by Paul Merton
There are some who claim that fly-swatting is inferior as a sport to the wasping of the English countryside. As one who has had a wide experience of both, I most emphatically deny this. Wasping is all very well in its way, but to try to compare the two is foolish.
Waspers point to the element of danger in their favourite pursuit, some going so far as to say that it really ought to come under the head of big-game hunting.
But I have always maintained that this danger is more imaginary than real. Wasps are not swift thinkers. They do not connect cause and effect. A wasp rarely has the intelligence to discover that the man in the room is responsible for his troubles, and almost never attacks him. And, even admitting that a wasp has a sting, which gives the novice a thrill, who has ever heard of any one barking his shin on a chair during a wasp hunt?
Wasping is too sedentary for me. You wait till the creature is sitting waist-high in the jam and then shove him under with a teaspoon. Is this sport in the sense that fly-swatting is sport? I do not think so. The excitement of the chase is simply non-existent. Give me a cracking two-hours’ run with a fly, with plenty of jumps to take, including a grand piano and a few stiff gate-leg tables. That is the life.
GIRLS TALKING
Victoria Wood
Victoria Wood (1953–2016) was one of the UK’s most cherished comedians. A shy child, she later declared, ‘stand-up comedy is the ideal place for a shy person because you’re completely in control.’ She grew up to enjoy a career spanning stand-up, singing, songwriting, script-writing and acting. Appointed CBE in 2008, she won seven Baftas and was profiled twice on the South Bank Show.
Film. A street. Jeanette and Marie in school uniform (ankle socks, track shoes, short skirts, shirts and ties etc) leaning against the mall. A male interviewer is heard in voice over throughout the film.
INTERVIEWER. Jeanette is fifteen, Marie is fourteen and a half. Both are from broken homes and living in an area with a high level of unemployment.
JEANETTE. Not really been to school since I was five. Five or six. I go in, like, if there’s something happening, like vaccination, or a nativity play.
[Cut to Marie in mid-speech.]
MARIE. Well it’s just boring like, isn’t it? They don’t teach you about anything important – like how to inject yourself, it’s all geography and things.
INTERVIEWER. Maybe you think it’s not worth being qualified as there are so few jobs in Liverpool…?
JEANETTE. There is lots of jobs. The government wants to keep us unemployed so we won’t smoke on the buses.
[Cut to Jeanette.]
JEANETTE. I could have been in a film but it was boring…
INTERVIEWER. What film was that?
JEANETTE. Documentary on child prostitution.
INTERVIEWER. You’ve actually been a prostitute?
JEANETTE. Yeah but it was boring. The sex was all right but they kept wanting you to talk to them.
[Cut to Marie.]
MARIE. Music? Kid’s stuff really, isn’t it?
JEANETTE. The government puts things on the record underneath the music.
INTERVIEWER. Sorry?
JEANETTE. Like, you know, messages that you can only hear with your brain.
INTERVIEWER. What do they say?
JEANETTE. Like telling you what to do.
MARIE. Keep you under.
JEANETTE. Don’t say ‘tits’ in the reference library.
MARIE. Don’t gob on each other.
INTERVIEWER. Is there much sleeping around amongst young people?
MARIE. No, it’s boring.
JEANETTE. It’s like for your Mums and Dads really, isn’t it?
MARIE. Like drinking.
INTERVIEWER. Don’t you and your, er, mates drink?
JEANETTE. We used to drink battery acid.
MARIE. But it burns holes in your tights.
INTERVIEWER. Do you sniff glue?
JEANETTE. That’s for snobs really, isn’t it?
MARIE. Grammar school kids sniff glue.
JEANETTE. We sniff burning lino.
MARIE. Cot blankets.
JEANETTE. Estée Lauder Youth Dew.
INTERVIEWER. What effect does it have?
MARIE. Fall over mainly.
INTERVIEWER. Doesn’t sniffing heighten your emotions?
JEANETTE. Oh yeah, you get a lot more bored.
MARIE. Things that were a bit boring get really boring, and that’s great.
INTERVIEWER. How do you see your future – do you think you’ll get married?
JEANETTE. We’d like to, ’cos it’s easier to get Valium if you’re married.
MARIE. But we can’t can we?
INTERVIEWER. Why?
JEANETTE. The government are bringing out this thing – you can’t get married unless you’ve got a going-away outfit. It’s got to be—
MARIE. Suit.
