Inconceivable (8 page)

Dear Idiot,

R
ather an unfortunate development arose today workwise. And when I say ‘rather’ what I actually mean is ‘unbelievably’ and such a bugger coming so soon as it did after my Downing Street triumph.

I was sitting at work trying to read a treatment for a game show that had been sent in by Aiden Fumet on behalf of one of his acts. It was bollocks, of course, and depressing bollocks at that.

Something about contestants having to identify their partners by smelling their socks and looking at their bare bottoms pushed through holes in the set. The bit they seemed most proud of was that the game would also feature gay and lesbian couples. This alone, the authors seemed to feel, made the idea important, alternative and at the cutting edge.

Anyway, I was just applying my ‘Loved it but seems more Channel Five to me’ rubber stamp when the phone rang and Daphne told me it was someone called Tosser. Good, I thought.

Tosser has always been a tiny bit patronizing with me and I’d been looking forward to telling him that I was no longer in the market for employment so he’d have to headhunt elsewhere. I relished this chance of informing him that as I’d recently been entrusted by the Channel Controller himself with the duties of executive producer to the Prime Minister, I was now feeling very comfortable at the BBC.

Sadly I was not to have this chance.

‘Sam,’ said Tosser, ‘love to come to dinner, old boy, except I’m going skiing. But as it happens I’m not sure the invite was intended for me anyway. It said ‘Dear Nigel’ on the note.’

Oh my God.

Oh my Goddity God.

I went first hot and then cold and then both hot and cold at once.

Wrong envelopes!

Such a basic farce plot! I would have seen through it in a second in a script and now it had actually bloody happened!

A man did not need to be Stephen Hawking to work out the permutations of the plot. If I’d sent the dinner invitation to Tosser Tomkins, then I’d sent my enquiry about leaving the BBC to…

Daphne took another call. I knew even before I had registered her hushed and respectful tone that the sword of Damocles was suspended above me. This would need very careful handling.

‘Sam. The Channel Controller on line two.’

I made my excuses to Tosser. ‘In shit, Toss, got to go!’

And picked up the phone. Nigel’s voice was cold as a penguin’s arse.

‘Sam, I have a memo here in which you address me as a tosser.’

‘It was a mistake.’

‘Yes,’ said Nigel, ‘it certainly was, mate.’

He went on to assure me that he was flattered that I had thought to seek his advice about whether I should leave the BBC and intrigued that I wanted his opinion on whether I should ‘put myself about a bit on the job market since after all the independent sector is clearly so much more vibrant’. He thanked me for my consideration and promised to give the matter his fullest and most immediate possible attention.

Click. Dial tone. Bugger.

That was it. No goodbye, no mention of my dealings with Downing Street about which I had copiously emailed him.

Well, I couldn’t leave it there, could I? I rushed along the corridor to his office. Television Centre is of course famously circular and I was so flustered that I missed the Controller’s office entirely and had to run round the whole building again. I’ve done that before, of course, many times, but only when pissed and trying to find a Christmas party.

Responding to my urgent pleading (conveyed to him via one of his icy receptionists he has two, flash bugger), Nigel allowed me into his office.

I can remember (just) that office when it was a friendly place.

When the BBC really was a family. A family in which almost every member was a jolly uncle or an aunt. A family of fat boozy old time-servers who earned little and drank much. Men and women who went through their entire lives without once wearing a stylish garment or having a fashionable haircut. Who worked their way up the system, serving the public faithfully (if slightly unsteadily) from Floor Manager to Producer to sad old git in the corner of the bar who was too old and pissed to find his way out of the circle. Well, those faggy, boozy days are long gone and it’s probably for the best. None of those jolly old boys would last a second in a climate where there’s five hundred channels competing for the audience and the money’s all going to cable and satellite. Still, I can’t deny that, as I stood there trembling before my Channel Controller (who, I must say again, is
two years fucking younger than me
), I found myself wishing that he was a fifteen-stone, red-nosed old bastard who would just tell me to bugger off and forget about it before commissioning another series of
Terry and June
.

‘Look, Nigel,’ I said, still dizzy and clutching at a Golden Rose of Montreux for support and nearly cutting myself on its petals.

‘This is awful, I wanted to invite you to dinner.’

He answered me with nothing more than a raised eyebrow.

