The Making of Minty Malone (10 page)

‘What’s a segue?’ he asked.

‘Oh, I don’t know.’ I didn’t like this. I was on my feet.

‘Music or speech which follows on from something else without an intervening explanatory link.’ He folded the printout in two. ‘What’s a “Lyrec”?’

‘I haven’t a clue,’ I said. ‘And I don’t really care any more.’

‘It’s a portable reel-to-reel tape-recorder, rather oldfashioned but still used for OB’s. What’s an “OB”?’

‘An Outside Bloody Broadcast,’ I said, sweeping up my bag from the floor. ‘These are just boring technical terms,’ I said. ‘I don’t have to know them. I want to be a reporter, not a sound engineer. I’m sorry to have bothered you. I think I’ll
try somewhere else.’ I reached for the door handle, but Jack was holding that piece of folded paper out to me. I took it and opened it up.

‘Right,’ he said. He was behind his desk, staring at me with his dark brown eyes. ‘That’s a news despatch about the environmental protest in Lambeth. There are plans for a hypermarket there, with a new link road, and the eco-warriors are creating.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘In fact, my Moth-’ I bit my lip. I decided to keep Mum out of it. ‘It’s been in the papers,’ I said.

Jack clasped his hands behind his head, and leaned back in his chair.

‘I want you to go down there and collect some material. I want some wild-track of the bulldozers, and a few vox-pops from the protesters – no more than six – which will accompany an interview we’re running tomorrow. My assistant Monica will get you a tape-recorder,’ he said, as he turned back to his computer. ‘Make sure you hold the lead still so that it doesn’t crackle, and keep the mike no more than a hand-span away from your subject’s mouth. When you get back I’ll find a spare producer to help you cut it down.’ He looked at me, seriously. ‘I expect you to mess this up a bit, because you’ve never done it before. But if you screw it up completely, I don’t want to see you again.’

That’s how I got started. And because Mum was there, collecting for the pressure group Eco-Logical, she knew all the campaigners and helped me get some really good quotes. Jack was happy with what I’d done, so he gave me a freelance reporting shift. Then, a week later, he gave me another. And then another. Soon, I began to compile longer pieces, quite complex ones – they took me ages to begin with. Sometimes – though I’d
never
tell anyone this – they took all night to do. Then, a few months later, it happened: one of the staff reporters was poached by Channel 4 News and there I was, on the spot. That was three years ago. My life seemed complete. I had fallen in love with radio; and then I fell in love with Dominic too.

‘That weely is
cwap
!’ Melinda screeched again, as I sat down in the boardroom on my first day back.

‘I thought Wesley’s idea was rather good,’ Jack said.

‘Oh, thanks, Jack,’ simpered Wesley. ‘Do you really think so?’ And then Wesley noticed me, and smiled.

‘Oh, hel-lo, Minty,’ he said. Then his features folded into an expression of sympathetic concern. ‘Minty, look, I’d just like to say –’

‘Wesley!’ Jack cut in. ‘Kindly tell us all who you would invite into the studio for this item on astrology.’

‘Well,’ he began. ‘Well …’ Wesley
never
has any ideas. His mind was clearly as empty as the Outback as he pursed his lips, then stared at the floor.

‘How about an astrologer?’ Jack prompted crisply.

‘Yeah!’ said Wesley. ‘Fab! Brilliant idea. There’s that woman from the
Weekly Star
 …’

‘Sheryl von Strumpfhosen?’ I offered.

‘Yeah. Thanks, Minty.’

‘She’s no good,’ I added bitterly.

‘Minty, look,’ said Wesley, ‘I’d really just like to say-’

I felt my face redden, and my heartbeat rise, but Jack deflected him again.

‘What other ideas do you have, Wesley?’

‘Well …’ Wesley began. ‘Well …’ He ran a limp hand over his balding head, then fiddled with the top button of his polyester shirt. He cast his watery blue eyes to the ceiling, and made funny little sucking noises with his teeth, but inspiration clearly eluded him.

‘Anyone else?’ said Jack tersely. Silence. As usual, none of the producers had a clue. They always leave it to Sophie, our new researcher. She’s just out of Oxford, ferociously ambitious, and as sharp as broken glass.

‘Sophie, are you prepared to help your clueless colleagues?’ said Jack.

She consulted her clipboard, tucked her hair behind one ear and pushed her wire-rimmed glasses up her nose.

