Funny Girl

by Nick Hornby

  ‘ “I was sleeping with a famous actress,” ’ Sophie offered helpfully.

  ‘I’ve always slept with actresses,’ he said helplessly.

  ‘And Nancy is another one.’

  ‘Yes, but she seemed … modern. The sort of thing all those French tourists come to Carnaby Street for.’

  ‘They come here to see tarty actresses who are pushing forty and make off-colour jokes? I thought they came because we’re all young and groovy and we’ve got the Beatles.’

  ‘I knew you wouldn’t understand,’ said Clive sulkily.

  Her fear was that she was still Miss Blackpool – that, despite all the things that had happened to her since then, she was stuck back there, somehow, a big fish in a small pond, a beautiful girl surrounded by pudgy dignitaries and dark mackintoshes and elderly people with no teeth. She didn’t want to be like that in bed. She didn’t want to regard herself as a prize, to be given up only grudgingly to hardly anybody. But Clive wasn’t talking about that. He was talking about the times they all suddenly lived in, and how hard it was not to be a small boy in a sweet shop with no cash register. None of that was anything to do with her.

  The last show went out on 16 November 1967. The word divorce was never mentioned, but Jim was shown leaving the family home, despite Clive’s protestations.

  ‘I told you this would happen if we had a child,’ he said after the first read-through. ‘Old ladies will beat me about the head with umbrellas in the street for the rest of my life. Why can’t she leave, if she’s so bloody unhappy?’

  ‘Women don’t leave their children,’ said Dennis, and then, remembering too late that Sophie’s mother had left her, ‘not as a rule.’

  Clive still managed to negotiate an off-screen divorce settlement, though, as compensation for his forthcoming shame: he got Tony and Bill to write an unambiguous speech for Barbara in which she stressed that none of it was Jim’s fault, and he got himself a guaranteed part, at a preferential fee, in the next script that Tony and Bill saw through to production.

  The last rehearsal nearly ended with Clive saying, ‘Is that it, then? Do you mind if I slope off?’, but Sophie felt as though she had to recognize the occasion.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘All of you.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Clive, and he walked towards the door.

  ‘Sit down, you unfeeling bastard,’ said Bill. ‘Sophie’s going to make a speech.’

  Clive sat down, reluctantly.

  ‘No, I’m not,’ said Sophie. ‘I just … I didn’t want it all to end without someone noticing.’

  ‘We all noticed,’ said Clive. ‘But we were trying to end it with dignity.’

  He stood up.

  ‘These have been the best years of my life,’ said Sophie suddenly, and Clive sighed and sat down again. ‘I think they’ve been the best years of your lives too.’

  ‘Steady on,’ said Bill.

  ‘What were your best years, then?’ said Tony. ‘The army? Writing jokes for Albert Bridges?’

  ‘Writing jokes for Albert Bridges,’ said Bill, and he got a laugh, but then he felt bad, so he said, ‘Only joking,’ and he got another one.

  ‘I’ve never been happy in the way that I’ve been happy in this room, and in the studios,’ said Sophie. ‘I’ve never laughed so much, or learned so much, and everything I know about my job is because of the people here. Even you, Clive. And I’m worried that I’ll spend the rest of my working life looking for an experience like this one, where everything clicks and everyone pushes you to do the best you can, better than anything you think you’re capable of.’

  There was a thoughtful, respectful silence.

  ‘Is that it, then?’ said Clive. ‘Mind if I slope off?’

  And this time they let him go.

  The last script required both Barbara and Jim to cry; Clive was horrified by the stage direction when he first read it, but he seemed to have an easy access to tears. Nobody teased him about it afterwards. The last words of the last script were ‘Take care, love,’ delivered by Barbara in a broad Lancashire accent that hadn’t been heard since the beginning of the first series. She was holding Jim as she delivered the line, and she had to hold him for a long time, because they wanted to run the closing credits over the embrace. Sophie found herself weeping properly then, and she had to bury her face in Clive’s jacket. She tried to convince herself that she was upset about breaking up with Clive, but it wasn’t that. It was always about the work. She’d never been in love with Clive, but she’d been in love with the show since the very first day.

