Tessa Duder's novel The Tiggie Thompson Show (1999) features a main protagonist who gets a role on Shapers; a kiwi soap set at a gym modelled on a Greek model of gym as youth centre for both physical and intellectual activities. The cast contains lots who have been on Shortland Street.
Did you know the first thing to get fat is the tongue? she cried enthusiastically. Get stuffed. I said quietly, I'd rather my tongue looked like a salami than a snake's
Tiggie has no illusions about herself, dumpy, plain and talentless and she knows that her parents and teachers think she's a loser at school she's the butt of jokes
To make it worse her mother is a glamorous television journalist with a famous face
At her new liberal school all she wants is to continue leading a quiet life. Once again, things don't turn out as she planned. Tigge Tompson, almost despite herself, is about to be discovered.
Join Tiggie for the most astonishing year of her life.
Tiggie's adventured continued in a couple of more books:
Tiggie Tompson All At Sea (2021)
Tiggie Thompson is savouring a new taste in her life - success. Against all odds, she has won the coveted role of Eliza in a nineteenth-century television drama The Longest Journey. Life seems so secure. But before the cameras even begin to roll, Tiggie becomes embroiled in her own family drama. Most disturbing of all are e-mails from an unknown half-brother in Australia, with unpleasant news about Tiggie's parents. But Eliza, the aristocratic young English woman who escapes abuse by way of steerage passage to New Zealand, has edged her way into Tiggie's waking thoughts. Their two stories, 150 years apart, are about to collide. In the second novel featuring feisty Antigone Thompson, Tessa Duder shows a young woman caught up with the conflicting demands of family, friends and career and a growing awareness of the need to be true to herself.
Tiggie Thompson's Longest Journey (2023)
Tiggie's traumatic role as the spirited 19th century emigrant Eliza Matthews in the TV drama The Longest Journey is threatening to spill over into her real-life relationships. How will she cope with the handsome actor playing Eliza's attacker? Or with boyfriend Gareth who gets a job on set? She's also concerned about her jealous half-brother Luke who reappears, her best friend, the anorexic Vita, who has gone missing, and her parents' startling news.
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