whom he worked in the theatre permanently touring Privates on Parade and, as such, was also a personal friend of the princess.
Ted wanted nothing, except to help his friends.
And so it was that one balmy, spring morning Ted was given permission to approach the royal bedroom where the princess had been asleep for what seemed a hundred years.
Fed only by a drip in her arm and given daily psycho-aerobic therapy, the princess was waif-like amidst the hypo-allergenic bedding.
Ted quietly approached the bed and instinctively sidestepped the royal corgis.
Ted bent over the recumbent princess and gently brushed his lips against her cheek, as he had so many times before. Stepping back he watched as her eyelids fluttered and she breathed deeply. She was, at last, awake.
Ted was overjoyed. The princess was aghast. 'My god, I look a mess!', she said and promptly threw up. She knew exactly what she looked like as she could see her reflection in the mirror on the ceiling.
'Quick, get me a hairdresser, a makeup artist, a masseur, a psychic and a couturier. I can't possibly be seen by the press looking like this.'
Ted had to sit for 3 hours by the bed while the various minions came in and plucked, pummelled and moisturised various parts of the princess. This was followed by another 2 hours of manipulation of her mind and ego by a further round of aides. And all this time Ted, and the courtiers waiting outside, fretted. Would she never be satisfied?
Finally the princess was ready to face her adoring fans and continue her life in the full glare of publicity. She emerged to gasps of approbation from the assembled populace. She was now a fully paid up goddess and martyr.
Of course the King and Queen got a lot of stick for not supporting her; her would-be saviours got a lot of stick for being unwise enough to try and help her. Only Ted, who wanted nothing, and the Princess came out of the whole thing virtually unscathed.
Ted went back to the theatre and continued touring, with Aidan in tow. And the Princess went on to become a major TV personality and ended up with her own 26 week mini-series on Sky and lived happily ever after.
© Pariss 1996