  When the audience had left, Sophie went back to the studio and sat down on the sofa in Barbara’s lounge, while the crew were striking the set. She felt self-conscious, as if she were playing the part of an actress whose popular TV show is ending and wants to do something sentimental to demonstrate that the show has meant something to her. She had to do something different, though. She couldn’t simply have changed, removed her make-up and gone to the Chinese restaurant.

  Dennis came to find her.

  ‘Are you ready for something to eat?’

  ‘Yes. In a sec. Sit down for a moment.’

  There wasn’t much left of the set apart from the sofa, and she could see that Dennis was being made uneasy by the trouble they were causing, but she felt the crew could give her this much. She’d never caused any trouble before.

  ‘I can’t help feeling we let Barbara down,’ said Dennis.

  ‘How?’

  ‘She wasn’t asking for much, was she? And we took it away from her. The divorce is a failure for the whole country.’

  ‘Steady on, Dennis,’ said Sophie, and laughed, but he didn’t seem to be joking.

  TELEVISION REVIEW:

  BARBARA (AND JIM)

  You may have stopped watching Barbara (and Jim) a year or two back, despite the likeability of its two central performances and the sharpness of its scripts; freshness is, regrettably, not a quality that can be retained, by definition. What was once both pertinent and laudably impertinent became familiar and sometimes even a little polite compared to the very best of contemporary television comedy – there are only so many overflowing baths one can watch before one ends up feeling that the show has gone a little soggy. Till Death Us Do Part in particular, so far ahead of the field when it comes to daring, rawness and confrontation, has made all its competitors seem a little staid.

  And yet last night, its swansong, Barbara (and Jim) reminded us of why we fell in love with it in the first place – ironically, given the subject matter of the final programme. Barbara and Jim are no more; sadly, they decided to go their separate ways. They did so in a mature, touching and responsible way, by simply agreeing that they no longer loved each other and that they should part, rather than stay together for the good of their child. There was, as you can imagine, very little room for humour, and though the studio audience laughed gamely at the couple of bones they were thrown, this was not a comedy programme. It was, however, a thoughtful and surprisingly touching portrait of a modern relationship gone wrong. The Church and certain fuddy-duddy politicians may huff and puff about how this sad turn of events will do nothing for the catastrophic divorce rate: an amicable parting, after all, simply makes separation appear attractive. But the writers are to be commended for addressing the problem head-on, and suggesting solutions that many couples will, regrettably, need to consider at some point in the future.

  We will miss Barbara and Jim. We will especially miss Barbara, played by the delightful and – despite the ruinous effects of motherhood – still shapely Sophie Straw. Let us hope a television producer somewhere knows what to do with her. In the meantime, we should raise a glass to the series. Like most of us when we are having fun, it slightly outstayed its welcome. But the BBC, and the country, would have been poorer without it. For a little while, it had something to say about the way we live now. And last night, as its candle was being snuffed out, it found its voice again.

  The Times, 17 Nov
ember 1967

  EVERYONE LOVES SOPHIE

  21

  And still it was not the end of the divorces and the separations.

  The week after the last-ever Barbara (and Jim) had been aired, Dennis asked Tony and Bill to call in and see him at the BBC. They sat down in his office and made small talk about the good old days, and they had just been served coffee when Sophie came in, flustered and apologetic.

  ‘I’m sorry I’m late. It’s not because I’m not keen,’ she said. ‘I am keen. Really keen.’

  ‘I haven’t said anything yet,’ said Dennis.

  ‘Oh,’ said Sophie. ‘Well. I’ll just sit down and shut up.’

  Dennis smiled at her indulgently.

  ‘Just Barbara,’ said Dennis, and looked at them expectantly.

  They didn’t know what he was talking about, so they stared back.

  ‘I don’t think they understand,’ said Sophie.