‘There’s a report out today on drug-taking in schools,’ she
began crisply, ‘and there’s another appeal being launched to save Bart’s. I see from the publishing catalogues that a new biography of Boris Yeltsin is published this week, so I’ve put in a bid for the author, and of course the shortlist for the Turner Prize is being announced in three days.’

‘Excellent,’ said Jack. ‘Anything else?’

‘Yes, I’ve spoken to Peter Greenaway’s publicist and I’ve set up an exclusive interview pegged to his new film. We’ve also got another special report coming down the line from the Edinburgh Festival.’

‘Good,’ said Jack. But Sophie hadn’t finished.

‘There’s been yet another resignation at the Royal Opera House; and I’d like to draw everyone’s attention to a very interesting new survey on the declining popularity of marriage,’ she went on enthusiastically. ‘The statistics show that marriages have fallen to an all-time low, so I thought we could get Minty to compile a report on “the myth of wedded bliss” – it’s an absolutely fascinating subject, you know-’

Jack opened his mouth to intervene, but Melinda got there first:

‘How can we
possibly
ask Minty to do
that
?’ she enquired indignantly. ‘The poor girl’s just been JILTED!’

My face reddened and my bowels shrank. Bloody Melinda. Stupid cow. Then, to my horror, Melinda stood up, and placed two fat, richly bejewelled hands across her vast stomach.

‘I’d like to say that I think we should all be vewy
kind
to Minty,’ she announced, ‘because she’s just been thwough something
tewwible.
Something weally, weally,
humiliating.
And I just want to say, Minty, that I think you’re VEWY BWAVE!’ She had finished. She sat down and beamed at everyone, as though expecting a round of applause.

In the embarrassed silence they all looked at the floor, while I tried to remember when Melinda’s maternity leave was due to start. It wasn’t that long now. Two or three months? I couldn’t wait. And then I looked at her again and I thought, Amber’s
right.
She’s right about the horrors of pregnancy, and here was the living proof. Melinda’s fat, bare legs were veined
like
dolcelatte;
she needed iron girders in her bra; short and plump to begin with, she looked as though she’d swallowed a tractor tyre. Particularly in those defiantly tight maternity clothes she sometimes wears. Today a skimpy T-shirt was stretched over her epic bulge. ‘Let Me Out!’ it read. No, let
me
out, I thought. And she’s a really terrible broadcaster. She can’t say her ‘R’s, for a start. And she makes
so
many fluffs – it’s appalling. You could stuff cushions with them. I mean, she’s always mis-reading her script. Spoonerisms, in particular, abound. Here are a few she’s slipped up on recently: ‘Warring bankers in the City’; ‘The shining wits of New Labour’; and
twice
now she has managed to mispronounce the ‘Cunning Stunts’ theatre company, despite extensive practice beforehand. We all cringe – and the letters of complaint that we get! But it’s all water off a duck’s back to Melinda. She thinks she’s marvellous. The
cwème de la cwème.
Well, she’s certainly rich and thick. I mean, who but Melinda would have welcomed David Blunkett into the studio with the cheery salutation, ‘Hello, David! Long time no see!’ But if there’s the slightest whiff of criticism of her, she goes bleating to Uncle Percy. In the end, that’s why everyone tolerates her. We simply have no choice.

‘
Vewy bwave
,’ she muttered again, then gave me an earnest sort of smile.

You see, the fact is, she likes me. That’s the awful part. Probably because she relies on me to write her cues. She’s useless, you see. Especially when it comes to current affairs. For example, she thinks Bosnia Herzegovina’s the Wonderbra model. Nor is she much better on cultural things. In May she astonished Ian McEwan – and all of us – by describing him as ‘one of Bwitain’s finest Shakespearwean actors’. Anyway, because she’s so hopeless, she’s forever asking me for help. And though I don’t like her, I’ve always obliged. Why? Because I’m nice. That’s what everyone says about me. ‘Minty’s really nice.’ ‘Why don’t you ask Minty?’ I hear them say. ‘She’ll help you,’ and, ‘Oh, just take it to Minty.’ ‘Oh, no, Minty doesn’t mind,’ they add. But actually, Minty
does
mind. Minty minds
rather a lot. That’s what nobody realises. And though I smile and nod, inside I’m in a
rage
because, recently, I’ve started to realise that I’m fed up with being nice. The fact is my colleagues exploit me. They really do. And it’s beginning to get me down. Wesley’s the worst. He never edits his interviews down in time, and then he rings me from the studio half an hour before he goes on air and says he’s way over and please would I come and cut six minutes out of this feature, or five and a half out of that, and so I stand there, with my heart banging like a drum, slashing tape against the clock. I could really do without the extra stress, but somehow I can never say ‘no’.

