Inconceivable

by Ben Elton

  Dear Self,

  I’m writing this in my room at the Britannia Hotel opposite Piccadilly bus station in Manchester, which is, I imagine, what Kremlin Palace must have looked like at the end of October 1917.

  Magnificent gilt, glittering crystal, carved marble and hundreds of pissed-up yobbos wandering about looking for the bar and a shag. I love it. It’s real rock ‘n’ roll.

  Most of the BBC posse are staying at the Midland Plaza (which is a Holiday Inn but posher than most). However, Joe London and Woody Monk always stay at the Britannia.

  ‘Vey understand a drinking man here,’ said Joe. ‘Not vat I bovver wiv all vat now, but I like ta rememba, you know wot I mean?’

  ‘And the disco’s always full of lahvly fahkin’ birds,’ Monk added.

  On inspection Monk was proved right about this. The disco was full of lahvly fahkin’ birds, but very, very tough-looking. Northern girls never cease to amaze me by how tough they look. I think it’s the temperature. They seem to be impervious to cold. They never wear tights! It’s amazing. In the middle of winter in Newcastle or Leeds you’ll see them, making their way from bus station to club, groups of determined-looking girls in tiny minidresses, naked but for a square inch or two of Lycra, bare arms folded against the howling wind, translucent white legs clicking along the sodden pavement in their impossibly precarious shoes. Never mind Scott of the Antarctic, these girls would have done it in half the time and got back before the chip shop closed.

  I must say I’m glad I’m married and past all that trying to pull birds business. I’d be far too terrified to talk to girls these days (actually I always was). Still, you can have a bit of a sad old look, can’t you? And Monk, Joe and I have just celebrated the end of a great night by having a last drink in the Britannia Hotel disco.

  And it has been a great night, I must say. A genuine rock extravaganza. Everything went brilliantly, not like on Livin’ Large. Believe it or not my bloody sister rang and actually asked if I could take Kylie! I’m afraid the language I used was not very fraternal. I haven’t sworn at her like that since we were teenagers. Kylie’s such a little anarchist these days, she’d probably try to assassinate the Prince.

  The show was at the Manchester Evening News Arena, which is just vast. There must have been fifteen thousand fans in there.

  Amazing. I had a doddle of a job myself, which was to…well…quite frankly, I don’t really know what my job was. Hanging around, I suppose, while the engineers did all the work. That’s what executives do, isn’t it? And eat lunch, of course, but it was far too late to eat lunch.

  We had an incredible bill. Representing the wrinklies was Joe London, Rod (obviously) and Bowie. We were to have had Phil Collins but there was fog at JFK. Besides this, we actually had a pretty impressive turn-out of current acts. Maybe the Prince is getting hip again. I certainly noticed that when the final bill was announced some of my fashion junkie colleagues at BH looked quite miffed not to be involved. The biggest booking of the night was Mirage. They’re colossal at the moment and being from Salford were almost local. The lead singer’s name is Manky (I think) and he hates absolutely everything, particularly, it seems, his own band. I went along to the sound check in the afternoon and he was on stage having a fight with the principal songwriter in the band, an ugly-looking bastard called Bushy. What a show!

  All the mikes were on and this vast concrete arena was echoing to the sound of these two lads yelling abuse at each other and pushing each other around.

  ‘Ya fookin’ cont! Ya can’t fookin’ sing!’

  ‘Ya fookin’ cont! Ya can’t fookin’ write songs.’

  My heart sank because Mirage were the top of the bill (although Joe and Rod were pretending they were) and it didn’t look as if Manky and Bushy would survive until the evening. These boys may have been hooligans but they were professional hooligans.

  One of the other members of the band started strumming his guitar. ‘Look, are you fookin’ conts just fookin’ fookin’ about? Or are we fookin’ sound fookin’ checkin’, ya conts?’

  ‘Fook it,’ said Manky, turning to the mike while Bushy picked out the familiar opening notes of ‘Get Real’, Mirage’s current smash.

