by Elton, Ben
SANDY: It’s three-love. Are you ready ...
PHILIP: No, bugger it! We’ve got work to do! (slap on back, walks of]) Come on soldier, bugger your introspection, if you want to be a philosopher, get a job with Channel Four. We’ve got arses to kick. So we’ll call it a draw, eh?
SCENE THREE
Sir Chiffley’s office, as in scene one. It is a month later, it would be nice if a plant or two had flowered.
The CHIEF and MISS HODGES.
CHIEF (perhaps just the slightest hint of adjusting tie): Thank you Miss Hodges, that was beautifully done. I don’t think I’ve ever known a secretary who could handle a ledger quite like you can.
MISS HODGES: It’s kind of you to say so Sir Chiffley.
CHIEF: And such a very heavy one.
MISS HODGES: I’m glad of the exercise Sir.
CHIEF: Do you think it’s worth going through it again?
MISS HODGES: Well Sir, you had scheduled a brainstorming session ...
CHIEF (glancing at watch): What? good lord yes, that excited memo from young Philip ... Is he here?
MISS HODGES: He’s outside Sir.
CHIEF: Well send him in girl, send him in.
MISS HODGES: Certainly Sir Chiffley.
(She exits. SIR CHIFFLEY pats the ledger. PHILIP enters.)
PHILIP (into phone): Hold all calls.
CHIEF: Sorry to keep you waiting Philip, but I’ve been considering your memo and I must say it confused me slightly. You say here (referring to memo) you’ve grabbed the challenge by the balls and sunk your teeth into it. Does this mean you have an idea?
PHILIP: Chief, my metaphorical balls are so lacerated you’d think I had a hypothetical crocodile in my trousers. As you know, it’s been a few months since you outlined the Pot Noodle brief and I don’t mind admitting that those few months have been about as fertile as a dead eunuch.
CHIEF: But no longer.
PHILIP: I think not Sir. You’re probably aware that we recently acquired the Associated London Press ...
CHIEF (thoughtfully): Publishing ... Publishing ... Yes, good, I’m interested. Not desperately original of course, been done before, but so has bending over a roll-top desk and getting your secretary to beat you on the bottom with a really heavy ledger, and I certainly don’t let that stop me.
PHILIP: And why should you.
CHIEF: Associated London is a perfectly decent group of newspapers. All we have to do is turn them into viscous, semi-pornographic, right wing toilet paper and we’ll make a mint. Of course Rupert Murdoch will sue us for conceptual plagiarism but it’s all good publicity ...
PHILIP: Uhm, actually Chief, I’m targeting something a little more specific here ...
CHIEF: I see, well let’s have it then lad.
PHILIP: Well Sir, I was checking out the titles we’d acquired, looking for a decent male, adult-interest magazine ... They have some bloody interesting articles about vintage sports cars in those male, adult-interest magazines you know.
CHIEF: Of course they do and there’s nothing dirty or shameful in that.
PHILIP: I suppose I was trying to get my mind off noodles ... but no go I’m afraid. (pacing) I was restless, fretful, I could feel it, I could smell it ...
CHIEF (slightly doubtful): Now then Philip, I’m confused, are we still talking about your idea here? Or have we moved onto male, adult-interest magazines?
PHILIP: Still the idea Chief ... I knew it was close ... I’d seen something in one of the papers, but I couldn’t recall ... The little Vodaphone I keep in the back of my head was trying to dial me, but I guess my brain must have been in a meeting Then suddenly ...
CHIEF: Your brain took the call!
PHILIP: Exactly! The paper I’d been trying to remember was a magazine for hay fever sufferers. (producing mag) The People’s Hayfever Listener Examiner Gazette Magazine — Phlegm. (hands it over) Or to put it another way; a Pot Noodle. It says here Chief, and get this ... they have just invented a machine which is guaranteed to suck in pollen-infested air, extract the pollen, and blow the air out again!!
CHIEF (after pause): Well frankly Philip I’m a little disappointed. This is a very junior stuff. Of course we can purchase the patent on this machine if you wish, put the price through the roof. I have no objection to milking a few snot noses.
PHILIP: Hmm, yes but ...
CHIEF (the light of enthusiasm): If I am under any moral obligation to offer a bunch of streamy-eyed sneeze merchants an easy ride, then I am unaware of it.
PHILIP: I was ...
CHIEF: No dew-drop-hanging free-loader chewing on a mouthful of mucus need expect the feather bed treatment from Lockheart Holdings.
PHILIP: I should say not but ...
CHIEF: Yes, certainly, go ahead, nail those phlegmheads to the wall and empty their pockets. If they want pollen-free air, make ‘em pay. But really Philip, your secretary should be doing this sort of thing for you.
PHILIP: Chief hear me out! It says here that the machine takes the oxygen from the air, cleans it, and stores it ready for when Cyril Snotnose feels a tickle coming on, when he can give himself a blast of pure, cool oxygen ...
CHIEF: Stores oxygen? What, like a scuba tank?
