Number 11

by Jonathan Coe

  When he felt that he had exhausted the range of printed sources available to him, Nathan went online and started trawling through comedy blogs and message boards, most of them devoted to contemporary manifestations of humour. Here he found himself entering a very different world, where comedy geeks and nerds who knew far too much about their subject, and had far too much of themselves invested in it, discussed modern humour with all the unfettered passion, obsessiveness, hostility, vitriol, scatology, abuse, unfairness, aggression, mean-mindedness, rudeness, impudence and nastiness that the internet allowed. These were people who loved comedy with a fierceness which could transmute into hatred at the flip of a coin. A joke which they had not found funny, a comedian who had not made them laugh, would be taken as a personal insult which had to be returned tenfold. A grudging reverence was shown towards a handful of the more radical comics, those who used their platform to make bitter, shocking, fundamental criticisms of society in language which put them beyond the pale for most audiences. Mainstream comedians, those who set out merely to amuse and to entertain their public with gentle absurdity, were tolerated as a harmless distraction. Real hatred was reserved for those whose work fell between these two stools: those who peppered their toothless routines with comfortable, crowd-pleasing political digressions in order to advertise their liberal social consciences. These people were attacked, pilloried and abused mercilessly by their safely anonymous online critics.

  After he had been wading through this material for two or three hours, Nathan followed a link to a blog which struck him, simultaneously, as being particularly well argued and particularly unhinged. The writer seemed to be some sort of would-be anarchist/terrorist, although whether his revolutionary impulses ever carried him any further than the screen of his laptop remained unclear. There was a profile picture, but in it his face was turned at ninety degrees from the camera, in shadow, and the photograph was so out of focus as to render its subject (deliberately) unidentifiable. The blog was called thisisyourwakeupcall and the writer’s username was ChristieMalry2.

  The entry which caught Nathan’s attention was headed ‘No Joke’, and he found it interesting on several counts. It was obvious, for one thing, that ChristieMalry2 accepted Freud’s theory of the basis of laughter; but he transposed it, rather intriguingly, from the psychological sphere into the political:

  Freud [wrote the blogger] believed that laughter is pleasurable because it creates an economy of psychic expenditure. Quintessentially, in other words, it takes energy and RELEASES or DISSIPATES it, thereby rendering it ineffective. So – what does that imply about (so-called) ‘political’ comedy, for which Britain is historically so famous? It implies this: political humour is the very opposite of political action. Not just its opposite, but its mortal enemy.

  Every time we laugh at the venality of a corrupt politician, at the greed of a hedge fund manager, at the spurious outpourings of a rightwing columnist, we’re letting them off the hook. The ANGER which we should feel towards these people, which might otherwise lead to ACTION, is released and dissipated in the form of LAUGHTER. Which is a way of giving the audience exactly what they want, and exactly what they’re paying for: another excuse to sit on their backsides and continue on their own selfish, comfortable path with no real threat or challenge to their precious lifestyles.

  That’s why it isn’t Josephine Winshaw-Eaves and her tiresome ilk who provide the greatest threat to social justice in Britain today. It’s the likes of Mickey Parr, Ray Turnbull and Ryan Quirky, with their oh-so-predictable jibes in her direction which the fucking Radio-4-listening, Guardian-reading, Pinot-Grigio-swilling middleclass wankers who pay to see them in stadiums and tune in to their radio shows lap up and laugh at and then feel they have to do NOTHING except sit back with their arms folded and wait for the next crappy one-liner. Chortling along at these pathetic, woolly-minded jokes, which a blind chimpanzee could write in its sleep, gives them the perfect excuse to salve their consciences and confirm their deluded self-image as righteous combatants in a playground battle between left and right which in any case was fought and lost years ago.

  I hate these fucking middleclass liberal-left comedians and so should you. It seems to me quintessential that they are all wiped off the face of this planet, or we are never going to summon up the energy to overthrow our current rotten, corrupt and soul-destroying political establishment. Down with comedy, for fuck’s sake! And on with the real struggle!