  I must say, Manky can certainly sing. He has a wonderful sneer in his voice which really does sound like he doesn’t give a fooking fook.

  Strawberry Lane and Penny Fields.

  Norwegian Walrus yeah yeah yeah.

  Who’s bigger than Christ now?

  I don’t care.

  D’ya get my meaning with your psychedelic dreaming.

  I’m a Somewhere Man and we’d all love to see the plan.

  Hey Maisonette Bill.

  She’s just a fool on the pill.

  Cos getting on an E is like having a cup of tea.

  Or is it?

  Get real.

  Some people detect a Beatles influence.

  When the song was over, Manky snorted with contempt and burped hugely into the microphone. It was amazing. This colossal belch rang around the vast aircraft hangar, bouncing off the walls and the concrete floor. I thought it would bring the ceiling down.

  ‘Ya disgosting cont,’ said Bushy, ‘I’ll ‘it ya with me knob, ya sweaty twat.’

  After that the whole band had a fight.

  As they left the stage I could see two familiar figures approaching across the vast acreage of the venue. It was my old lunch buddies, Dog and Fish, who were to compere the night and provide the ‘comedy’ element. From experience I knew that basically this would involve them coming on between each act and pretending that they did not really want to be there. The strangest aspect of modern compering (or perhaps I should say post-modern compering) is that the host of the evening invariably seems to feel the necessity to disassociate himself from the proceedings, as if it was all some sad joke they’re indulging in for a laugh. You see it at award ceremonies all the time. Some young blade comes on and basically says, ‘Look, we all know this is a pile of self-indulgent shit and it’s probably fixed, but welcome anyway.’ I think it’s a shame. Bring back Michael Aspel, I say, but you see my problem is that I like things to be nice.

  ‘Hullo, Sam,’ said Dog. ‘Shag the Mrs that day, did you?’

  For a moment I was at a loss but then I recalled the circumstances of my hasty retreat from One Nine Oh. I didn’t know what to say, so I laughed a bit and left it at that.

  ‘Yeah, sorry you got shafted out of telly,’ added Fish. ‘You were a straight geezer. Best thing that could have happened to you, though. Radio’s the only truly post-modern no-bullshit medium.

  It’s the new TV.’

  ‘So my successor didn’t give you a series, then?’ I asked.

  ‘No. Bastard,’ Fish said morosely. ‘I couldn’t believe it, even after we stormed it in Montreal and all the Yanks were queueing up.’

  Oh well, it wasn’t my problem any more. I had this evening to worry about.

  ‘Now, you do know you can’t swear, don’t you?’ I said.

  ‘No fucking problem, Sam,’ said Dog and laughed as if this was a brilliant joke and they headed for the stage.

  I could see why. Brenda was starting her sound check. Brenda is a singer but her real claim to fame is that she is heart-stoppingly gorgeous. A regular star of the cover of Loaded magazine and a new-lad icon. She usually performs in tiny see-through nighties and sings like she’s having an orgasm. The number she was rehearsing is called ‘Sex Me Again Sexy Baby’. It’s the follow-up to her big hit ‘Sex Me Sex Me Sex Me’. Unfortunately ‘Sex Me Again Sexy Baby’ seems to have flopped. And our sound engineer told me he’d read that she was going to have to do another Loaded magazine photo spread to revive her career but that the editor has insisted that this time there was to be none of this coy stuff and it would have to be nipples out. In our sad modern world female pop stars have to be very successful indeed before it’s allowable for them to perform with their clothes on.

  Brenda was not doing a proper sound check because she was
performing to a tape, but obviously a rehearsal was required so that the director of the concert video could ensure that Brenda’s body would be well covered by the cameras if by nothing else.

  Brenda’s voice thundered out of the sound system as she strutted and pouted, miming the words.

  Sexuality, feel my physicality.

  Baby, you and me. Let’s get it on.

  Sex sex sex sex sex.

  My body is for you, do what you want to do.

  Use me and abuse me, Caress me and undress me, Sex me sexy baby.