  ‘I’m not sure it’s a failure of comprehension,’ said Bill. ‘I think it’s more a failure of communication. Dennis has provided us with the name of a character in an old comedy series and put the word “just” in front of it. I don’t think Bertrand Russell would have understood.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Dennis. ‘Sophie and I would like you to write a new series entitled Just Barbara, which follows our girl as she deals with life as a divorcee.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Tony. ‘That’s interesting.’

  ‘Do you really think so?’ said Bill.

  ‘Yes,’ said Tony.

  He thought any offer of work was interesting. They were struggling with Reds Under the Bed, and the Anthony Newley thing was going nowhere fast: they had recently been told that he wanted to turn it into an X-rated musical. And Bill turned down new offers every week, apparently without even a moment’s consideration for Tony’s situation.

  ‘What are the problems, Bill, as you see them?’ said Dennis. ‘Let’s kick them around. I’m sure we can sort it out.’

  ‘Well,’ said Bill. ‘The first one is, it’s a terrible idea.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Dennis. ‘We were rather pleased with it. What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘Doesn’t go anywhere.’

  ‘It can go anywhere you want it to go.’

  ‘It’s got no legs. Or wheels. You won’t get it out of the garage.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘There’s the bloody baby, for a start. Every bloody episode you’ve got to explain where it is.’

  ‘Perhaps he could be with Jim. He said he was going to help out.’

  ‘He meant take it for a walk sometimes, not invite it to stay for the weekend. And is she going to work? Or is she knocking round the house all day? And how many boyfriends can a divorced mother of one have in a television comedy before someone calls the police on her? No. It’s not for me.’

  ‘Just no?’

  ‘Just no,’ said Bill, and that appeared to be that.

  ‘Thanks, mate,’ said Tony when they got outside. He was angry.

  ‘Do you really want to write a series called Just Barbara?’ said Bill.

  ‘I just want to write,’ said Tony. ‘I’m a writer. It’s my living.’

  ‘ “Just Barbara”,’ said Bill, in a whiny, simpering voice.

  ‘Well, anything sounds stupid if you say it like that. “Hancock’s Half Hour”. “Look Back in Anger”. “The Gospel According to St Matthew”. It’s just a character. One woman.’

  ‘One woman who can’t do this and can’t do that because we’ve visited every corner of her personality fifteen times over the last few years. Is that what you want to spend your life doing?’ said Bill. ‘Really? You don’t want to do something fresh and different and interesting?’

  ‘Yes, but …’

  ‘There aren’t any buts,’ said Bill. ‘That’s the whole point of being a writer, isn’t it? If I wanted buts, I’d go and work in a fucking but factory.’

  ‘Bully for you. In my life there are fucking buts everywhere.’

  ‘You’re living the wrong life, then.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll just change it, shall I?’

  It was the wrong response. He didn’t want to change his life. His buts were June and baby Roger, and he was happy with both of them.

  ‘This is all because of that bleeding book, isn’t it?’ said Tony.

  It still hadn’t been published, but it had already changed Bill’s life. Braun and Braun had asked him for another one, and the literary editors were asking for reviews and columns and anything they could think of to get him into their pages.

  ‘Yes,’ said Bill. ‘Of course it is. It turns out I can do something else. I don’t have to write for grannies in bloody Melton Mowbray.’

  ‘You’ve become one of that lot,’ said Tony.

  ‘Which “lot”?’

  ‘One of the Vernon Whitfields of this world. You think you have to write a book to be clever.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Bill. ‘Now he finds the fire in his belly. Where was all your revolutionary fervour when you came up with “The New Bathroom”?’

  They had reached the tube station.

  ‘Do you want a drink?’ said Bill.

  ‘June’s going out,’ said Tony. ‘I’ve got to look after the baby. And when I wake up tomorrow I’ve got to work out a way of supporting both of them.’

  Bill fished around in his pocket for some change and seemed to be trying to remember something.