‘
Vewy
bwave,’ muttered Melinda again. And then her eyebrows drooped theatrically, and she flashed me this compassionate smile.

But I was determined to salvage my pride. I was determined to keep my vow. I was determined not to cave in. I was determined,
determined
to come through.

‘I’m
perfectly
happy to compile that piece about attitudes to marriage,’ I said stiffly. ‘Why on
earth
would
anyone
think I’d
mind
?’ They all shifted uncomfortably in their seats.

‘OK, then,’ said Jack, ‘do it, and we’ll run it tomorrow. But don’t forget Citronella Pratt.’ Damn! Citronella Pratt! I’d forgotten.
Quelle horreur
– and on my first day back.

‘Do I have to?’ I said, backtracking. ‘I’d rather chew tinfoil.’

‘I’m afraid you do,’ said Jack. ‘You know how it is.’

Yes, I do. You see there’s
one
thing I don’t like about working in commercial radio and that’s the constant concessions we have to make to our sponsors and advertisers. For example, Mazota cars advertise regularly on London FM and, believe it or not, this affects our news priorities. Balkan massacres, Middle Eastern airstrikes and catastrophic earthquakes are wiped off the bulletins if there’s anything about road pricing, or taxation on company cars. It’s sickening, and I suppose it’s corrupt; but we just have to live with it and remember that old adage about the piper and the tune. And Citronella Pratt, a right-wing housewife with a column in the
Sunday Semaphore
, falls into this category too. We often interview her for
our programmes. Not because we admire her brain, which is mediocre, or her views, which are venomous, but because her husband is the chairman of Happy Bot, the nappy manufacturer which sponsors our weather reports. So to keep Mr Happy Bot happy, we have to interview his wife. And she would know if we used anyone else, because she listens to us all the time.

‘Sorry about that, Minty,’ said Jack, as the meeting broke up. ‘Just a quick Citronella soundbite will do.’

I went over to my desk, which had been borrowed during my absence and left in a terrible mess. I began to clear up, then realised that someone was standing over me. It was Wesley and he looked distraught.

‘Minty, I’d just like to say –’

‘What?’ I said, as I took my portable tape-recorder out of the top drawer.

‘I don’t know how he could do that,’ he went on miserably, shaking his balding head. ‘How could anyone do that to you?’

‘How could anyone do that to
anyone
?’ I said quietly, as I slotted in a clean cassette.

Wesley stood a little closer. ‘You’re so wonderful Minty,’ he whispered.

Oh God,
no.
No, not this.

‘You’re so attractive …’

Please.
No.
I’d forgotten that my newly single status meant that I’d be fighting off boring old Wesley again. When I was with Dominic he’d at least had the decency to stop.

‘I know you rejected me before,’ he went on, with a martyred air, ‘but I just want you to know that I’m still here for you.’

‘Thanks, Wesley,’ I said disinterestedly, as I plugged in the microphone. ‘Testing, one, two, three, four, five. Hey, who’s been using my tape-recorder? The batteries are almost flat!’

Wesley had now perched on the edge of my desk as I did my best to ignore him.

‘Dominic wasn’t right for you, Minty,’ I heard him say as I
put in four new Ever-Readys. ‘And look how he’s let you down.’

‘I’m not discussing it,’ I said, rather sharply. ‘Anyway, I’ve got far more pressing things on my mind, like this feature, which I have a day to prepare.’ I got out my contacts book and turned to ‘M’ for marriage. Wesley glanced round the office to make sure he couldn’t be heard.

‘I’d do anything for you, Minty,’ he murmured, ‘you know that.’

‘Then please let me get on with my work,’ I replied. But he didn’t seem to hear.

‘I’d even leave Deirdre for you.’ Oh no. Not
that
again.

‘I don’t think you should,’ I said with uncharacteristic firmness as I picked up the phone. ‘In fact, Wesley, I strongly advise you against
any
such course of action!’ Wesley looked a bit shocked at my spiky tone of voice, and, to be honest, it surprised me too. I wouldn’t normally have been so sharp, I realised, as I began to dial.

‘Deirdre’s just not very …exciting,’ I heard Wesley say. This was true. They were a perfect match. ‘But you’re wonderful, Minty,’ he droned. ‘You’re so clever, you’re such fun –’

‘Leave me alone please, Wesley.’

‘You’ve always been the girl of my dreams, Minty,’ he whined, with a wounded air. ‘
Why
won’t you give me a chance?’