Inconceivable

by Ben Elton

  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.

  Dearest Penny,

  I have to tell you that something

  strange happened at work today, which I hardly like to write about. I was on my own again. Sheila is still bronchial (self-prescribed cure: forty cigarettes a day) and Joanna is in LA with our one other big name, Trudi Hobson. Trudi is playing the icy British bitch in some dreadful action film. It’s a sequel called, well, can’t remember what it’s called actually. Shit Two, I should imagine. Anyway, there I am on my own and who should turn up but, yes! Carl Phipps, all brooding and Byronic looking in a big coat. Well, before I know it he’s telling me that fame is a lonely burden and asking me out to lunch! Extraordinary. I can’t imagine why he picked on me. I’m sure I haven’t given him the slightest indication that I enjoy his company or find him remotely attractive.

  Well, as it happened I couldn’t go out with him anyway because I was all alone and who would man the phones? (Lots of voiceover work coming in this week, almost every chocolate manufacturer in the country seems to want one of our chaps to say ‘When you need a

  big, satisfying block in your gob…‘). So I told him that I was too busy, and I said it slightly hoitily. I rather resent the assumption that mine is the sort of job that you can just drift in and out of, even though it is. ‘Fair enough,’ says Lord Phipps and off he goes in a flurry of brooding, wuthering menace, and I thought that was the end of it.

  Well! Ten minutes later he’s back with a positive hamper from Fortnum’s (perhaps not a hamper, but certainly a large plastic bag), full of fantastic stuff from their food hall. Oysters, olives, foreign nibbles and champagne no less! He said he was celebrating getting a recall for a very big American film. Usual thing, dastardly Brit to play villain. Actually, I must just say that for all that we hate political correctness, it has been a godsend for our posh actors. It seems that the English are the only racial group left on earth whom absolutely nobody minds seeing marmalized. Honestly, ten years ago it was costume drama or nothing for our boys. If nobody was making

  Robin Hood or Ivanhoe, they didn’t work. Now they get to crash helicopters into Bruce Willis!

  Anyway, so there we were in the office, just the two of us, and I asked Heathcliff if he was celebrating, didn’t he have someone special to celebrate with? Do you want to know what he said to that, Penny? He said that that was exactly what he was doing!!!! Arggh!

  Oh, my

  God! I could feel myself going beetroot and that rash on my neck coming back (when I was a teenager, if ever a boy asked me out I invariably instantly looked as though my throat had just been cut). My knees became the knees of a jelly lady and the cheese straw I had been toying with disintegrated and fell into the photocopier (and completely buggered it).

  Anyway, of course I told him not to be silly and asked him what he meant by such familiarities. I put on my best snooty, posh ‘we are not at home to callers’ telephone voice and said that I was a respectable woman. Well, he didn’t say anything, he just smiled in a sort of soft way that he

  knew brought out his dimples and took my hand.

  Yes!

  Smouldering eyes, shy dimples and holding my hand. Sorry about the breathless style, Penny, but I am much moved.

  Because here, I’m afraid, is the terrible thing (none but you must ever know, Penny). I did not withdraw my hand! Not for a moment, anyway, or perhaps even a bit longer than a moment. A minute or two, possibly, not more than three, I’m sure of that. I left it there and we just sort of, well, looked at each other and his eyes went all melty (just like his close-ups in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall when he really was very good). He looked like the dispossessed lord of a bleak moorland estate. I swear his aftershave smelt of heather. God knows what I looked like an electrified rabbit with a rash, no doubt.

  Anyway, time felt as if it had been frozen as I became lost in his eyes. Then, and I don’t know if I imagined it, but I think, in fact I’m sure, I felt his finger playing in the palm of my hand which, as far as I know, is silent code for ‘I would not be averse to rogering you, ma’am.’

  If this is true, I just can’t BELIEVE the man’s cheek. He knows I’m married. Married to a good, solid, honest, ordinary, boring, far better man than he, if not quite so dishy, bloke.

  Anyway, after a bit I did take my hand away, thank God. I don’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t. I think he would have kissed me. His face certainly seemed to be a lot
closer to mine than it had been a moment or two before. And then short of making a scene I don’t know what I would have done. He is our biggest client, after all. I probably would have had to kiss him back, which would have been terrible! Anyway, instead I thanked him for the lunch in an extremely cold ‘not today, thank you’ voice and said that I had to get on with my work. To which he shrugged, smiled a knowing little smile, picked up his fan mail and left.

  I must say, I feel most peculiar.