PHILIP (very excited): Yes but more so ... the ad says it incorporates a revolutionary compression process which allows considerable quantities of oxygen to be extracted from the air, and stored for when the sufferer needs to flood the environment with pure nose-fodder.
CHIEF (still doubtful): We-ell, interesting concept, I suppose ... could sell well to marine research, it might even perhaps have some applications in space, but I really don’t see ...
PHILIP (very excited): Chief think bigger, think stunningly big, think first-class cabin baggage allowance. What I am talking about here is designer air!!!
CHIEF (after a huge pause): My God, it’s enormous.
PHILIP: I’ve done some research in sister fields Sir. Water for instance, you can have no concept how big the ponce water market is, and after all, when you come down to it what is Perrier? A multi-million pound industry, selling people stuff that falls out of the sky. The French must be absolutely pissing themselves, that’s probably what gives the stuff its acrid taste.
CHIEF (beginning to get excited too): My dear boy, I think you may have stumbled on something absolutely colossal here, talk me through your thinking so far.
PHILIP: Picture our target consumer right? I had graphics knock me together some visual backup. (He has visual aids, computer graphics etc. He pieces together or somehow produces a full-size cut-out of a yuppie with a briefcase) His career is in ascendant mode, his other car really is a Porsche. He wants the very best and he intends to get it.
CHIEF: I like him already.
PHILIP: He has a home gym that looks like an ironlung factory. His yogurt is so alive it shuts the fridge door for him. His muesli is coarse enough to prize open the buttocks of a concrete elephant and his chickens are so free-range he meets them for drinks at his club. And what is he breathing? What is he breathing Chief?
CHIEF: You tell me Philip, you’ve done the research.
PHILIP: Bus drivers’ farts!! That’s what he’s breathing. He is breathing the same stuff that people in the North are burping their Vimto into. Have you any idea of the cocktail of natural fumes a dog emits when it’s on heat? ...
CHIEF: Pretty gruesome I should imagine.
PHILIP: There are guys out there pulling down six figure incomes being forced to breathe that stuff! Something has to be done.
CHIEF (hitting intercom): Hold all calls please Miss Hodges and alert security if you’d be so kind, we have a potential Pot Noodle in the building ... Carry on Philip.
PHILIP: Picture it Chief. You have two wine bars OK? Both are so crowded it takes three days to get a drink. Both have got girls slooshing the plonk with legs sufficiently frisky to revitalize the British motor industry. Both have got a large blackboard that says something indecipherable about game pie ... But get this, only
one is offering pure, sparkling, guaranteed filtered, cleansed and mineral-enriched private air. Now which hostelry do you think our free-wheeling trouble-shooter who wants the best is going to patronize?
CHIEF: Philip, this one, if I might be forgiven some exuberance, is a stallion’s stiffy.
PHILIP: It’s a whale’s whopper.
CHIEF: It’s an elephant’s appendage.
PHILIP: It’s a dinosaur’s dong.
CHIEF: It’s the giant’s giblets. How do we go about acquiring the thing?
PHILIP: Chief, I’m way, way ahead of you. You’re still training for 1992 in Barcelona, I’m on my way to Manchester for ‘96. I have bought up the patent in perpetuity. I also took the liberty of indoctrinating one or two junior top-level executives into the project. (hits intercom) Sandy, bring in ‘Suck and Blow’.
CHIEF: I like it.
(SANDY enters with the machine.)
PHILIP: I suggest that for this demonstration we implement a complete security shut down ... windows, doors, intercom ... this thing could be bigger than food.
CHIEF: And food is very big. Activate the shut down Philip.
PHILIP: Sandy, get your butt on it for Chrissakes.
SANDY (not really enjoying being addressed in this manner): You got it Philip.
(SANDY hits a button, huge steel screens descend in front of each window and door etc.)
PHILIP (bustling round machine, turning on lights and moving bits): Now then the chemical reaction which extracts the oxygen is similar in many ways to photosynthesis; it creates gaseous carbon compounds which compensate for the loss of the oxygen in the atmos, so there shouldn’t be a pressure drop. But watch out all the same.
SANDY: Pressure doesn’t worry me Philip, I am a walking area of high pressure. When I go . outside, the weather changes.
CHIEF: I like this young fellow Philip.
PHILIP: My top man Sir, believe me, he’s being groomed.
SANDY: If people get too close to me their ears start bleeding.
PHILIP: Yes all right Sandy, let’s hit Barry button. (he presses a button, the machine begins to whirr and hum and flash, steam comes out of it, and a small balloon begins to inflate) The oxygen is now being extracted Chief, in a few minutes it will all be inside the machine.
SANDY: Uhm Philip ...
PHILIP: Later Sandy.
SANDY: No really Philip ...
PHILIP: Not now Sandy.
SANDY: It’s just that, if the machine is extracting all the oxygen from the atmosphere, what are we going to breathe?
CHIEF: Good point young fellow.
PHILIP: I encourage all our people to come up with good points Chief.
CHIEF: Good. Are you grooming him?
PHILIP: Like he was a horse Sir.
