‘Where’ve you been, you truanting bastard?’
‘Went for a walk over in the Jewellery Quarter.’
‘Oh? Went for a walk over in the Jewellery Quarter? You don’t have to act like a grumpy teenager by disappearing off if you’re bored. Some of us have got to put up with managing this lot. I wish I could just piss off whenever I fancied.’
‘Calm down.’
‘I need a pint. Let’s go to the pub. And give me a cigarette.’ He turned towards the crew. ‘Right, you lot, that’s it for now. I need a break. You do too. Go and have some tea and I’ll see you back here in two hours.’
Excitable noises emerged from the crew; they looked like school kids who’d just been told they were on a snow day.
Bob and I walked west. I lit a cigarette and handed it to him.
‘Ah, that’s better. There were times this morning when I wished I hadn’t been able to screw the last lousy bit of budget out of the powers that be, and then at least we wouldn’t have to face however many more days it is traipsing around the country with that clown. Don’t get me wrong, I want to make this for Bel. I just forget how quickly I run out of patience with Baxter.’
‘Traipsing round the rest of the country… and Berlin. Don’t forget that.’
He puffed with comedy gusto. ‘Berlin? Berlin? You’re kidding, kiddo? I read that on the script as Bromsgrove. I thought we could all get the bloody bus.’ Bob looked knowing. ‘And now you tell me I’ve got to fly this lot out to Europe’s clubbing—’
I guffawed.
‘Yes, clubbing capital—’
‘How do you know that?’
‘My niece told me. I’ve got to get this bunch of chancers on a plane, off a plane, keep them out of the bloody discos, off the pills, and babysit that arsehole of a presenter as well?’
‘Why did we pick him?’
‘Because there’s no one else. Belinda should have that job, obviously. And if not her, then who? I can’t do it, I know jack shit about architecture. You can’t fucking talk in front of a camera without stuttering or fluffing your lines. Who else are we gonna get? There’s no one left. Ralph Marks who used to do Bullseye – he’s been pushing up daisies in some churchyard in Warwickshire for a decade. Do you want one of the comics off Welcome To The Masshouse to do it? You may as well ask Millie, the network weather woman.’
‘I went to university with her.’
‘Perfect. Give her a ring.’ Bob made a phone shape with his hand and lifted it to his ear. ‘Say, “Hi love, we know you’re great at telling us when it’s gonna rain, but how do you fancy presenting a very arty documentary about brutalist buildings? Mmm hmm? Yep. No, darling. No, love, I haven’t got a fucking clue about concrete myself. But I know we absolutely must bloody 101 per cent do it because I made a promise to Belinda Schneider and I’m damn well going to keep that, even if it means we’ve got a weathergirl pointing at stuff she doesn’t have a clue about. Oh right, you’re busy anyway? OK, fine. Bugger you, Millie.”’
‘Millie’s quite clever actually.’
‘I’m sure she is. I’m sure she is.’ Bob paused. ‘Why the hell aren’t we going to the Mids Bar? It’s cheap. And it’s over the road.’
‘Variety.’ We headed to a pub overlooking the canal called the Lasdun Arms. A brick building perched on the towpath – it looked like a quaint house that some kind of eccentric village baker or blacksmith would have lived in 200 years ago. The area around it was obviously rural when it was built; now the city had crept up on it. The city creeps up on us all eventually.
Bob sat down and I went to the bar. I heard him shout, ‘Get me some crisps as well, son!’ at the top of his voice. I came back with the beers and a bag of prawn cocktail.
‘Prawn cocktail? Donald, Jesus, do you have any conception of taste, of fucking… flavour? You can’t be trusted when it comes to food, you really can’t.’
‘More for me,’ I reasoned aloud, ripping the bag, inhaling the noxious chemical scent, popping a plethora of the pink-stained crisps onto my tongue. They exploded in an acrid shower of not so much seafood as just a criminally acidic overload. They beguiled me. I was only just beginning to take rudimentary enjoyment from eating again. I remember Kate saying that breaking up with her other half was the easiest way of losing weight she could have imagined, and I knew exactly what she meant.
