Inconceivable

by Ben Elton

  Sam’s in the bathroom shaving, having just delivered a little monologue on the downside of having children, and I’m trying very hard not to get upset because I’ve already done my make-up. How could he be so thoughtless and selfish? He doesn’t mean to be cruel, I know, but he just doesn’t understand. I was born to have children. There’s never been a moment in my life when I didn’t want, some day, to be a mother. When he talks like that, as if children are some kind of lifestyle option to be taken or left, I feel a million miles away from him. Children are the reason for being alive.

  I just reminded Lucy that kids are, in the end, just another lifestyle option and I think I made her feel better.

  On the other hand. Sometimes I must admit that I catch a glimpse of Lucy, or a look at her while she’s asleep, and I think how pretty she is, and how much I love her. And I think how much more I would like to love her and how I would like to find new and more complete ways of expressing that love. That’s when I think that perhaps having a baby might be the most wonderful thing in the world. Oh well, mustn’t dwell.

  A Game of Two Halves

  Dear Penny,

  Last night’s dinner with Trevor and his boyfriend Kit was great fun, despite Sam getting me a bit upset before we left.

  Sam and Trevor are of course colleagues in lunch at the Beeb and are terribly funny when they start sneering at the more awful of the artists they have to hand over all our licence fees to. Trevor was telling us about these ghastly Oxbridge-educated yobbos whose job is to make jokes about football on some beery late-night sports chat show. It’s called

  and it’s Trevor’s biggest hit. Apparently the rough idea of the show (I haven’t seen it) is that clips of various sporting events are played and then the regular panel members compete with each other to see who can mention their penises most often.

  It was nice to have a really good laugh. We always do with Trevor and Kit. Trevor is good at taking the piss out of himself and it seems he’s become a victim of his own success with this alternative sports quiz he’s developed. Two of the blokes on it have inevitably been picked up for representation by the bull-like Aiden Fumet. Fumet has been to see Trevor and explained that, on the strength of their current ‘ballistic’ status, his ‘turns’ must immediately be given their own sitcoms. When Trevor asked if before committing hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of licence payers’ money to an untried project it might be possible to see a script, Aiden Fumet immediately turned into the spiritual skinhead he is and called Trevor ‘a pointless timeserving cunt’.

  He also threatened that any suggestion of artistic interference from Trevor or the ‘BB-fucking-C’ would result in Aiden Fumet’s entire ‘stable’ being no longer available to the Corporation.

  Trevor does a very good Aiden Fumet, who has a strange hybrid accent half bored aristocratic rock star and half East End stallholder. ‘What the BBC ‘ave gotta understand is that all my boys are Time Out-approved geniuses and any more messing abaht and I’ll take ‘em all to ‘ollywood, where they have a proper professional attitude towards the talent and I can get two million dollars a turn, minimum.’

  Trevor, George and I all agree that artists are a lot more arrogant with the BBC than they used to be. I suppose it’s down to the incredible diversity of employment options that anybody half good (or not even) is presented with these days. I mean, there was a time when there was only one channel and anybody, no matter how talented, who wanted to be on telly did so by the grace of the BBC. That was how we used to get those incredible long runs of things. People did what they were told, and if that meant doing sixty episodes of the same sitcom then that was what they did. These days, with eight million channels available the celebs call the shots, which makes life a lot more difficult for us execs.

  Trevor also blames the Montreal Comedy Festival. This takes place in Canada (well it would do) and hence appearing at it is as close to playing in the United States as the vast majority of British comics are ever going to get. Which is why they all go there. Trevor and I go too whenever we can swing it, as it really is the most monumental piss-up, and the restaurants are excellent! The problem is that big Hollywood TV people also go.

  Well, not actually big Hollywood TV people. In fact, the minions of the minions of big Hollywood TV people. Those so low down the US TV totem pole that they have nothing more pressing to do in LA or New York. In fact, as far as I can make out, the Montreal Comedy Festival is really just an annual holiday for failed Americans because it is the one time of the year where they get to lord it over people even more desperate to make it in the States than they are themselves.

