Who is Tom Ditto?

by Danny Wallace

  And why would you give it all up? Who in their right mind would want to live someone else’s life?

  Ding.

  * * *

  FROM: MAUREEN THOMAS

  TO: ALL STAFF

  Please do NOT bring your OWN WASHING UP LIQUID TO WORK.

  * * *

  Delete.

  I’d had to hand my ID over to Maureen the week before, like a renegade cop rather than a disgraced local newsreader, but I still got her emails.

  Adewale kept his eye on me as I sat in reception, waiting to be picked up and led upstairs by some work experience or other. I looked around.

  ‘WELCOME TO OUR FRIENDS AT BONJELA.’

  And next to that screen, in huge letters painted right across the wall, the SoundHaus mission statement:

  WE ARE THE VOICE THEY HEAR!

  One voice, unified, passionate! One voice for London, one voice for the United Kingdom!

  We are here to serve, to entertain, to inform – this is SoundHaus Plc.

  And you’re welcome to it!

  It had been an internal competition. Jonathan in Online had won. He called it ‘One Voice’. That was on all the stationery now – ‘SoundHaus – One Voice’. Jonathan got a night in Barnsley House for his trouble, and even with a prime Cotswolds dinner it was maybe 3,000 per cent cheaper than paying an actual marketing company to do it instead. The only stipulation was that it had to use the word ‘passion’ because they’d done some audience testing and ‘passion’ was ranked top by almost two in every three ABC1s in the coveted 18–34 demographic when asked to identify most-looked-for attributes in modern music or speech-centric commercial radio endeavours.

  I found my way to the newsroom. Generally, I avoid this place, because this place is not a fun place to be. Eight desks, six computers, two tellies, strip-lit, windows facing a stained brick wall. Sky News running constantly at just above a whisper. Head of news in a small office to one side. It’s the travel people you really avoid. Eight hours a day looking at cameras, studying tailbacks. It’s not conducive to very good anecdotes.

  ‘It’s stacked back to Clackets,’ they’ll say, most days, shaking their heads very slowly. It’s always stacked back to Clackets.

  Bron poked her head out of her office door and beckoned me in.

  ‘I hear your personal life is suffering some strife presently,’ she said, one eye on the screen. Was she reading this? Did she get an email from HR with a script? ‘Please know we wish you to feel supported and hope this does not affect your work.’

  My work. That implies …

  ‘So here it is and brace yourself,’ said Bron, her voice suddenly changing as she clicked the email away, the buttons at the bottom of her shirt straining as she leaned back in her chair, her Telford accent as thick as she was. ‘You’re back on breakfast from Monday.’

  I mustered up a smile.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Thank you for your understanding.’

  ‘OFCOM are going to rule against us. Of course they are. We broadcast the very worst word you can. Have you seen the list?’

  She pushed a file across the desk towards me.

  There they all were, the words, neatly divided into sections.

  Slang words for sex.

  Insults with sexual connotations.

  Everyday words.

  Ethnic words.

  People with disabilities.

  Terms of racial/religious faith abuse.

  Religious words.

  Body parts and/or bodily functions, eg ‘tits’.

  And there – right there, right at the top, in bold, so you couldn’t really miss it.

  The word Leslie said.

  ‘There’s no way round it,’ said Bron, shrugging, reading an email off the screen. ‘“Radio broadcasters must have particular regard to times when children are particularly likely to be listening.”’

  She made a face that implied this could arguably include breakfast time.

  ‘“The transition to more adult material must not be unduly abrupt.”’

  I made a face that implied I accepted it could be said Leslie’s outburst could be described as unduly abrupt.

  ‘I suspect we’re looking at a fine that could well be record-breaking. You’re lucky to be here at all, but it wasn’t your fault.’

  It kind of was.

  ‘It was Leslie’s responsibility,’ she said, swatting a fat fly away and watching it go. ‘It was Leslie that had to take the fall.’

  Her gaze found me again and she half-smiled. That said it all. Leslie was right. They’d been looking for an excuse.