‘Honestly, I don’t know how long I can put up with Baxter. I really don’t.’
‘You and me against him.’ I managed to get out, my mouth full of crunched-up crisps.
Bob supped his pint, sucking through his moustache, on which some of the beer stuck. ‘Now look, I don’t want you getting too mournful while we’re out shooting this film. We’ve got a lot more to do. Er, where are we going again? After we’ve done in Brum?’
‘Leeds, Sheffield, London and… Berlin.’
‘Berlin!’ Bob spat out some beer for comedy effect. ‘I read that on the script as Balsall Heath. I thought we could walk everyone down Digbeth High Street for that shoot. Now you’re telling me we’ve got to go to bloody Berlin? You’ll be the death of me, Don, the death of me. Remember when we were doing I Love My Dog! and you couldn’t get the bloody jokes right some weeks? I ask you to do the easiest thing, to write me some material about dogs and leads and bones and all that kind of thing, and you just couldn’t get the bloody laughs from those coffin-dodgers in the audience?’ Remember that?’
‘I do.’
‘And what did I say?’
I put on a uninterested voice. ‘You said, “This show is going to the dogs”.’
Bob winked. ‘Damn right I did. It was. Cheers!’ He held up his pint. We chinked. ‘Now I mean what I say. I don’t want you… going to the dark side. Bel would have wanted us to do this film and she’d have wanted you to write the script and for this to get made. Because if it gets made then it becomes a permanent record of all those buildings she loved. And it might even save them.’
‘It might.’
‘Exactly. So chin up. This could be a difficult time, but I’ll be here to box your bloody ears.’
*
This is a dream:
I can feel myself tossing and turning, searching for answers, perplexed. I’m trying to solve puzzles, find words. I can’t get to where I’m going. A calm descends. A camera on a jib swoops down. Two actors are frozen to the floor; the pause button has been pushed on them. An old man in tweed and a younger one in a navy suit. Desks and drawing equipment lie all around. The flimsy studio backdrop has a big window and a fake view over Birmingham’s 1960s skyline – a photograph, a cheat. I can’t find the words, I can’t find a script. A man wearing headphones comes running over and starts yelling at me, but I can’t hear anything he says and the actors don’t strain a sinew. They’re still motionless. The man with headphones starts waving his clipboard in the air and opening his arms wide in a messianic, questioning gesture. I don’t know where the bloody script is though, I just don’t know. Where is it?
17
1990
‘…and cut! We’re clear. Great show, cherubs. Loved the chicken costume business. More of that next week?’ The floor manager looked pleased as punch.
‘Praps.’ Bob’s face was harder to decipher.
I saw the studio director give us a thumbs-up gesture from behind the greasy glass of the gallery.
A few people in the audience started sparking up fags and putting the jackets of their shell suits on, cigs dangling from mouths, muttering. They didn’t look elated, more exhausted. All I could think about was Belinda. I’d just seen her again on the big screen when they’d projected the VT of us pratting around outside the library the other day to the audience. And they – naturally enough, considering they were trollied – had thought it was all the height of comedy. This laughter is very important for a comedy writer because it shows that what you’ve written is, actually, funny. You sit typing away by yourself, thinking you might have concocted something amusing; you make yourself giggle the first ti
me you come up with an idea, and when you read the stuff out to the crew they sometimes laugh too. But when you hear an audience really guffaw, even an audience that’s been hard at the Birmingham Bitter or vodka sodas just before transmission, you know that the thing – the joke, the skit – is actually funny. It’s proof of oneself, one’s ability. People think we’re cocky somehow, but I’ve yet to meet anyone in this business – any writer – who thinks what they’re doing and who they are is enough. You’re battling yourself. But maybe I didn’t have to battle any longer. Belinda had agreed to go on a date with me.
‘Oi!’ Bob strolled over. ‘I know what you’re thinking about. Are you taking her out tonight then?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘Well, well. She knows how famous you are, right? I hope you made sure she knows that bit. Where are you taking the poor lamb? Straight back to yours for a microwave lasagne?’
‘Bartholomew’s.’