  Anyway, these US non-executives swan about the place being bought drinks by British agents and pretending to be important.

  Then they go up to all the desperate British, Irish, Australian and Kiwi comedians and tell them that they are ‘just incredibly interesting and original’ and that CBS will probably be very interested in turning them into Eddie Murphy probably or at the very least possibly giving them a sitcom development deal probably.

  The sad truth, of course, is that the British comics swear far too much to be of any real interest to the Americans and I have to say that the Ozzies are even fouler. Also, the Montreal Comedy Festival is of only slightly more significance to American Television people than is the Big Knob Comedy Club in Brick Lane. So all that happens is that the British come home (having been drunk for a fortnight and having abused the sacred sexual trust of some poor little nineteen-year-old Canadian publicist), with eye-popping tales of impending and colossal success in the glamorous world of American sitcom. These tales are then circulated by the comedians’ managers and dutifully published in the Independent and, of course, Time Out (‘Move over, Robin Williams, here comes Ivor Biggun from Slough!’

  ‘Eric and Ernie couldn’t do it, but Dog and Fish just might’). This confirmation of the stories in print then makes the managers, who originally circulated the stories, actually believe them, hence they think that they can push the BBC around.

  ‘Listen, Sam,’ Aiden Fumet regularly says to me, ‘I’ve been faxed by somebody very big at NBC! So where’s the fucking sitcom deal for my boys?!’

  It was so funny! Trevor is always good at telling stories about work because you see he doesn’t really care about it very much, unlike Sam, who cares desperately and actually thinks that you can ‘plan’ comedy hits and that festivals and managers and American development deals are terribly important.

  Anyway, then Sam (possibly trying to be funnier than Trevor) brought up our impending postcoital business, which I suppose I didn’t really mind because Trevor and Kit are very good pals. Although it is slightly disconcerting to discuss one’s vaginal juices at the dinner table. We all had another good laugh about it, though, because, of course, it is funny. Trevor and Sam were both being most amusing, saying things about vaginal genocide and Sam’s sperm swimming back from the fray carrying little white flags.

  We actually laughed until we cried and then I’m afraid to admit I nearly did cry a bit because the truth is, hilarious though it may be, it isn’t very funny wanting kids and not being able to get them.

  Kit was so lovely. He’s a set designer for the theatre (mainly fringe; he told me that recently he had to do Burnham Wood moving to Dunsinane for about five quid: ‘We use a lot of real twigs, and binliners, of course, can represent just about anything’). Anyway, Kit asked what we would do if we failed the test and it turned out that my body really did reject Sam’s sperm. Well, before we knew it we were discussing Trevor making a donation! Ha! Apparently, Trevor has already done it for a lesbian couple in Crouch End that he and Kit met on the Internet. He explained that you don’t actually have to do it, you know, have sex together (‘Not even for you, Lucy love,’ said Trevor), you just use a turkey baster! Seems incredible to me, but apparently it’s true.

  Sam laughed a lot at all this, but I could see he was a bit taken aback at the idea. He really has always been so blasé about kids that I didn�
�t think he’d mind what I did, but then he went quiet, so I expect he does mind really.

  Life is becoming rather strange. My wife appears to be plotting to conceive with my gay friends using a turkey baster. That’ll be an interesting story to tell my mother over the next Christmas dinner.

  It has made me think a bit, though. I mean, what if Sam and I aren’t compatible? What are the alternatives? Adoption? Artificial insemination? Forgetting about the whole thing? Oh well, I suppose I’ll just have to do what I’ve done many a night of late and try not to think about it.

  Dear Sam,

  A sort of half-exciting thing happened at work today. It started off very exciting, but then got slightly less so. I was just completing a particularly difficult level of Tomb Raider on my PC when Daphne looked in and said that the Director General’s office had been on and would Lucy and I care to go to dinner at Broadcasting House!