  But also very angry.

  Yes, all right, he’s good looking and famous but that doesn’t mean that every girl is going to fall at his feet for a glass of champagne and a cheesy nibble! I love my husband, dull, sexless bore though he may be. What is more, I want to have his children, something which is not proving easy, and I can do without arrogant actors trying to interfere with my already unbalanced hormones.

  Dear Sam,

  No news on sperm.

  No reply from Tosser re him giving me an important new job.

  No further communications from the Channel Controller.

  My life is on tenterhooks, whatever tenterhooks may be.

  One good thing is that everyone has been impressed by my visit to Downing Street. Except Nigel the Controller, of course, who still hasn’t talked to me about it. Lots of people are trying to get tickets to the show but I’m being ruthless. I say, ‘You didn’t want tickets when it was just Mr Blob Blob and the two puppet monsters. What’s changed?’ and they say, ‘The fucking Prime Minister’s going to be there! That’s what’s changed,’ which I suppose is fair.

  I saw Nigel the Controller today and he didn’t remind me about my appalling faux pas over the letters, which I think is a good sign. Mind you, he didn’t really have an opportunity because it wasn’t just him and me, he’d summoned all the commissioning editors in the Entertainment Group (if indeed that is what we are), plus the finance and marketing people, for a big strategy meeting, so there were about ten of us festooned about his office. The subject of the meeting was the BBC’s plans to get into movies, so it should have been an exciting discussion, but with the cloud hanging over me I couldn’t get worked up. What’s more, I was the last to arrive, which is always a dodgy thing to be with a sarky up-himself swine like Nigel.

  ‘Good of you to pop in, Sam.’

  I should have told him to stuff it but I didn’t, of course, I started to try and explain. What is it Churchill or Thatcher is supposed to have said? ‘Never apologize, never explain.’ Well, they were right. Nigel didn’t let me get any further than, ‘Sorry, I was…’

  ‘I see,’ he said. ‘So having wasted our time being late you want to waste more time telling us why. Is that it?’

  I couldn’t believe it! The bloke is younger than me. George and Trevor were both in the meeting but they were no help, they just studied their briefing notes intensely.

  ‘Uhm…‘ I said. Not a brilliant retort, I’m prepared to admit.

  ‘Uhm,’ Nigel repeated. ‘Well, as answers go it has the virtue of brevity, but I think that completes its list of recommendations.’

  Some of the others actually laughed at that! Snivelling sycophants. Not George or Trevor, of course, but a couple of the accountancy people and a young woman with pink hair who came over from Sky. I’ll remember you, I thought, but why bother?

  She’ll probably be my next boss.

  Anyway, I slunk into a corner and Nigel got down to some serious pontificating.

  ‘Nobody watches television nowadays,’ he said, ‘or at least none of my friends do. Television is wallpaper. Television is fast food.

  Television is arse produce. Movies are the millennial art form.

  Where do you think I’m going with this? Come on, come on, anyone!’

  Honestly, it was like being back at school.

  ‘The BBC should be getting into movies,’ said the young woman with the pink hair and Nigel positively beamed at her. ‘Hullo,’ I thought, but actually I think Nigel could only ever properly fancy himself.

  ‘Exactly, Yaz,’ he said and proceeded with great self-importance to rap out the names of recent British movie hits.

  ‘Four Weddings, Full Monty, Trainspotting, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Emmanuelle Goes Beaver Hunting…’

  This last one took us all a bit by surprise but we let it go.

  ‘British movies have never been more healthy,’ he continued, banging his desk. ‘There were at least three last year that the Americans quite liked. We need to be a part of that revolution.

  We need to reposition our goddamn asses.’

  I swear he said it: ‘reposition our goddamn asses’.

  ‘We need to be making movies.’

  Everyone seemed terribly excited at this idea but I always thought the BBC was a television company and said so.

  ‘Boots is a chemist, Sam. That doesn’t stop them selling chicken tikka sandwiches with yogurt and mint dressing.’ This got a big laugh from Yaz, who leant forward to pick up her coffee conspicuously pointing her cleavage the Controller’s way. Nigel didn’t notice, being the sort of man who’d rather harangue his subordinates than look at a nice bosom.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Sam! At least try setting your brain for the twenty- first century! As Britain’s premier media provider, the BBC is perfectly placed to connect up with the real cutting-edge talent that is out there making New Britain hip. Writers, producers, directors, women, the cream of Cool Britannia, the tip top of Britpop. We need to interface with these people. We have the resources to make films, we have the budgets to make films, all we need is the ideas.’