JEANETTE. Yeah, suit, and it’s got to be in two colours that match.
MARIE. And you have to have a handbag and slingbacks.
JEANETTE. It’s just not on.
MARIE. My mother’s got enough to do paying off my shoplifting fine.
INTERVIEWER. What happened?
JEANETTE. A duvet fell into my shopping bag.
[Cut.]
INTERVIEWER. Have either of you got boyfriends?
JEANETTE. We have, like, one between two.
MARIE. Just to save time really.
INTERVIEWER. And what does your boyfriend do?
MARIE. He gets tattooed a lot.
INTERVIEWER. Yes, what else does he do?
JEANETTE. He has them removed a lot.
[Cut.]
INTERVIEWER. Any ambitions?
JEANETTE. I’d like some stretch denims.
INTERVIEWER. I suppose you can’t afford any?
JEANETTE. You can apply for a grant.
MARIE. For denims.
JEANETTE. But not stretch denims.
INTERVIEWER. How do you feel about teenage pregnancies?
MARIE. We’ve got used to them now.
[They sniff a bottle of perfume. Jeanette
falls over. Marie looks bored.]
KITTY: ONE
Victoria Wood
Victoria Wood (1953–2016) was one of the UK’s most cherished comedians. A shy child, she later declared, ‘stand-up comedy is the ideal place for a shy person because you’re completely in control.’ She grew up to enjoy a career spanning stand-up, singing, songwriting, script-writing and acting. Appointed CBE in 2008, she won seven Baftas and was profiled twice on the South Bank Show.
Kitty is about fifty-three, from Manchester and proud of it. She speaks as she finds and knows what’s what. She is sitting in a small bare studio, on a hard chair. She isn’t nervous.
KITTY. Good evening. My name’s Kitty. I’ve had a boob off and I can’t stomach whelks so that’s me for you. I don’t know why I’ve been asked to interrupt your viewing like this, but I’m apparently something of a celebrity since I walked the Pennine Way in slingbacks in an attempt to publicise Mental Health. They’ve asked me to talk about aspects of life in general, nuclear war, peg-bags…
I wasn’t going to come today, actually. I’m not a fan of the modern railway system. I strongly object to paying twenty-seven pounds fifty to walk the length and breadth of the train with a sausage in a plastic box. But they offered me a chopper from Cheadle so here I am.
I’m going to start with the body – you see I don’t mince words. Time and again I’m poked in the street by complete acquaintances – Kitty, they say to me, how do you keep so young, do you perhaps inject yourself with a solution deriving from the placenta of female gibbons? Well, no, I say, I don’t, as it happens. I’m blessed with a robust constitution, my father’s mother ran her own abbatoir, and I’ve only had the need of hospitalisation once – that’s when I was concussed by an electric potato peeler at the Ideal Home Exhibition.
No, the secret of my youthful appearance is simply – mashed swede. As a f
ace-mask, as a night cap, and in an emergency, as a draught-excluder. I do have to be careful about my health, because I have a grumbling ovary which once flared up in the middle of The Gondoliers. My three rules for a long life are regular exercise, hobbies and complete avoidance of midget gems.
I’m not one for dance classes, feeling if God had wanted us to wear leotards he would have painted us purple. I have a system of elastic loops dangling from the knob of my cistern cupboard. It’s just a little thing I knocked up from some old knicker waistbands. I string up before breakfast and I can exert myself to Victor Sylvester till the cows come home.
There’s also a rumour going round our block that I play golf. Let me scotch it. I do have what seems to be a golf-bag on my telephone table but it’s actually a pyjama-case made by a friend who has trouble with her nerves in Buckinghamshire.
Well, I can’t stop chatting, much as I’d like to – my maisonette backs onto a cake factory, so I’m dusting my knick-knacks all the day long.
And I shall wait to see myself before I do any more. Fortunately, I’ve just had my TV mended. I say mended – a shifty young man in plimsolls waggled my aerial and wolfed my Gipsy Creams, but that’s the comprehensive system for you.
I must go, I’m having tea with the boys in flat five. They’re a lovely couple of young men, and what they don’t know about Mikhail Barishnikov is nobody’s business. So I’d better wrap up this little gift I’ve got them. It’s a gravy boat in the shape of Tony Hancock – they’ll be thrilled.
[She peers round the studio.]