  Well, would I? All thoughts of Lara Croft’s extraordinary bosom fled my mind instantly. I mean the DG’s dinners at BH are legendary. He has cabinet ministers, captains of industry, footballers, bishops, everyone. But never, to the best of my knowledge, has a lowly executive producer of broken comedy and sitcom been invited. I did once go to his Christmas drinks, but it was only the once and, anyway, there were at least two hundred people at that and it was only drinks. This was dinner! Dinner at Broadcasting House, the Ship that sails down Regent Street!

  What an honour! The DG must have heard of my trip to Downing Street. I doubt he could have missed it: I’ve talked about it loudly in every single nook and cranny of the Corporation.

  Anyway, for whatever reason, we’d been invited. We were ‘in’. I nearly stood to attention when I told Daphne to accept!

  ‘When is it?’ I said. ‘I’ll cancel everything. If my mother dies, she dies alone.’

  ‘Tomorrow night,’ she said.

  Slightly disheartening. Obviously an invitation at such short notice means we’re to be fill-ins for somebody who has jacked.

  Still, I thought, I’d never have expected to have been asked at all, so even being a replacement is an honour.

  Then the phone rang. It was George.

  ‘Guess what?’ he said. ‘Melinda and I got asked to a DG’s dinner for tomorrow night! Incredible, eh, what a coup! Obviously we’re a fill-in for somebody who jacked but, still, pretty amazing. The appalling bugger of it is we can’t go! Melinda just can’t get a sitter she trusts. There’s only two sitters in the world it seems who aren’t mass murderers and they’re both busy. I’ve threatened divorce but she won’t budge…’

  ‘When did you get your invitation?’ I asked.

  ‘Yesterday, late afternoon,’ said George. ‘I rang the DG’s office first thing this morning to say we couldn’t do it. I could scarcely believe I was actually turning down the Director General this morning. I suppose in a way it’s pretty cool.’

  After George got off the phone I tried not to be miffed. ‘Who cares?’ I thought. ‘So what if I was second choice?’ We were still going to dine with the…

  And then Trevor rang.

  ‘You’re not going to believe this,’ he said, ‘but Kit and I got invited to have dinner at BH with the DG and we can’t go! His office rang first thing this morning. It’s for tomorrow night so obviously we were to be the replacement for someone who’s dropped out, but all the same! Pretty amazing, eh? I had to ring them back half an hour ago to decline. It was like pulling teeth but there’s no way Kit can break his rule.’

  Kit, sadly, is HIV positive and although he’s doing incredibly well and you would never know he carried the virus he does have to be careful about over-exertion. He and Trevor have a strict rule that they have only one social occasion a week.

  ‘And we used it up having you to dinner,’ Trevor said, and I must say that I didn’t much like his tone, the clear implication being that he and Kit had been insane to waste their precious entertaining time on us when there were far more impressive prospects just around the corner. We parted slightly coldly.

  So there it is. Lucy and I are to be the replacement for a replacement for a replacement. Nonetheless we are going to dinner with the DG, which is not to be sniffed at. I’ll have to make sure that Nigel hears about it. He can hardly sack me if I’m friends with the PM and the DG.

  I spent all day expecting Keith Harris to phone and say he’d had to turn down an invite from the DG because Orville has a cold.

  Tosser also phoned me today. No chance of a job with his company, which was a bit dispiriting, I must admit. I had thought, vainly, that he’d jump at the chance of recruiting me, that I’d be rather a prestige signing for his company. You know, top BBC man and all that, but obviously he doesn’t think so. ‘The BBC is just another player,’ he said to me, which is a bloody ridiculous thing to say considering the BBC is the largest broadcaster in the world and he has a floor and a half in Dean Street. Quite frankly, I suspect him of only giving work to gorgeous young women with pierced bellybuttons and small tattoos of scorpions on their shoulders; there certainly seem to be a lot of them employed at his office, though that might just be coincidence, I suppose.