‘That note I sent you was meant for someone else. Simon Tomkins, you know, he was on the panel with you at last year’s Edinburgh Television Festival. He was the one who said the BBC was an ageing tart trying to flag down a curb crawler on the information superhighway.’

Well, it put the thing about calling him a tosser to rest but, beyond that, I’m afraid I had dug myself deeper into the hole.

‘So what you’re telling me, Sam, is that this note dissing the BBC’ (he used the word ‘dissing’ even though he’s a thirty-six- year-old white freckly philosophy graduate from Durham University) ‘was actually intended as a job application to one of the foremost independent producers in the country?’

‘Uhm,’ I said.

Not good, but the best I could do at the time.

‘Well?’ said Nigel.

I was clearly going to have to do better than ‘Uhm.’

‘Oh, you know, just a punt, Nigel, really more to see what sort of shape the independent sector’s in than anything else.’

He did not believe me even slightly.

‘Uhm…did you see my emails regarding the Prime Minister?

Tremendously successful meeting we…’

‘Yes, I saw them,’ said Nigel, and there our meeting ended save for Nigel assuring me that if I was at all unhappy at the BBC I had only to offer my resignation and he would consider it most favourably. He said he was disappointed, that he had always taken me for a company man (which I bloody am actually). He talked about the Beeb being a family, that it was not just a part of one’s career but a career in itself, a career that demanded some sense of loyalty.

Yes, Mr Nigel straight from Granada, bloody exactly, until the next time the Chief Exec at Channel Four resigns or Murdoch is looking for a bit of posh to give cred to the management ‘team’ at one of his tabloid channels. Then the BBC will be a family all right, a modern dysfunctional family in which everybody buggers off at the first chance they get, with Nigel at the front of the queue.

Needless to say, dinner was not discussed.

Big Issue.

Dear Penny,

G
ot my picture of Gertrude today and was slightly disappointed to discover that it’s the same as the one in the

You’d think they’d have taken more than one shot of her. Still, at least it’s a better print.

I do have to admit, Pen, that I’m just a little bit concerned that those less environmentally aware than myself (my mother, for instance) might consider my adoption of Gertrude as reflective of my hopes for a child. This is definitely

not
the case. The plight of the mountain gorillas is an international tragedy and my involvement in the issue is entirely political.

Book,

L
ucy has put a picture of a baby gorilla into a clipframe and placed it on the mantelpiece. She says we’ve adopted it. I’m now rather worried that her nurturing instincts are getting the better of her. Interestingly, the baby gorilla (whose name is Gertrude) is, in my opinion, the dead spit of George and Melinda’s Cuthbert, although possibly Cuthbert has more hair.

I went for a quickie in the BBC club bar after work today. The club bar always depresses me these days. It’s been franchised out and now has a name, Shakers or Groovers or possibly Gropers, I’m not sure, I’m always pissed when I try to read the beer mats. I do know that the Studio One tea bar is now called Strollers. Anyway, I bumped into George and Trevor at the bar and they had clearly been sniggering about something when I approached, but on seeing me they stopped dead. It could only mean one thing. My arse-up with the Channel Controller is now public knowledge and it will only be a matter of time before the whole incident is recounted in
Private Eye
. Not good, I fear.

Still, it’s taken my mind off the sperm test.

Finnegans Wake? FINNEGANS WAKE!

Dear Penny,

S
am’s a bit quiet and rather down at the moment. I know he had a row at work with that appalling Channel Controller. (Who else but an arse could spend £7 million of public money adapting

I ask you. A road map of Birmingham is easier to follow. And seven million! That’s a million pounds per viewer in my opinion and I said so at last year’s Light Entertainment Christmas party. George laughed so loudly something came out of his mouth, but Sam, who can be a fearful toady, told me to keep my voice down.) I do feel sorry for Sam. I mean he really does seem a bit depressed, but it’s so hard to know how to help. The fact is he doesn’t want any help. He’d rather read his newspaper. If it was me I’d want tons of attention, in fact I
do
want tons of attention. Sam, however, neither craves it nor gives it very much and this leaves me feeling in extreme want of warmth. This evening I knew something was on his mind and I tried to reach out to him but he’d have none of it. He just drank beer and cracked silly jokes about if we do have a kid we’ll have to send it out to work at the age of seven because we’ll be so poor. Ha ha. So now we’re going to be penniless as well as infertile. Hilarious.

