“The desire to search for the truth is a truly wondrous thing.
But with every layer you peel away, you’ll cry just a little bit more.” (Walter, Act One)
What this work is
Written by Gary Carpenter and Nick Owen, TABLOID!!! is a stage musical — sharp, political, and deliberately excessive — about media power, ambition, and moral corrosion.
Adapted from Guy de Maupassant’s Bel Ami, the story is transplanted to London in the late 1980s: a city shaped by deregulation, tabloid journalism, financial excess, and the blurring of truth, influence, and profit.
At its heart is Roy Bellamy, an ex-soldier returning from the Falklands, who discovers that in this new Britain, stories are more valuable than facts, and charm is more useful than integrity.
Why this work exists
This musical was written and first performed in 1995, during the early years of the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts (LIPA), at a moment when:
- tabloid journalism dominated public discourse
- media and political power were deeply entangled
- “greed is good” had become common sense
- offensive language and behaviour were routinely dismissed as “just the times”
Nearly thirty years later, the conditions that produced TABLOID!!! have not disappeared. They have recurred.
This publication marks the first time the full script of the musical has been made available, both as a historical artefact and as a work that continues to speak uncomfortably to the present.
The story, briefly
Roy Bellamy arrives in London penniless and hungry. Through an old army contact, he gains access to a newspaper world reshaped by the Wapping disputes and the collapse of Fleet Street traditions.
He cannot write — but that turns out not to matter.
With help from powerful women, editors, and fixers, Roy learns how to:
- invent credibility
- exploit intimacy
- weaponise information
- and climb rapidly through a corrupt ecosystem
By the end, Roy has wealth, status, and influence — but no redemption.
The musical charts his rise not as an exception, but as a logical product of the system.
Form and style
TABLOID!!! is deliberately theatrical and confrontational.
It combines:
- rapid-fire dialogue
- ensemble numbers
- satirical songs
- media montages and projected imagery
- explicit language and caricature
The tone is knowingly excessive — mirroring the culture it depicts — and refuses subtlety where subtlety would let power off the hook.
The opening number, The Effluence of Affluence, establishes the work’s core premise: that wealth, corruption, and spectacle flow together.
Context and collaboration
- Songs: Gary Carpenter
- Book: Nick Owen
- Illustrations: Paul Warren
- Originally performed: Unity Theatre, Liverpool, Friday 13 October 1995
- Produced in conjunction with: Unity Making Art programme
The work emerged from a unique institutional moment: a gap between students arriving and formal teaching beginning at LIPA — a rare space where art could be made without assessment, outcomes, or metrics.
TABLOID!!! sits alongside other NOP publications that interrogate systems rather than individuals:
Across these works runs a shared concern: how systems reward the wrong behaviours — and call it success.
A note on language and offence
This work contains language and attitudes reflective of the period it depicts.
They are not softened here.
The intention is not nostalgia, but exposure.
Why it still matters
TABLOID!!! is not a period piece. It is a warning cycle. It asks:
- how power reproduces itself
- how media manufactures consent
- how ambition adapts to whatever system it enters
And why, when we say “this time it will be different”, it rarely is.
Where to go next
- For institutional satire → Mess Theory
- For power and labour → The Business Allotment
- For bodies and confession → Confessions of the Ageing Swimmers
- For irritation and national myth → There’s No Such Thing as an Englishman