Madame de Gaulle's Penis

by Herbie Brennan

  “You were great on Johnny’s show, John,” Abe said with the sort of overwhelming sincerity I had previously associated only with Hughie Green. “I watched every minute and you were sensational! That moment... that instant... when you turned towards the camera and smiled and said ‘You’ve stitched me up’, John, that was pure poetry, pure television poetry.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Johnny Carson quietly sit down again. I thought he looked relieved.

  “But then,” said Abe in his booming voice, “you’re in the business yourself, aren’t you? Big TV star in London, am I right?”

  “Well, radio actually -” And even that was past tense.

  “Radio - television - what’s the difference? It’s all communications. And you’re a natural. Am I right, Johnny.”

  “You certainly are, Abe,” Johnny told him and possibly even believed it. He certainly sounded sincere.

  Abe turned back to me. “You’re a busy man. I’m a busy man. Even Johnny’s a busy man - just kidding, Johnny. So I’ll not beat around the bush. I’m here to offer you your own show, John. Salary commensurate, as they say. Company Caddy, window office, health insurance, holiday condo, usual perks, we’ll sort out the fine print in the contract. Six months renewable. Okay, okay, a year, but that’s my final offer. You’ll need to move over from London so naturally we’ll foot the bill. You’ll need a city apartment, place in the country to hideaway - we can provide those. What do you say?”

  I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. Not that it mattered, because Abe was talking again.

  “I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job, John - we believe in creative freedom here at NBC, don’t we Johnny? -”

  “You bet,” Johnny said.

  “- but I’d suggest you build your show around this naked women thing. Naturally we can’t actually show them naked, but we can hint. Hey, Johnny’s blazed the trail for you there - right Johnny?”

  “Right, Abe.”

  “Camera angles,” Abe said, echoing the words Johnny had used earlier. “Little bit of shoulder, little bit of knee, maybe somewhere down the road we can slip in a little bit of tit, keep the viewers interested. What you do with the broads is your affair. Interview them, get them to sing and dance, whatever. It’s the nudity the viewers will tune in to see. Know how many calls we had about your spot on Johnny’s show? Fifty-eight thousand, seven hundred and sixty-six before the switchboard blew. Fifty-eight thousand! I tell you, naked broads are going to send your ratings through the roof. What do you say?”

  This time I managed to answer. “I’m afraid I’m only over on a tourist visa.”

  Abe Feldenkranz and Johnny Carson both began to laugh.

  Epilogue

  Sixty-nine (or Soixante-Neuf, as my nurse likes to call it in her more skittish moments) was one hell of a year. Sometimes I look out my office window and the scenery fades as the memories come flooding back...

  It was the year of the big famine in Biafra. There was famine there before and there was famine there after, but January 69 was the year we actually took notice. Famine isn’t really famine until it makes the television news and we can feel our heartstrings tugged by wide-eyed kids with matchstick legs.

  It was the year Yassar Arafat formed the PLO. You’d think they were there forever, but up to then all you had was disorganised bullets and bombs aimed at Israel. Afterwards there was a name, and a movement, Goddamit.

  It was the year Golda Meir became Premier of Israel. Ah, Golda! They used to say she never wore a mini skirt because she was afraid her balls might show. And I had it on good authority that after the Six Day War, she called Nixon and offered to fight Viet Nam for him at cost plus ten per cent.

  He should have taken her up on it. It was the year the New York Times reported Viet Nam casualties had at last outstripped those of the Korean War. That’s American casualties, of course. Nobody gave a toss how many gooks were killed. Nixon reacted with more bombing, including sorties into Cambodia, but his heart wasn’t in it and he’d started to pull out before the year was up.

  It was the year Fellini released Satyricon. It was a duff movie, but like my show on NBC there were naked people in it so it got a lot of (disapproving) publicity.

  It was the year General Charles de Gaulle left office and retired from politics, God bless his cotton socks. I never mentioned why he did it. There was a referendum about reform of the French Senate. Charlie went on television and backed it to the hilt. I suspect he spent too long in Hospitality beforehand because he actually promised to step down if the people didn’t vote his way. They didn’t. It was a close-run thing, though. Five percentage points the other way and they’d have had the old bastard forever. My life would have been very different too.

  It was the year Ho Chi Minh died (although it didn’t seem to make much difference to the war in Viet Nam) and the year Khadafy came to power in Libya. It was the year the troubles got really troublesome in Northern Ireland. It was the year man first walked on the moon.

  But are these the things you remember? Or do you, like me, find it easier to recall John Lennon and Yoko Ono taking publicly to bed in Canada to protest about peace and promote John’s latest single? Do you remember the very first-ever colour television broadcast in Britain? ITV, of course. That sort of thing was much to frivolous for the good old BBC. Do you recollect that ladies started burning bras as Women’s Lib got underway? Do you even care that Denmark put on the world’s first Sex Fair after legalising pornography?

  Towards the end of 69, Britain at long last outlawed capital punishment so you could no longer be hanged no matter how badly you behaved. But I was never even tempted to go home.

  I have to tell you I’ve done rather well since 1969. The show Abe offered me was only a moderate success, but my lawyer (a cousin of Martin Bormann’s incidentally) negotiated a truly monumental buy-out when NBC decided to terminate my contract. I invested the money wisely and I’m now the head of my own communications empire. It’s hard work, but it has its moments - Barclay Haslett once applied here for a job.

  Looking back at the year it all started, I find it as difficult to recognise myself in that sex-starved young man as I do to understand the money values of the day. I am now as rich as Croesus. I have outlived seven wives (including Seline, incidentally, who choked to death on a fish-bone while on holiday on Crete) many of my friends and most of my enemies. I have been blessed with astonishing good health. Even now it allows me to smoke cigars in moderation, drink sometimes to excess and eat more or less what I enjoy most of the time. Despite this, I have a live-in nurse. She is twenty-eight years old. She has blonde hair. She is the one who giggles and refers to 1969 as soixante-neuf.

  I have developed an enormous fondness for the late Madame de Gaulle.

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