  Deep inside. Oooh, oooh.

  It was all a bit too much for me. More of that and I’d have had to have a lie-down. I wandered off to have a mooch around the hospitality section. I can’t be standing about in vast empty arenas ogling young girls like that. It’s not good for me. Besides, what would Lucy have thought? I always feel very close to her when I’m away, absence making the heart grow fonder and all that. It made me a bit sad to think of her sitting at home, probably having a solitary bowl of soup or something in front of EastEnders. I called her, but she sounded a bit distracted. She said she was tired and was going to put the answerphone on and go to bed really early.

  Dear Penny,

  We met at Quark. I’ve never been there before but I know Sam goes quite often on his numerous important lunches. It’s very posh and they give you little plates of nibbles the moment you arrive. I got there first (of course!) and sat there feeling like an absolute

  ! I mean of course I hadn’t actually done anything wrong but it just seemed to me that everybody knew I was there for a clandestine dinner with a man who was not my husband.

  I knew the rash on my neck was coming up. No red wine, I told myself, in fact no wine

  at all. My God, if I got pissed there was no telling what would happen.

  The next thing I knew was that this dashing maitre d’ was opening a bottle of champagne in front of me.

  ‘Meester Pheeepps ‘e ‘as call to sigh ‘e will be a leetle light. ‘E sigh to geeeve the liedy shompine.’ Well, long story short, as they say, I’d had two and a half glasses by the time Carl turned up. I didn’t want to but when one is just sitting there like a lemon, one does.

  Carl looked incredible. Everybody turned to stare. He’s grown his hair and sideburns again (for a part, Dick Turpin, American cable movie, silly script but fun) and what with his dark curls and big coat he looked as if he’d just come back from writing epic poetry and fighting duels in Tuscany. Anyway, he strode straight across to me and without so much as saying ‘hello’ or anything he kissed me

  on the mouth! I mean he didn’t try to slip me the tongue or anything but it was quite lippy and totally took me by surprise. Then he stood back, stared at me with his smouldering coal-black eyes and said that I looked absolutely ravishing, which I did not, although I must admit that I was wearing a new silk blouse with no bra (silk does rather flatter the smaller bosom like mine).

  Anyway, he was full of apologies about being late, rehearsals or something and terribly important meetings. He said he already felt cheated because he knew that my husband was only away for the evening and that he’d already wasted forty precious minutes of it.

  Well, that made me think, I must say.

  ‘How did you know Sam was going to be away?’ I asked.

  Carl looked me in the eye. ‘I’m ashamed to say that he wrote to me on behalf of His Royal Highness asking me to read a poem at the Prince’s Trust Concert and instead of agreeing, as naturally I normally would have done, I…Well, it seemed like fate.’

  I was amazed. He had waited until he knew my husband was out of town and had then brazenly asked me out to dinner!

  ‘This is a planned seduction!’ I exclaimed and he continued to stare me in the eye and replied that he certainly hoped so.

  God, I must have been the colour of a shy beetroot.

  ‘Carl, I’m married! I…I love my husband. You can’t possibly be serious! I shouldn’t even be here.’

  ‘Then why did you come?’ he asked, and I’m afraid to say he had me there. I mean I could have protested that I had accepted his invitation entirely innocently, but after what had gone on between us before? Hardly. And me sitting there with my hair done and a breast-flattering new silk top on? The truth of the matter was that there was no way that this meeting could be innocent. I was just avoiding the truth because I was scared of it.

  Carl answered his own question. ‘You’re here because you’re lonely, Lucy. Because you need tenderness and passion and you’re not getting it. I can see the longing in your eyes.’

  I tried to protest that it wasn’t true, but I’d lost the power of forming a coherent sentence, what with the champagne and the fact that in some ways…Oh God, he was right.

  ‘I’ve tried to do the honourable thing and keep away as I said I would,’ Carl said, ‘but when this chance came along I couldn’t fight it any longer. I’ve wanted you from the first day we met, Lucy. You fascinate me. I don’t know any other women like you.’