SANDY: I’m not sure it’s working actually, nothing very much seems to be happening (his knees buckle) .
PHILIP: Get up Sandy, stop playing the giddy ass. (he collapses) Sorry Sir, ruck in the carpet.
CHIEF (gripping desk unsteadily): What the devil is going on!
SANDY (pulling himself up unsteadily): I think it’s the machine Sir, we don’t notice we’re suffocating because the replacement elements fool the lungs into believing that they are breathing normally.
PHILIP (crawling to feet): Sandy, are you trying to say that we have stupid lungs because, if so, I take a pretty dim view ...
CHIEF: I’m getting dizzy, somebody open a window or I shall sack the lot of you!!
(All very wobbly and faint.)
PHILIP (trying to pull up metal screen): They’re all on the security timer Sir! ...
SANDY: I’ll call Miss Hodges ... (he moves to the intercom) hallo ... hallo ... She can’t hear me, the damn thing’s on security shut-off too ...!
PHILIP: Techno let-down. Try upping the volume on your natural communication system.
SANDY: What?
PHILIP: Shout.
SANDY (squeaking): Help ... help ... I’m not sure I can Philip ...
CHIEF (struggling to get the words out): If anyone can think of something sensible they will be making a most advantageous career move ...
(The machine is now grunting and shaking. The balloon is full.)
SANDY: Well it’s just a thought, but we pressed the button marked ‘suck’; maybe we should press the one marked ‘blow’ ...
PHILIP (lying prostrate on his back staring upwards, says faintly): I was wondering how long it would take you to notice that Sandy. Well done, memo me to intensify your grooming process ...
(SANDY staggers to button, the whirring changes. The balloon quickly deflates. Almost instantly they all go ‘AAAAAH’ with relief)
PHILIP: Obviously the instruction manual will have to be very clear on certain points.
(Blackout.)
SCENE FOUR
The office of ‘Image Control’, a top advertising agency. Total cool, designer work place, big glossy blow-up photos taken from previous campaigns.
KIRSTEN CARLTON, a top ad lady.
KIRSTEN (on phone): No dammit Anton, I can’t see you! This is a major pitch for me, Lockheart are launching an entirely new product and I want the bloody account...... Listen if you can’t handle sleeping with someone in a higher income bracket I’ll bike you round a bloody bimbo! Don’t bother to call! (phone down, hits intercom) Graham darling, send in the gentlemen from Lockheart.
(Enter PHILIP and SANDY ...)
PHILIP: Kirsten, at long last, I’m Philip, this is my top man Sandy ... I can call you Kirsten? You give such good fax I feel I almost know you, anyway formalities are totally inefficient. Whoever said ‘manners cost nothing’ never had to play hard ball across eight time zones with the Tokyo stock exchange.
SANDY: Those guys are tough.
PHILIP: Terry tough! By the time you’ve said ‘greetings honourable colleagues’ they’ve bought your company, miniaturized your lawn mower and eaten your goldfish.
KIRSTEN: Phil, Sand, let me tell you something about me. People tend to address me in one of two ways — it’s either ‘Kirsten’, or ‘that tough bitch’, you can have it whichever, whichways, whatever way you want it.
PHILIP (laughing): I think we’re going to get along just fine Kirsty.
KIRSTEN: When you come to Image Control, you come to the best. The media is a minefield of no-talent, sad-act companies whose address is a portable fax machine on the back seat of a Mini Metro.
PHILIP: Exactly.
KIRSTEN: You do not require some member-munching mincer with a Design Centre security laminate on his tit ... (PHILIP grunts with exasperated recognition) a Marks and Spencer crudité dip in the saddle bag of his ten-speed racer (again PHILIP understands) and an ad concept featuring a basking iguana, an enigmatic male model and no mention whatsoever of the actual product because that would be naff.
PHILIP: God, you’ve met them too?
KIRSTEN: You’ve come to us because we empty shelves.
PHILIP: That’s what the word is on the streets. I play squash with a guy from Imperial Biscuits who says you brought the Jammy Dodger back from the dead.
KIRSTEN: I had a small, chemically produced biscuit with a blob of red sticky stuff in the middle of it and my cute little ass was on the line. Imperial had given me a donger of a budget to push the Jammy Dodger up market, get it out of the tuck shop and into the executive dining room.
PHILIP: It was inspired, I’ll never forget it, Penelope Keith pushing the wafer mints away ... (plummy voice) ‘Pass a Dodger, Roger.’
SANDY: Brilliant casting, Nigel Havers as Roger was just so stylish.
KIRSTEN: Disappointing in bed, surprisingly.
PHILIP: Hmm, yes, well anyway ... Sandy, I believe you’ve accessed Kirsty on the relevant base-line information and she’s Suck and Blow compatible.
KIRSTEN (gathering her visual aids together): Sandy’s good Phil, very good.
PHILIP: Believe me he’s being groomed. Now then Kirsty I’m not going to pussyfoot around here, I respect you too much
and know you have no time for feet in your pussy so tell me, how do you feel about Suck and Blow?