Now, who had hold of my showerproof? It’s irreplaceable, you know, being in tangerine poplin, which apparently there’s no call for…
[She gets up and walks past the camera.]
There’s a mauve pedestal mat of mine, too.
GIVING NOTES
Victoria Wood
Victoria Wood (1953–2016) was one of the UK’s most cherished comedians. A shy child, she later declared, ‘stand-up comedy is the ideal place for a shy person because you’re completely in control.’ She grew up to enjoy a career spanning stand-up, singing, songwriting, script-writing and acting. Appointed CBE in 2008, she won seven Baftas and was profiled twice on the South Bank Show.
Alma, a middle-aged sprightly woman, addresses her amateur company after a rehearsal of Hamlet. She claps her hands.
ALMA. Right. Bit of hush please. Connie! Thank you. Now that was quite a good rehearsal; I was quite pleased. There were a few raised eyebrows when we let it slip the Piecrust Players were having a bash at Shakespeare but I think we’re getting there. But I can’t say this too often: it may be Hamlet but it’s got to be Fun Fun Fun!
[She consults her notes.]
Now we’re still very loose on lines. Where’s Gertrude? I’m not so worried about you – if you ‘dry’ just give us a bit of business with the shower cap. But Barbara – you will have to buckle down. I mean, Ophelia’s mad scene, ‘There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance’ – it’s no good just bunging a few herbs about and saying, ‘Don’t mind me, I’m a loony’. Yes? You see, this is our marvellous bard, Barbara, you cannot paraphrase. It’s not like Pinter where you can more or less say what you like as long as you leave enough gaps.
Right, Act One, Scene One, on the ramparts. Now I know the whist table is a bit wobbly, but until Stan works out how to adapt the Beanstalk it’ll have to do. What’s this? Atmosphere? Yes – now what did we work on, Philip? Yes, it’s midnight, it’s jolly cold. What do we do when it’s cold? We go ‘Brrr’, and we do this [slaps hands on arms]. Right, well don’t forget again, please. And cut the hot-water bottle, it’s not working.
Where’s my ghost of Hamlet’s father? Oh yes, what went wrong tonight, Betty? He’s on nights still, is he? OK. Well, it’s not really on for you to play that particular part, Betty – you’re already doing the Player Queen and the back legs of Hamlet’s donkey. Well, we don’t know he didn’t have one, do we? Why waste a good cossy?
Hamlet – drop the Geordie, David, it’s not coming over. Your characterisation’s reasonably good, David, but it’s just far too gloomy. Fair enough, make him a little bit depressed at the beginning, but start lightening it from Scene Two, from the hokey-cokey onwards, I’d say. And perhaps the, er, ‘Get thee to a nunnery’ with Ophelia – perhaps give a little wink to the audience, or something, because he’s really just having her on, isn’t he, we decided…
Polonius, try and show the age of the man in your voice and in your bearing, rather than waving the bus-pass. I think you’ll find it easier when we get the walking frame. Is that coming, Connie? OK.
The Players’ scene: did any of you feel it had stretched a bit too…? Yes. I think we’ll go back to the tumbling on the entrance, rather than the extract from Barnum. You see, we’re running at six hours twenty now, and if we’re going to put those soliloquies back in…
Gravediggers? Oh yes, gravediggers. The problem here is that Shakespeare hasn’t given us a lot to play with – I feel we’re a little short on laughs, so Harold, you do your dribbling, and Arthur, just put in anything you can remember from the Ayckbourn, yes?
The mad scene: apart from lines, much better, Barbara – I can tell you’re getting more used to the straitjacket. Oh – any news on the skull, Connie? I’m just thinking, if your little dog pulls through, we’ll have to fall back on papier mâché. All right, Connie, as long as it’s dead by the dress…
Oh yes, Hamlet, Act Three, Scene One, I think that cut works very well, ‘To be or not to be’, then Ophelia comes straight in, it moves it on, it’s more pacey…
Act Five, Gertrude, late again. What? Well, is there no service wash? I’m sure Dame Edith wasn’t forever nipping out to feed the dryer.
That’s about it – oh yes, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, you’re not on long, make your mark. I don’t think it’s too gimmicky, the tandem. And a most important general note – make up! Half of you looked as if you hadn’t got any on! And Claudius – no moles again? [Sighs.] I bet Margaret Lockwood never left hers in the glove compartment.