  ‘Of course … Leslie has a different opinion. He might be coming after you, press-wise. If he does, please just alert HR, I’ll make sure they’re across it.’

  A full-smile now, with sly eyes.

  ‘Have you seen the videos?’

  Oh, I’d seen the videos. Leslie had gone viral. JAM NAZI was massive. Six hundred thousand views in five days. The show had been removed from Listen Again almost immediately, but not before the website crashed under the weight of traffic, and the audio stuck up on SoundCloud. There were dozens, now. Some set to music. Some animated. Some just with a sombre black-and-white publicity photo of Leslie someone had found of him holding a kettle while presenting the 2004 Which? Awards. There were the usual parodies and remixes – a screaming Hitler, a dubstep version, something with kittens. It had even made a few in-roads into America, but it was over, done, yesterday’s viral, replaced almost immediately by someone else’s mortification. A fat woman stuck in a McDonald’s high chair, maybe, or a naked drunk man running into a wall.

  ‘It’s actually had a few upsides,’ said Bron. ‘Station awareness is … well, statistically word-of-mouth has increased. Chris Evans was talking about it on Radio 2.’

  Radio 2? Oh, Leslie would be delighted. He’d taken it hard, truth be told. He was yet to understand how quickly it spread. He still thought the internet was probably just one big ‘forum’, and that live radio was gone the second you’d finished.

  Well, he knew all about it now. The engineer who’d been told to take Leslie’s stuff and drop it round at his house said he found him in his conservatory, hunched over his PC in a short navy dressing gown, railing against ‘the trolls’, demanding to know what PMSL meant, a bottle of Glenfiddich broken in the corner, one more in the wastepaper basket.

  ‘So I’m working with Mike Brundell, I guess?’

  God, Mike Brundell was boring. His career had peaked in 1988 with an ITV version of That’s Life! called What’s Your Story? He’d been a newsreader on BBC Northwest up until then, had a column in the Reader’s Digest, still pops up on ‘Dictionary Corner’, and wastes no time in telling you about the time Noel Edmonds performed an elaborate Gotcha! on him, and how if it hadn’t been ‘cut from the show due to time constraints’ it would have changed everything.

  ‘No, not Mike Brundell actually.’

  Who, then? Tony Ram, with his jumpers? Passive-aggressive Ray Singer?

  ‘We’re switching things up. Reflecting the changing tastes of the key demographic. We haven’t announced it yet, but you’ll be working with Cassandra Tailor. Though we’re just calling her “Cassandra”. That’ll be her name. Or maybe “Cass”. We’re testing both.’

  They test names.

  ‘Cass?’ I said. ‘But isn’t she … I mean, she’s a jock, isn’t she, not a broadcaster, and—’

  ‘This has always been the plan. That’s why we gave her weekend breakfast. It was supposed to be another year or so.’

  Just in time for Leslie’s contract renewal.

  ‘She’s … less experienced,’ said Bron, by which she meant cheap and malleable. ‘We’ve done three off-air pilots already. She’s good. Fit, too …’

  She flashed me a dinosaur smile, face hard as steel when her teeth were bared.

  ‘… and I’ve specified she’s not to talk about her cracked heels. Leslie talked about his cracked heels a lot. Said it made him one of the people. I sa
id it made him one of the people with cracked heels.’

  I shrugged my agreement.

  ‘So we want you there for stability. Familiar voice for the listeners. Just until Cass has settled in. So welcome back.’

  Cass was in today. She’d been dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s with her agent. Apparently she wanted to see me before I left, so I hung around the kitchenette and kept an eye out.

  ‘Tom!’

  I span round. Pippy, dragging Work Experience Paul behind her.

  ‘I just got some good news,’ I said.

  ‘You think you’ve got good news?’ she said, beaming, sidling up to me, pleased as punch.

  ‘Oh yeah?’ I said.

  She tapped the side of her glasses. She doesn’t normally wear glasses, Pippy, much less glasses like these, because these were statement glasses.

  ‘The man who made these glasses …’ she said, ‘was nominated for an Oscar!’

  I blinked.

  ‘Wow,’ I said, a little confused. It wasn’t Oscars season. Was I missing something? ‘Who is he?’