Dear Sam,

W
ell, it’s done. Conjugal visit to hand completed. Not as easy as I might have hoped, considering my enormous experience in this area, but the required sperm sample is sorted. Funny to think that my sperm is in some laboratory somewhere waiting to be tested, darting this way and that for the benefit of a total stranger. Hope they’re looking after it, keeping it warm. I feel very slightly paternal about the stuff.

Producing it was a close-run thing. Originally we had planned for Lucy to attend the masturbation, possibly even lending a hand, so to speak. This was her idea. She doesn’t really like the thought of me having sex without her, even if it’s only on my own. She’s convinced that I’ll not give her a single thought throughout the whole proceedings but offer my entire fantastical erotic being to Winona Ryder, and of course she’s right. Well, for God’s sake! I get to sleep with Lucy every night, I only get to do it with Winona when required to produce a sperm sample. I tried to explain this, saying that psychologists had established that an uninhibited fantasy life was part of a healthy, monogamous sexual relationship. Well, Lucy wasn’t having any of it. In fact she acted quite hurt, which I find truly extraordinary.

Women! I simply do not know where to start. They
actually
think that a man can be unfaithful whilst indulging in solitary masturbation! It’s positively early Christian in its unforgiving intensity. Thank goodness I didn’t tell her I’d also been planning to invite Tiffany from
EastEnders
, The Corrs and Baby Spice to the party.

Anyway, as I said, Lucy seemed to feel it was important that she be involved in the process, so this morning when we woke up I went and got the pot from the sitting-room mantelpiece. I handed it over to Lucy, got back into bed and took up my limp appendage whilst she held the pot out expectantly, clearly anticipating an immediate outpouring.

Well, I’m here to tell anyone who cares to listen that masturbation with an audience (particularly an impatient one which hasn’t yet had a cup of tea) is not easy. I mean, of course Lucy and I had done this together before, but only in relaxed mode, in the spontaneous joy of passion, so to speak (and not, I admit, for some time). We had never before attempted masturbation for a solely practical purpose. Book, I am here to tell you that I felt a complete prick, both personally and of course literally. There I was kneeling on the bed, portion in palm with Lucy holding out the pot like some kind of beggar, and nothing was happening. Lucy, bless her, had a rather self-conscious go and disported herself about the bed a bit, you know, cupping breasts in hands and pouting, that sort of thing. I really don’t know which of us felt more stupid. After about thirty seconds I could see she was getting bored and beginning to think about breakfast. It was as much as she could do to stop herself looking at her watch. Quite obviously it was never going to work. I love her and I fancy her but a fellow can feel self-conscious even with a woman he’s shared a bed with for six years. I just could not get things going and in the end I had to decamp into the spare room and choke the poor old monkey alone.

I could see that Lucy was a bit hurt (though she denied it), but what could I do? You can’t masturbate without an erection and you can’t get an erection with your wife staring at your dick angrily and saying, ‘Come on, it’s already eight-fifteen. Don’t you fancy me, then?’

Anyway, left to myself I came up with the goods, so to speak. I say ‘goods’, if that isn’t too grand an expression to describe the sad little sample I produced. I couldn’t believe it. I’ve always been under the impression that my ejaculation is as substantial as the next man’s. If anything I might have even flattered myself that I was rather a major supplier. Well, let me tell you, you can forget all that once it’s dribbling down the inside of a plastic pot.

It looks pathetic! I mean pa-the-tic. Like a sparrow sneezed.

Interesting, really, how vulnerable the whole exercise made me feel. I felt genuinely exposed, like my very manhood was being tested. As if the whole exercise was a test of my virility and sexuality. Rather sad, actually. I’d always presumed I’m a pretty relaxed, modern sort of bloke. I didn’t think I’d ever bought into any of that macho bullshit about being a big noise in the trouser department. Yet there I was staring at my sample thinking about trying to eke it out with a bit of flour and water.

But one thing you learn as you go through life is that you are what you are and you have to accept it. Besides which, I suddenly realized that I’d spent about two minutes worrying about how little I’d produced and of course I only had an hour to hand it in before the stuff died. I had to get to the clinic or I’d have the whole business to do again.