That’s it for tonight then; thank you. I shall expect you to be word-perfect by the next rehearsal. Have any of you realised what date we’re up to? Yes, April the twenty-seventh! And when do we open? August! It’s not long!
EXTENDED
COPYRIGHT
Margaret Atwood: ‘There Was Once’ from Good Bones, published by Virago, an imprint of Little, Brown Book Group, copyright © O.W. Toad, 1992. Reproduced with permission of the publisher and agent on behalf of the author.
Marcel Aymé: ‘The Man Who Walked Through Walls’, translated by Sophie Lewis, from The Man Who Walked Through Walls, Pushkin Press. Reproduced by permission of the publisher.
Kevin Barry: ‘Beer Trip to Llandudno’ from Dark Lies the Island, Jonathan Cape, copyright © 2012. Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Ltd.
Donald Barthelme: ‘Some of Us had been Threatening our Friend Colby’, from The New Yorker, 26 May 1973, copyright © Condé Nast.
Robert Benchley: ‘Take the Witness!’ from The New Yorker, 22 March 1935. Reproduced by permission of the Estate of the author.
Heinrich Böll: ‘Action Will Be Taken’ translated by Leila Vennewitz. Reproduced by permission of the Estate of the translator.
Leonora Carrington: ‘The Royal Summons’ and ‘The Neutral Man’, translated by Katherine Talbot and Marina Warner, from The Debutante and Other Stories, 2017. Reprinted by consent of the Estate of Leonora Carrington.
Peter Cook and Dudley Moore: ‘Sex’ from Private Eye, copyright © Lin Cook, 1964, 1965, 2002, and ‘Father & Son’ from Not Only But Also, copyright © Lin Cook, Martine Avenue Productions Inc, 2002; published in Tragically I was an Only Twin, The Complete Peter Cook, Arrow 2003. Reproduced by permission of David Higham Associates.
Noël Coward: ‘The Wooden Madonna’ from The Short Stories, 1939, copyright © Alan Brodie Representation Ltd.
Richmal Crompton: ‘The Show’ from Just William, 2015. Re
produced by permission of Macmillan Children’s Books.
Marco Denevi: ‘The Lord of the Flies’ translated by José Chaves, from The Café Irreal, no. 9, copyright © 2000. Reproduced by permission of the translator.
Nora Ephron: ‘The Girl who Fixed the Umlaut’ from The New Yorker, 2 June 2010. Reproduced by permission of ICM Partners.
Jasper Fforde: ‘The Locked Room Mystery, mystery’, The Guardian 24 December 2007. Reproduced by permission of the author.
Ray Galton and Alan Simpson: ‘Extract from Hancock in the Police’, ‘Sid’s Mystery Tours’, copyright © Ray Galton and Alan Simpson. Managed and licensed by Tessa Le Bars Management.
Joyce Grenfell: ‘Story Time’, ‘Committee’ and ‘Thought for Today’ from George Don’t Do That, copyright © Joyce Grenfell, 1977. Reproduced by permission of Sheil Land Associates Ltd.
Giovanni Guareschi: ‘A Sin Confessed’, ‘The Baptism’, and ‘The Proclamation’ translated by Adam Elgar, from The Complete Little World of Don Camillo, 1942, copyright © Giovanni Guareschi. Reproduced by permission of Pilot Promotions.
Saleem Haddad: ‘Do I Understand That You Are A Homosexual Sir?’ from Don’t Panic, I’m Islamic, Comma Press, 2017. Reproduced by permission of David Higham Associates.
Omar Hamdi: ‘Islam is not Spiritual, but it is a Useful Identity’ from Don’t Panic, I’m Islamic, Comma Press, 2017. Reproduced by permission of the author.
Jack Handey: ‘The Plan’ from The New Yorker, 24 November 2008, and ‘My First Day in Hell’ from The New Yorker, 22 October 2006. Reproduced by permission of the author.
Akinwumi Isola: ‘The Uses of English’ translated by Akinwumi Isola, from The World Through the Eyes of Writers: Words Without Borders, Anchor Books, 2007. Translation copyright © 2007 by Akinwumi Isola. Reproduced by permission of Words Without Borders. All rights reserved.
Luigi Malerba: ‘Consuming the View’ translated by Lesley Riva from Italian Tales: An Anthology of Contemporary Italian Fiction, copyright © Yale University, 2004. Reproduced with permission of the Licensor through PLSclear.