  She leaned forward, conspiratorially.

  ‘Tom Ford,’ she said.

  She leaned back, tapped them again.

  ‘Tom Ford … the designer?’ I said.

  ‘Exactly,’ she said.

  I was struggling to work out how this was good news.

  ‘And … do you know him?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘But he directed a film, and it was on telly last night, and the bloke announcing it said that Tom Ford had been nominated for an Oscar for it, and then I remembered that I had a pair of Tom Ford glasses.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘And are they … bespoke?’

  ‘No no,’ she said. ‘Bought them in a shop.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, doing my best for her. ‘That is good news.’

  ‘I couldn’t believe it,’ she said, shaking her head, like she was telling me she’d milked a cat and pumped out liquid gold. ‘I was like, Tom Ford? Oscar?! He designed my glasses!’

  She glanced at Work Experience Paul, who did not look as enthusiastic, and she held his gaze until he did. Poor kid still had nothing to do, except scratch.

  ‘Have you told Bron?’ I asked.

  ‘Do you think Bron would be interested?’

  ‘I think Bron would love to hear this piece of good news.’

  ‘I’ll away and tell Bron.’

  ‘I’m stoked, man,’ said Cass, coming in for the hug. ‘So stoked.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s great news, Cass,’ I said, not knowing where to put my arms. I was sure there must be a rule. Maureen was probably hovering around her keyboard just waiting to fire something off. ‘Congratulations.’

  ‘No, I’m stoked to be working with you. I asked for you.’

  She smiled, flashing a row of perfect teeth made for billboards.

  ‘They’re going to keep an eye on us for a while. Plenty of snoops, apparently.’

  Snoops. Great. An hour after the show to listen to random segments and be told why they’re awful. Jen Latham once had a snoop in which they told her she was saying her own name wrong.

  ‘I obviously feel bad for Leslie, though, man,’ said Cass. ‘That was really … unfortunate.’

  ‘That’s one word for it. I guess you’ll be in charge of the mics.’

  She started to laugh. She found that funny. It wasn’t even a joke.

  ‘This is why I wanted you, man. The bants.’

  Eek. She used the term ‘bants’. This could be a warning sign. I’m not sure I can work with someone who uses the word ‘bants’. Mind you, I just used ‘eek’.

  ‘Though Christ, I hate that word, “bants”,’ she said. ‘If I ever say it again, slap me down. It’s my sister. I live with her. She overuses it. We need a bants ban.’

  ‘You just said it again.’

  ‘You’re funny,’ she said. ‘Literally.’

  I was literally being literal, but I let that one go.

  ‘I’m heading out with my agent for a drink, I was going to get Janice to come along and maybe Pippy – she’s had some good news of her own today, have you heard?’

  She winked at me.

  This was the first time I’d been invited anywhere in forever.

  ‘Sure,’ I said, warming to her already.

  Janice couldn’t make it. I think she still felt bad about Leslie. She’d worked with him for years – since his Radio Trent days. And she’d followed him faithfully through the regions, to Rock Radio for the Love Hour, his late-night call-in show on West Country Gold, and all the way to London Calling. London – the big time. And there’d always been rumours about those two. And she’d been getting more and more mysterious calls that meant she had to leave the room of late. But that’s just idle gossip, and as you know, I don’t deal in that.

  Serena from Ketsu Talent put her card behind the bar of the Punch & Judy and drifted off to smoke and run her Blackberry down. She’d started the company, dragged a bunch of clients away from Allied Agents when she left, and only recently discovered that accidentally leaving the ‘i’ off ‘Ketsui’ meant it was no longer the Japanese word for ‘determination’ but instead a Japanese slang word for ‘bottom’. She was currently coming up with new names.

  ‘So come on,’ said Cass, touching my arm. ‘We’re going to be working much more closely together. Tell me everything.’

  ‘What? About the job? About what to expect?’

  ‘Well, I meant about you, but yeah, if you want to tell me about the job – go on.’

  I thought about it.