  PC Pilbeam read these paragraphs through a number of times. Then he bookmarked the site and also, to be on the safe side, printed out the relevant pages and placed them neatly into one of his box files. He yawned and looked at his watch. He was starting to feel that familiar ache in his eyes from so many hours staring at a screen. He was conscious, also, of another task that he needed to perform, unrelated to detective work but just as important. He put on his coat and left the flat.

  Buttoning up his coat against the autumn chill, PC Pilbeam made the ten-minute walk to his local Tesco Express, where he filled a recyclable bag with tins of soup, vegetables and cooked meat. These items did not constitute his normal diet, and indeed he was not buying them for himself. He was on his way to the food bank. Normally he would have taken unused and unwanted items from his own kitchen shelves, but he didn’t have any of those left. The fact was that he had learned, on the evening of their dinner together, that Lucinda Givings had started to help out at the food bank during the evenings and weekends, and for this reason he had started to visit it regularly – although so far his timing had been unlucky, and he hadn’t encountered her. This would be his fourth visit in three days, and he had reached the point where he was having to buy food especially for the purpose.

  And yet today – joy! – his civic altruism was rewarded, for there she was, standing behind the counter and looking as radiant, as desirable as ever. She was wearing a thick woollen jumper which would have made Marilyn Monroe herself look like a sack of potatoes but, even so, Nathan felt that he could not possibly have conceived a vision of purer loveliness, of sweeter, more crystalline beauty.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, with a smile – he was sure – of genuine affection. ‘How good of you to come down.’ She began to remove the tins from his bag. ‘And with such generous donations!’

  ‘I feel I must do what I can,’ he answered. ‘The terrible thing is that there should even be a need for places like this.’

  ‘I know.’ Lucinda sighed. ‘It’s very depressing, and I’m sure there’s some perfectly terrible explanation, but I don’t know what it is. I’m afraid I’m not really one of those angry, political types.’

  Her colleague, however, a middle-aged woman in denim jacket and jeans, had definite views on the subject.

  ‘Essentially,’ she said, ‘this is what happens when the ruling elite uses a crisis of its own making to legitimize attacks on the poorest and most vulnerable people in the country.’ She held out her hand. ‘I’m Caroline, by the way.’

  Nathan shook her hand, but he was not really in the mood for further conversation on this topic. His real objective was to find out whether Lucinda was busy tonight, and whether she’d like to go out with him. Turning back towards her, he casually ventured:

  ‘I was walking past the cinema just now, and couldn’t help noticing …’ Then he stopped, and frowned. Something in Caroline’s last remark had suddenly set off a strange, intriguing echo in his mind. Talking more to himself than anyone else, he mumbled: ‘Yes, of course. That’s right. That’s perfectly right.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Lucinda asked.

  ‘What you said,’ he repeated, add
ressing Caroline now, ‘was perfectly right. I don’t mean your comments about the economy, although I don’t disagree with you there, exactly. But I’m referring to your choice of words. You said “Essentially”. Which, of course, is the correct form of expression.’

  Caroline was glancing in puzzlement at Lucinda, as if silently to enquire whether her peculiar friend usually carried on in this way.

  ‘You’re not making yourself very clear,’ said Lucinda, trying to put it tactfully.

  ‘I’m sorry. This is the way it is, when you’ve got your teeth into the meat of a case. You forget how to communicate properly. I’ve been holed up in my flat for days, reading and reading and reading. It’s just that the last thing I read – I’ve realized now that there was something a bit odd about it. A quirk of expression. Whenever he meant “essential” or “essentially”, the writer put “quintessential” instead. I’m sure there’s nothing in it. But you can’t help noticing these things, you see. Your brain starts to fixate on little details and … well, you start to go a bit mad, to tell the truth. Forget I ever mentioned it.’ Lucinda was staring at him, her eyes getting rounder and rounder. He wanted to dive into them and drown. ‘What I really meant to ask you,’ he stammered on, ‘was – I mentioned the cinema, and I was walking past it only a few minutes ago when I noticed –’

  But once again, Nathan never managed to get any further with his invitation. This time it was the ringing of his mobile phone that interrupted him.