  This couldn’t be true, surely? I mean Carl Phipps is a star, a heart-throb. He could have the pick of the bunch. I put this to him but he insisted that I was different, that he really did want me above all others. Before I knew it, there we were holding hands again. I really don’t know if I encouraged this but I do know that I had left my hand lying prone between us upon the table and when he elegantly rested his hand upon it, I did not withdraw.

  Therefore, I suppose I’m as guilty for what ensued as he.

  The hospitality backstage was really buzzing. Charlie Stone was doing some interviews to be cut into the broadcast whenever any of the old rockers got into a particularly long guitar solo. I hung around with him and his recordist for a while, partly to let people know that I did have some status and also, let’s face it, because he was interviewing absolutely gorgeous girls, including Brenda.

  ‘So, Brenda,’ said Charlie. ‘What do you say to people who call you a sexist stereotype?’

  Brenda drew herself up to her full height, which was about five feet nothing, and answered the charge.

  ‘Well, I think they’re the sexists because they don’t understand that me being proud of my body and getting my kit off is actually all about being strong, and female empowerment and the me I want me to be.’

  ‘Well, it certainly gives me the horn,’ Charlie said, getting to the point, so to speak. Brenda smiled a gorgeous smile as if her point had been proved and honour satisfied.

  Next I found myself in Joe London’s dressing room. Woody Monk was there, of course, and Wally, the drug-addled lead guitarist of The Muvvers and Joe’s sidekick for nearly thirty years. Wally looked quite extraordinary, like a mummified corpse. He reminded me of that Stone Age hunter they found after he’d been frozen for twenty thousand years in the Alps, except Wally had a feathered haircut with a spiky top which had only been preserved for about thirty years. They were rehearsing one of The Muvvers’ early hits and Joe and Wally seemed to be having a little trouble remembering exactly how the song went. Joe said, ‘Nah, man, you go fahkin’ da da da dum after the second line when I sing, ‘Youngest gun, dream won’t stop’ awight?’

  This threw Wally completely. ‘Is that the lyric?’ he mumbled with apparent surprise.

  ‘Of course it’s the fahkin’ lyric. I mean we’ve only done it eight trillion fahkin’ times, geezer!’

  ‘Well, that’s amazing, man,’ said Wally. ‘I always thought you were singing ‘Currant bun, cream on top’. In’t that amazing?’

  Then Joe saw me. It took a moment for him to focus, but he recognized me, which was nice and he seemed genuinely pleased to see me. I told him how proud and happy the BBC were that he and the band had graced us with their presence and he couldn’t have been sweeter about it.

  ‘I larve a big gig, me. A nice big charity gig. ‘Ere, Wally, you remember that one we done for RockAid with Mark Knopfler and the Straits?’

  ‘Nah,’ said Wally. Silly question really because it was quite o
bvious that Wally did not really remember anything at all.

  ‘Mark done this guitar solo,’ Joe continued, ‘you know, the one in the middle of ‘Sultans of Swing’…dabadaba dabadab dabad- aba daaaa daaa, he would not stop, daaaa dabadaba dabadab dabadaba daaaa, people was nodding off, going out for fags, getting married, ‘aving kids, dying. Mark’s still giving it dabadaba dabadab dabadaba daaaa. ‘Pack it in, you ponce!’ we was all shouting, but old Mark was off in Dabadabaland. In the end we just left ‘im to it. I think it’s still going on somewhere as it ‘appens.’

  Just then Rod Stewart puts his head around the door to say hello.

  I must admit it was all pretty exciting.

  ‘Rod! ‘Ow’s it going, you old bastard? Orlright?’ Joe said. ‘Nice one. ‘Ow’s Britt? Sorry Alana. ‘Ow’s Alana?’

  This was of course something of a faux pas.

  ‘Not Alana, you pillock,’ said Monk. ‘He moved on.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, sorry. ‘Ow’s Rachel?’ Joe corrected himself.

  ‘I don’t fink it’s ‘er any more eiver,’ said Monk.