  Daily Telegraph

  Dear Pen Pal,

  I’m writing this having just got back from dinner at Broadcasting House. The Director General was hosting one of his evenings for the great and the good so obviously we’d only been invited to pad out the numbers (Sam did some spying and it turned out that the Editor of the

  had jacked at the last moment. Sam said other people had been asked to fill in before us, but he was very vague about who they were, very important people he said).

  Anyway, when I say we had dinner with the Director General we barely actually spoke to him, of course, being at the other end of the table, but it was still very nice. BH really is a fantastic building, even though some idiot or other ripped most of the Deco out in the fifties and replaced it with the interior of a Soviet prison. Nonetheless it still feels special to walk in through those same doors that Tony Hancock and Churchill and Sue Lawley have walked through before you.

  Of course actually having dinner there (served by very smart staff) is particularly magical, it takes you back to another age, like the twenties or something. You start with drinks in a sort of antechamber and then go through into a marvellous dining room, all wood lined and shimmering crystal. I got sat next to a bishop who was very nice, and a junior member of the shadow cabinet who was not. He immediately made it quite clear that he was not happy at being seated next to a mere ‘wife’ and, what’s more, a mere nobody’s wife to boot. I swear that as the swine came through and spotted his place-setting (with me already sitting next to it) his face actually fell! Unbelievable. He couldn’t even be bothered to make the pretence of being polite. He actually

  grimaced.

  We attempted smalltalk for about a minute.

  Me: ‘So you’re in the shadow cabinet? How fascinating. Although I always imagine that being in opposition must be very frustrating.’

  Swine: ‘Hmm, yes. So your husband works in television comedy, you say? I really don’t think that any of that rubbish is funny any more. There hasn’t been anything remotely decent since Yes, Minister.’

  After that he completely ignored me until the cheese, by which time he was pissed enough to try a bit of bored flirting in a lazy, patronizing, off-hand sort of way.

  Swine: ‘I expect with you both being in showbusiness there must be terrible temptations. Do you ever get jealous? Does he?’

  I wasn’t having any of it. ‘What a strange question,’ I said, not only hoitily but also fairly toitily and turned back to the bishop, with whom I was getting on like a house on fire. He must have been ninety-three if he was a day and he was telling me about his hobby, which was collecting eighteenth-century Japanese erotic art! Extraordinary! Where does the church get them? What’s more, whilst describing a porcelain figurine of a naked ninja (in rather too much detail), he squeezed my leg under the table! The randy old goat. What is it about
men? They’re pathetic. A couple of drinks and they start sniffing about like dogs. Sam was scarcely being any better than the bishop. He was sitting next to this tart with extraordinary knockers (not entirely her own, I fancy) and I could see him just ogling them. I mean at first he’d at least tried to be discreet, although I knew what he was up to, of course, all that reaching for the salt and passing the bread. Sad, really. And after a few glasses of wine he just gave up any pretence at subtlety and started simply staring at them with his tongue hanging out. I mean it couldn’t have been any more obvious if he’d said, ‘Phwoar! Look at the jugs on that!’ I’ve no idea who this overly boobed slapper was, she was only about twenty-three or four and clearly a second wife to someone, but I didn’t find out whose. I looked for a man with a smug smile on his face but there were too many contenders. It may have been the shadow cabinet minister. On the other hand why would a man with a girl like that be flirting with me? I’m not exactly spectacularly blessed in the knocker department.

  All in all, what with Sam drooling and the shadow minister sneering and the bishop’s hand beginning to gather a tiny bit too much confidence, it was a great relief when the DG made us all move round for the pudding. I ended up talking to his wife, who seemed very nice. I found myself telling her all about Carl Phipps. Not the hand-holding lunch, obviously, but about being an agent and representing him. I must admit I suddenly heard myself being altogether more enthusiastic about him than I’d intended to be. ‘He’s so nice,’ and ‘He’s rather dishy,’ and ‘He’s not at all stuck up,’ the last of which at least is certainly not true.