  ‘Aren’t you going to answer it?’ Lucinda asked.

  ‘No. Not until I’ve –’ But then, unable to resist glancing at the screen, he realized who was calling. ‘Actually, yes. I’d better take this. Sorry.’

  He withdrew to a corner of the hall and cupped the iPhone to his ear.

  ‘Hello? DCI Capes?’

  ‘Afternoon, Pilbeam. Glad I caught you. Is this a good moment to talk?’

  ‘Of course. What is it? Have there been … developments?’

  ‘Not yet. But I’m pretty sure there will be, very soon. Tell me, Pilbeam, have you heard of the Winshaw Prize?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Then you know that this year’s winner is going to be announced next week. The ceremony’s up in Birmingham. Well, Josephine is pretty much the only surviving member of the family, as you know, so she’s going to be there. So is Sir Peter. But get this … who do you suppose is the celebrity they’ve chosen to present it, this year? None other than – our good friend Mr Quirky. And he won’t just be in the same room as them, but sitting right next door. I’ve seen the seating plan, you see. They’re on table 12. Quirky will be on number 11.’

  Nathan let out a whistle of alarm. ‘An explosive situation,’ he said.

  ‘I know, but don’t worry. We’re going to be there in force. And the reason I’m calling – well, as the person who brought all this to my attention, I think you should be there.’

  ‘But … but, sir, this is such an honour.’

  ‘Never mind honour, Pilbeam. I could do with your input. The dinner is on Tuesday week. Don’t worry, I’ll clear everything with your station, and make sure you get off for the night.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. This is … This is a big step for me.’ And then, out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of Lucinda. Watching her walk from one end of the hall to the other, her lustrous (he assumed) blonde hair pulled back more uncompromisingly than ever, her slender (he imagined) arms filled with cans of baked beans, tomato soup and spaghetti hoops, he felt himself propelled forward by waves of lust. ‘There’s just … There’s just one thing, sir. If I might make a small … official request?’

  ‘Of course, Pilbeam. What’s on your mind?’

  ‘I was just wondering: would it be all right if I bring a date?’

  5

  The Winshaw Prize, by now established as the most prestigious and valuable in the country, was named in honour of Roderick Winshaw, the famous art curator, who had died on the terrible night of 16 January 1991, in the massacre which had also claimed five other members of his family.

  A few months after Roderick’s death, once the shock waves it sent throughout the art world had partially subsided, a committee of friends and admirers gathered to discuss how the great man’s memory might be preserved. A prize was the obvious solution. But there was already a major art prize, the Turner. How could this new prize distinguish itself from its competitors?

  A steering committee was set up, under the chairmanship of Giles Trending, the highly successful director of Stercus Television and owner of the Recktall Brown Gallery in Shoreditch. His first notion was that the Winshaw Prize should be the ne plus ultra of cultural accolades, and as such should be open not just to paintings, sculptures, videos and installations, but to novels, films, poems, ballets, operas, pop songs and even advertising campaigns. Pretty much everything, in other words. The fact that none of these things could be sensibly compared with each other would be precisely the point.

  At this proposal, the eyes of the other committee members had lit up with excitement, and after many hours’ enthusiastic discussion, it was decided that the Winshaw Prize, in its first year, should be encumbered with absolutely no rules and no boundaries. Accordingly, the shortlisted entries for that year consisted of a book of short stories, a hip-hop single, a video of an artist writing anticapitalist slogans in letters made out of his own snot, a new strain of apple created by a fruit farmer in Herefordshire and the giraffe enclosure at Chester Zoo. This policy was continued for some time, culminating in the notorious edition of 2001, when the prize was awarded to ‘the distinctive smell you get when you visit your grandmother’s house and open a biscuit tin which has been empty for five years’.