Now the advice that Dr Cooper had given me was to pop the pot down my pants, because at all costs its contents must be kept warm. In fact he had told me that if possible I was to work it into a warm crevice, which I assume is doctor code for shove it up your bum. It’s a very strange feeling waddling along the street trying to hail a taxi with a pot of sperm clenched between your buttocks. I was immediately consumed with the irrational conviction that everybody knew what was going on. Policemen seemed to glare, toddlers tugged at their mothers’ skirts and pointed, office girls veered across the pavement apparently to keep well out of my way. I swear I heard an
Evening Standard
vendor mutter ‘Dirty pervert’ as I passed. Perhaps it was my desperate, hurried air that drew people’s eye. Let’s face it, a man is hardly going to look his most relaxed and urbane when he is charging along the street, agonizingly aware that his sperm has only minutes left to live.

Every taxi was full, every bus a ‘Not in Use. Driver in Training’ let-down. The tube station had one of those chalk blackboards outside which regret that two thousand people are stuck in a tunnel below. Eventually I spotted an empty cab but inevitably another bloke spotted it too. We both dashed for it (well he dashed, I waddled) and arriving at the same time we wrestled over the handle together.

‘Mine, I think,’ I said. Normally I would have given up without a fight but I was desperate by this time, having only twenty-eight minutes left.

‘Well, you think wrong,’ said the man. ‘Bugger off and get your own cab. I’m having this one.’

Honestly, I don’t know how some people can be like that, so casually brutal and rude. I couldn’t do it if you paid me. It’s like when I see people throw litter out of car windows, I just think, are these people from another planet? Are they a different species altogether?
I would never do that
. Oh well, mustn’t get depressed about it, it takes all sorts I suppose.

Anyway, on this particular occasion, quaking at the thought of a scene though I was, there was no way I was going to let that cab go.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘I have to have this cab, it’s a matter of life and death.’

‘Tough,’ said the man. ‘I’ve got a very important meeting.’

‘Well I’ve got some warm sperm up my arse and it’s dying.’

I’ll have to remember that one. The bloke let go of that door handle like it was a live snake.

‘I bet you’re the sort who drops litter out of car windows as well,’

I said as I got in the cab, and I meant it to hurt.

It wasn’t an easy journey, unable to sit down as I was. I had to curl up on the back seat in a sort of foetal position and I could see that the driver didn’t like it. But we got there in the end, with a few minutes to spare even, and I rushed into the clinic and handed in my sample. Actually that was a pretty gruesome moment too. I was so desperate to get there in time that I just rushed through the front door and went straight up to the reception desk. It was only as I was actually fishing the pot out of the back of my trousers that I realized that it might have been more tactful and polite to have retrieved the thing in private. The nurse stared at it as if to say, ‘And you want me to touch that now?’ before going off to get some rubber gloves and a bargepole.

My God, I can’t believe I’ve just spent half an hour writing about taking sperm to a clinic! If I could only be half this committed and energetic at work I might not be in the shit I’m in. Things are still very edgy at the office. It seems to me only a matter of time before Nigel finds a way to get rid of me, and if I’m honest I’m really not particularly employable. Lunch-eating is not a skill for which there is much demand these days, it’s not the eighties.

Lucy keeps saying I need to start writing again. Touching, really, how she still believes in me.

I sent another note to Tosser (this time I checked the envelope three times) to try asking him again about a job. I didn’t bother with any matey-matey, beating-about-the-bush stuff this time. I just basically asked the bastard for a job. Hope I didn’t sound desperate. Does ‘Give us a job, you bastard,’ sound desperate, I wonder? Depends on the tone, I suppose. But how does one imply tone in a letter? You can’t write ‘Not to be read in desperate manner’ because that really would sound desperate.

Looking back over the last few pages I’ve written, I’ve come to the surprising conclusion that the American expert Lucy’s friend Sheila saw on
Oprah
was right: writing letters to yourself is actually a very good idea. I came home today all fired up with my success at delivering the sample on time and looking forward to telling Lucy the story (particularly the bit about hailing the cab), but she seemed all distant and distracted. She said it had been a difficult day at work and she didn’t feel like talking. Fair enough. I almost always feel like that. Still, it’s helped to write it down.

Perhaps I should bash it all out into some kind of article and send it to the
Observer
Health section. I bet they’d give me a hundred quid for it, but Lucy would probably not approve. Besides which, I was forgetting, I can’t write.

Strange, Lucy not wanting to talk. I hope she isn’t working too hard. Actors can be such pains.