  ‘Well, you’ll sort of know this from working on the weekends, but when you’re out so early during the week … well, you’re out before London even wakes up. Before the sun rises. And London is all orange and dark and sort of abandoned …’

  She leaned in. Gestured me on.

  ‘Well, I mean … you get to know the sound of a milk cart, the sound that the bottles make, which you’ve probably forgotten from you were a kid. And you notice little things as you stop at the traffic lights or whatever.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘I dunno. White vans with their ceilings all nicotined. Men flipping back doors open to get newspapers out or whatever, and they’ve got their radios up far too loud for that time of the morning. And … you know …’

  It felt like it was just me and her, now, despite a man three tables away who just kept finding excuses to stare at her.

  ‘Battered estate cars. The last illegal minicabs of the night, taking drunk single girls back to wherever they slurred they needed to go. And the girls have got their sticky windows down for air, and you just know they’ve got damp fivers clutched in one hand and their purse is all spattered with Sambuca.’

  ‘Sounds magical.’

  ‘It sort of is, in some dirty way. You’re seeing the tail end of something. The hangers-on, who nearly made it into your day, and they’re finishing the story of their night. Like clubbers. Or a couple of Rorys in tuxedos sitting with a bottle of red by a statue, fresh from some corporate marketing awards where they lost out on – I dunno – International Outsource Team of the Year to the guys from Capita but still toasting their own good fortune. And they don’t know how lucky they really are because just metres away—’

  ‘“Rorys”. Remind me of that one day.’

  ‘—because just metres away you see piles of newspapers left outside shops by overturned bins and flaps of kebab skin, all dead and grey because no one’s cleaned them up yet, and men with hoods and backpacks circling stacks of milk by the Tesco. Everywhere’s just nervous eyes and faked bravado. You’re in the night bus and you see this shadow, papering up the inside of the phone box with bits of old Metro so he can smoke his crack in peace. Or the woman in the alley off Theobalds Road looking out for stragglers before …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Before we get there.’

  ‘You make it sound horrible. And sort of beautiful.’

  ‘It sort of is. I mean
, it’s much, much more horrible than beautiful, but it can be beautiful because it’s real. It’s not manufactured or controlled. No one’s cleaning it up. It just is. People always talk about the listeners waking up to a show, the ones in bed, or listening in the shower. I like to think of the people who aren’t listening. Who are oblivious. Untouched by … radio chatter. Pop. Who wouldn’t know what to do with a traffic update.’

  ‘I thought when you said you were going to tell me about the job you meant “the coffee machine’s usually broken” and “Maureen in HR likes an email”.’

  ‘And then it’s dawn,’ I said, registering what she’d said, acknowledging her smile, but on a roll now, with more somehow to tell her, ‘and it’s the Poles and the Nigerians and the Afghans that pour out of the buses, all in black, heads down, so they can clean our offices or man our casinos or get us ready, and then they slink back to their estates or bedsits and they turn on the radio … and they hear Leslie James telling them how unneeded or unwanted they are.’

  ‘Well,’ she said, picking up her glass for a toast. ‘Here’s to change. Let’s lead London to a brighter dawn.’

  She laughed. That was pretty clever and she knew it. But it also made her sound a bit like Hitler.

  ‘I’m not a leader,’ I said, clinking glasses.

  ‘Fine by me,’ she said, and that man, probably Italian, found another excuse to look at her. ‘Here’s to followers.’

  A pause, as she built up to something.

  ‘Now tell me about you,’ she said. ‘And what happened with that girlfriend of yours …’

  ‘You know about that?’

  My neck prickled.

  ‘Dude,’ she said, putting one hand on mine. ‘Everybody knows about that.’

  They didn’t know the half of it.

  I felt hopeful after that. She’d asked for me. And as I walked down Parker Street, trying to find my way to Kingsway and the tube, night falling all around me, one easy eye out for a lazy cab home, belly full of Ketsu Talent pinot, it was the other half of it I was thinking about when I turned my head, slight right, and began to feel uneasy.

  There was a man and he was close, so I started to cross the street and as I did so I realised in that gut-wrenching, heart-sinking way that you do, that once again I was being followed.