  Later, discussing the meeting in the BBC bar, George and Trevor were very excited about it. After all, for people like us who spend our time commissioning new ways of humiliating the public for the early Saturday evening schedules, the idea of making proper films is pretty seductive. I tried hard to join in with their enthusiasm but I couldn’t summon up much jollity. Jealousy really, I suppose. I don’t want to commission films, I want to write one. The idea of going about Soho searching out shaven- headed twelve-year-old film-school fashion junkies with rings through their scrotums made me tired. Unfair of me, I know, but as my mother said, life wasn’t supposed to be fair.

  George and Trevor saw things differently. They thought it presented a golden opportunity.

  ‘This is your big chance!’ they said. ‘Commission yourself. Write a script and green light it. The man’s crying out for ideas and he’s asking us to find them. You’ll never get an opportunity like this again! It’s gamekeeper turned poacher.’

  For a moment I was almost seduced, but then I remembered two things. Firstly my current relationship with the Controller does not lead me to imagine that he’d accept a script with my name on it. And secondly, even if he did, what script? I haven’t written a thing in years. I’ve forgotten how to write and even if I hadn’t I have nothing to write about.

  Trevor said he’d always thought that a gay alcoholic in recovery would make a great subject for a movie.

  ‘But that’s your story, Trevor,’ I said.

  ‘And a monumentally fucking dull one it is too,’ George added.

  Of course they’re both right. Nigel’s new initiative is an opportunity I should be seizing with both hands. But I just can’t do it. They say comedy is about conflict and pain. Where’s my conflict? Where’s my pain? I’m a boring bloke in a boringly happy marriage. Apart from my own monumental lack of talent and an impending sperm result there isn’t a cloud on my horizon.

  Dear Penny

  I simply cannot believe it. Sam handed in his sample three days ago and since then he has been jumpy as a kitten. He pounces on the post in the morning even though he knows the result will take five days. He grabs at any envelope that comes through the door, ones containing offers to join bookclubs, others containing enquiries about whether we want to sell our house. He tears them all open in terror that they might also be concealing a failed sperm test certificate. I swear that’s what he thinks he’s going to
get, a certificate, possibly with a ribbon on it or a red wax seal, saying ‘sperm test FAILED’. I’m afraid it seems that nothing, absolutely nothing, turns a man into a wanker so much as having to take a sperm test.

  Anyway, my blood test result came through with the second post and it seems my body has passed that particular hurdle, insomuch as the indications are that I ovulate. Hooray and whoopidydingdong. There are now only fourteen million things that could be wrong with my sad, dysfunctional tubes. Sometimes it really is hard to be a woman.

  I had to send off loads of signed pictures of Carl ‘Will you fuck me for a sandwich?’ Phipps today. I have very mixed emotions about that whole episode. Obviously I’d never do anything about it, I mean obviously. Nonetheless it’s quite flattering. At thirty-four and married it’s rather nice to discover that one could still get laid if one wanted to which one doesn’t and one certainly wouldn’t even if one did.

  When I told Sam that my blood test indicated healthy ovulation he acted most unpleasantly. Instead of being pleased that at least one part of my body functions as it should, he immediately took it as proof that he’s going to fail his sperm test and that he’s some kind of sexless eunuch. It really is most thoughtless of him to be so self-obsessed, and not very attractive. I must confess to having briefly entertained the unworthy thought that Lord Byron Phipps, the brooding, smouldering Tenant of Wildfell Hall, would not be so ungentlemanly or uncaring of a lady’s distress.

  He would also have more faith in his testicles.

  Sam,

  Still no news on the sperm test.

  Also still no word from Tosser about giving me a job.

  However, I’ve also still heard nothing further from the Channel Controller about my sensational faux pas over the mixed-up letters and am beginning to dare to hope that I may have got away with it. After all, Nigel isn’t such a bad bloke, is he? He’s trying to drag the Beeb into the twenty-first century and all that, isn’t he? And he’s got a sense of humour, hasn’t he? He’d see the funny side, on the quiet. I mean when he was an Arts Editor I remember he did that documentary on Ken Dodd. Marvellous stuff. Really, really marvellous earthy, populist stuff. It compared Dodd to a Shakespearean clown. They did a bit of Dogberry and Verges from Much Ado to illustrate the point. Hilarious, particularly when they duelled with loaves of French bread, absolutely hilarious. I must tell Nigel how hilarious I found it.