  The steering committee, however, became ever more aware that the prize had failed to capture the public imagination. It proved too challenging to interest the media in a prize which, every year, was awarded to a mere abstraction. Despite the best efforts of Pott Bellinger, the PR firm engaged to publicize it, the Winshaw Prize was far outstripped, in terms of column inches and front-page splashes, by the Booker, the Turner, the Baileys, the Costa, the Brits, the BP Portrait Award, the Carnegie Medal, the Rear of the Year and countless others. It was while contemplating this list of more successful rivals, one melancholy morning, that Trending had his second great idea. Of course! How could he have not seen it before? Later that week he gathered the other committee members for an Extraordinary Special Meeting and presented them with his proposal:

  ‘This prize,’ he argued, ‘is meant to commemorate Roderick Winshaw and, by extension, the whole of his family. Now, when we think of the Winshaws, what do we think of? What did they believe in, above all? The answer, of course, is competition. Competition between individuals, between companies, between nations. Competition, that is, in the sense of a fight to the death. Winner takes all, loser gets nothing. And what is an artistic prize but the very distillation of this idea – and a perfect poke in the eye to all those sentimentalists who still believe that artistic creation is some sort of haven from competition. There is no such haven, in this day and age! No one believes any more that the arts world is some sort of socialist utopia, in which different creative spirits work on their different projects side by side, in parallel and in sympathy. Things have changed, as they have everywhere else! It’s a free marketplace now. Survival of the fittest, and extinction for everyone else. So let’s put artist in competition with artist, let’s set writer against writer and musician against musician. Let envy, rivalry, economic uncertainty and status anxiety be the new spurs to creativity! What we need to create, by rebooting
the Winshaw Prize, is a sort of über-prize. The ultimate prize. The prize to end all prizes. Do you see what I mean, ladies and gentlemen? Do you understand what I have in mind?’

  There was an expectant silence. Nobody had yet seen the logical conclusion of what he was saying.

  ‘From this year onwards,’ he concluded triumphantly, ‘the Winshaw Prize will be awarded to … the best prize in the United Kingdom.’

  Around the table there was an audible gasp, at both the audacity and the simplicity of the idea. Of course! What better way to establish the Winshaw Prize’s superiority over every other award in the country? From now on the Booker, the Turner, the Mercury, the Stirling and all the others would be pitted against each other, every year, in deadly competition, and there would be no need to announce the criteria for judgement, since the fundamental meaninglessness of the comparison would be the whole point, and indeed the very origin of the prize’s prestige. There might well be a reluctance to cooperate on the part of the other prizes’ organizers, but that was not important. Prizes would be considered eligible whether they were officially entered or not, and besides, each annual ceremony would be so lavish, so glamorous, and would attract so much publicity, that in a few years everybody would be clamouring to take part. And so, indeed, it proved. The media quickly latched on to the idea and before long the presentation of the Winshaw Prize, which took place every November, became one of the biggest talking points in the calendar of British public life. After a shaky and somewhat predictable start (it was awarded to the Turner Prize in its first year, and to the Forward Poetry Prizes in its second) the Winshaw got into its stride and went from strength to strength. The shock year in 2005, when it was awarded to the little-known Giggleswick Prize for the best flower arrangement in the BD postal area, blew things wide open, making people realize that the prize was not just open to the ‘big hitters’ but to any plucky little independent outfit which happened to catch the judges’ attention. In 2008 the prize was opened to other European prizes and in 2011, in a bold and controversial move, to American prizes, making it a truly global and continent-spanning award. 2012 was a spectacular year, in which the Pulitzer Prize went head to head against the Nobel Prize for Physics, and yet the award was finally carried off, in a dramatic last-minute reversal, by France’s Prix Médicis Étranger. Every year, now, the Winshaw prize was getting bigger, and the stakes were getting higher. In financial terms alone it was now worth one million pounds to the lucky victor. 2013 promised to be another milestone in the prize’s history.