‘Bartholomew’s!’ Bob whistled. ‘That’ll cost a pretty penny. Don’t forget your chequebook. Nice mixed grill they do though, went last year. Big portions. Nice chops. Chicken Kiev’s alright too. Though if you’re angling for a snog…’
‘Not sure how much of anything I’ll be able to eat. I’ll need a few glasses of red wine first.’
‘It’s a pig driving home when you’ve had a few. Obviously three or four glasses sharpens your senses, you feel more in control. But six or seven…’ Bob gurned like a Cumbrian farmhand at a country fair. ‘Fucking hell – you better watch for red lights. I’ve flown through a few of them after closing time! No fault of my own. Just the way it is driving home in Brum.’ He slapped me on the back.
‘The show seemed to go well. They were laughing.’
‘That means you don’t get sacked, sonny. Cos if they weren’t, you’d be down the job centre. And the queues down there aren’t pretty these days.’
‘So? Thoughts, dear leader?’
‘They found the chicken bit funny, and they enjoyed that stand-up comic we had in, the one from the club.’
‘He was awful. Hackneyed routine, fat bastard. From the past.’
‘Hmmm. Well, he got the laughs.’
‘Look at the crowd. We need a… more sophisticated audience, and some younger comics. This isn’t the 1970s.’
We both looked up. A couple on the back row were engaging in heavy frottage; another guy was just collapsed in his seat, smoking. Everyone else had left. There were multiple empty crisp packets on the floor. ‘Yeah, OK, point taken. I’ll make some calls. Get a few students in the cheap seats next time. They’ll do anything that’s fucking free. And they’ll laugh on cue. I think we need better sketches too. That’s your job for next week – write me some funnier sketches.’
‘What about?’
‘I don’t know what about – that’s your job. Terrorists, footie, politicians, people off the telly. Who cares?’ Bob turned and started walking away. ‘See you in the bar in fifteen minutes.’
I walked over towards the rake of seats the audience had just been sitting on.
‘Got a spare cigarette?’ I asked the guy still sitting around smoking.
‘Sure.’ He handed me one. I lit it. What was I going to say to Belinda tomorrow? How was I going to convince her that she needed to give me a chance? I was going to have to write some material tonight, fold it up and put it inside my jacket. If I got stuck I could make my excuses and go to the toilet, then choose a pre-written line and get back on track. The cigarette calmed me. I looked around. The studio seemed bigger than normal today. Fat men dragged pieces of equipment out of it, their arses hanging out of their trousers. Every surface was brown or black. The kit went back into grubby boxes. The place was hot, the aroma… socks. A forklift truck drove in and picked up a Perspex tank stained with green gunge. It reversed back outside, beeping all the while.
‘The glamour of TV.’
‘Wass ’at pal?’
‘Ah, nothing, ignore me.’
Kate sauntered over. She slid a pen bearing the Mids TV logo into the bun in her hair and winked at me, pushing her glasses up towards her face. ‘That wasn’t a bad show.’ She smirked. ‘It was an awful show.’
‘You should be doing my job.’
‘What job are you doing right now, exactly?’
‘Very funny. You look nice.’
‘Thanks. New shoes. I’m going out on Broad Street later.’
‘Date?’
‘Course not. With my housemates. On the pull. Not that there’s much hope of scoring anyone interesting in Brum on a Saturday night. All bloody drunks or businessmen.’
‘I’ve got no plans for tonight.’
‘Well let’s go for a drink now, then. Bob said he’d be in the bar. You’ve got me for…’ Kate pressed the digital watch on her left wrist. ‘…45 minutes. After that I’m out and anyone’s. Well, anyone that’s showered, charming and well-endowed.’
‘I think I tick one of those boxes.’
‘I think I know which one.’ Kate chuckled, for far too long and with far too much of a knowing look. I think I blushed.
The bar was absolutely heaving; the fug was disgusting. Almost everyone was smoking. I ordered a pint for me and a double gin and tonic for Kate. A fat man jumped onto the bar. ‘Right, you bastards! Who just watched Welcome To The Masshouse? And who thought it was the bloody bees knees, eh?’ Bob. The rabble groaned. A woman wearing a claret-and-blue Aston Villa shirt yelled, ‘Bugger off, I want me perry!’