  ‘ “… the writers are to be commended for addressing the problem head-on, and suggesting solutions that many couples will, regrettably, need to consider at some point in the future”,’ he said eventually.

  ‘That rings a bell,’ said Tony. ‘Oh, it’s the Times review. We’re the writers.’

  ‘Yes. Ironic, isn’t it?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There we are, commendably suggesting ways that couples can separate without fighting. And here we are fighting.’

  ‘Oh, Christ on a bike,’ said Tony.

  Tony’s peculiar romantic history meant that he had never broken up with a girl or a boy. He had never given anyone the push, and he’d never received it either. But he imagined it felt exactly like this: the sudden lurch in the stomach, the acute awareness of time and place and temperature, the terrible realization that this was it, there were to be no second chances or mind-changing or persuasion.

  ‘You coming?’ said Bill.

  ‘I’m just going to buy a paper,’ said Tony.

  ‘I’ll wait for you.’

  ‘Nah, don’t worry.’

  He didn’t want to have to make small talk with his oldest friend on the train while his world collapsed around him.

  Tony went back to see Dennis the next afternoon.

  ‘I’m sorry about yesterday,’ he said. ‘You know what he’s like.’

  ‘I hope you’ve come to tell me he’s changed his mind.’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ said Tony.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Dennis.

  The feeble, insecure part of Tony – the writing part, as he often thought of it – didn’t like the sound of that.

  ‘I’ve come to ask if you’d give me a crack at it on my own,’ he said.

  ‘Oh,’ said Dennis. ‘Oh. I see.’

  ‘We’re going to do different things for a while. Bill’s got his book coming out, and he wants to write another one, and …’

  Tony began to feel hot. Dennis’s hesitation was killing him. It hadn’t occurred to him that there would be anything less than immediate and grateful enthusiasm, even though Dennis had no idea who did what in the partnership. Tony wasn’t sure that he knew either. Bill was the clever one, but was cleverness important, or did it get in the way? And maybe it wasn’t true anyway that Bill was his intellectual superior; maybe those were the roles they’d somehow fallen into over the years. Bill read more than Tony did, that was true. But then, Tony didn’t read as much because he was always watching TV with June. Surely that had to count for something, his obsession with the medium, his conviction tha
t you could say anything you liked in situation comedy, as long as you remembered to include gags and characters, and wrote in ways that grannies in Melton Mowbray could understand?

  ‘Gosh,’ said Dennis. ‘That’s headline news.’

  But he still wasn’t offering him a job.

  ‘I could find somebody else to write with, if that’s any help,’ said Tony. This had just popped out, without him even thinking about it. ‘If you think I’m better, you know, with someone.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Dennis. ‘That might be interesting.’

  Tony felt a little stab of self-pity, and another little stab of betrayal. His pride was wounded too, presumably by a third stab.

  ‘I’m pretty sure I could have a go at it on my own, though,’ said Tony. ‘I’d like to, in fact.’

  ‘What happened to finding someone else to write with?’ said Dennis. ‘Because that was an idea you had quite recently.’

  ‘That was before I realized you thought I wasn’t up to it.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ said Dennis. ‘It’s not that at all.’

  ‘What is it, then?’

  ‘Sophie and I think that a woman should be involved.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Tony gloomily. ‘A woman. Well, there’s not much I can do about that.’

  ‘There’s not much you can do about being one,’ said Dennis. ‘But you could work with one, couldn’t you?’

  ‘Do you know anybody? There aren’t many of them. Or any that I’ve ever come across.’

  ‘Sophie has someone in mind. A girl called Diane.’

  ‘What’s she done?’

  ‘Nothing that’s actually been on the telly or the radio. She works for a magazine at the moment and she’s desperate to get out. But she’s been writing scripts and showing them to me. They’re different from yours, but I think she could be good.’

  What Tony thought was that he was too long in the tooth, too set in his ways, too recently bereaved by the death of his first partner, too weighed down by anxiety to coach someone who didn’t have a clue about scriptwriting. But – but! – he kept these thoughts to himself.