Bob stamped along the bar. ‘You boy,’ he bellowed to me. ‘Come with me.’
Bob jumped down, landed with a thud, and dragged me over to the toilets. He slammed a cubicle door shut and pulled out a small silver box. Inside was fine white powder.
‘Jesus Christ, is that…?’
‘It is. I got it last time I was down at HQ. Those bastards in newspapers, those City bastards, those TV bastards, those business bastards, those lawyer bastards, those taxi-driving bastards, those MP bastards – they’re all at it down in London, believe me. And believe me, it works. Just tried some before you got here.’ Bob racked up two fat lines.
‘This is my first time.’
‘First time’s the best time.’
I hefted up the line. The powder stung my nostrils, then the sensation of the drug going through my nasal passages made me feel nauseous. It was like being sick backwards.
Thumping on the door.
‘Fuck.’
‘Ignore it,’ said Bob. ‘Fuck off.’
‘POLICE.’
I turned to Bob. He didn’t care.
Again. ‘WEST MIDLANDS POLICE. OPEN UP.’
I opened the door gingerly, and saw Kate standing there, winking at me. The drug banged into my synapses and I started to cackle like an idiot.
‘You cheeky cow.’
‘Shut up, rack up,’ she said in a deep voice.
Bob hoofed up his line and extravagantly started sniffing upwards, nostril by nostril, his fingers on the opposite one, each in turn. ‘Fancy seeing you in the gents,’ said Bob.
‘Shove over and give me a line of that,’ said Kate.
I watched her red jumpsuit fold in two as she kneeled and bent over the cistern, Bob’s rolled-up tenner in hand, ready to inhale. The pen fell out of her hair. She sniffed up the coke, and Bob started clapping his hands and dancing. ‘I think we need to fucking go out on the town. John Bright Street. Let’s get wasted.’ His fists were clenched, his mouth pouting.
‘Sorry, boys, I’ve got to meet my mates,’ said Kate.
‘Nonsense. You’re coming with us.’ Bob drained the pint glass he’d left by the sink and shouted ‘Alright!’ to some guy having a piss in the urinal.
‘Bring your mates too,’ I said, feeling like, now, I had all the answers a man could ever need.
The man urinating zipped up his fly and turned to face us.
‘What are you lot up to? Twatting about as usual?’
‘Fuck off, Ralph.’
Kate whispered
in my ear, ‘Is that Ralph Marks?’ before collapsing into more giggles. I nodded.
‘You can tell me to fuck off as many times as you want, Bob, but at least one of us is trying to make serious programmes for the network. Serious journalism.’
‘It’s boring, Ralph. No one cares about current affairs. And you don’t even make it very well. They’re not elegant like our programmes. Now we’re off out. Joining us?’
‘I’m driving back to Hagley.’
Bob pressed his face close to Ralph’s. ‘Hagley, Ralph? Or you stopping at the Spence Motel by the motorway in Quinton to shag your fancy man? What was his name again… Arthur, right? From accounts. Yeah, that’s him. And while your poor wife’s out at the Conservative Club, doing the teas…’
Ralph stormed out, muttering something under his breath about all of us being tossers.
‘Wanker,’ said Bob as he grabbed both our arms. ‘You two are coming with me!’
We banged into the corridor and smashed out through the fire exit into the freezing cold, Bob yelling, ‘Taxi!’ despite us being in the pedestrianised plaza right outside the studios.
I said, ‘John Bright Street’s only over the road.’
Bob replied, ‘I don’t care. I want a taxi!’
Kate wiped tears of laughter away from rouged cheeks and shot me a glance which seemed to say a million things at once.
18
2007
‘Who are the authority figures?’
‘What do you mean – “Who are the authority figures?”’
‘Who are the authority figures? You’re always saying that your job is to satirise, that the highest art form of all is the art which takes the piss out of all the other art, out of art itself. Satire is the art which rumbles the bullshitters and the chancers and the authority figures. So who are they?’
‘The planners, the architects, the councillors, the contractors, the politicians, the businessmen, the artists, the writers, everyone…’
‘The writers?’
The Wall in the Head Page 10
