by R. A. Spratt
When they got to the television station they easily got past the guard at the front gate. Nanny Piggins simply rolled down the window of Mr Green’s Rolls-Royce and screamed, ‘Let me in!’ She did this with such venom and entitlement that the guard naturally assumed she was a major television celebrity and did as he was told.
Once inside, they headed straight for the building with The Young and the Irritable written in large letters across the top and huge banners hung from the roof to the ground, featuring the faces of the lead characters, either glowering or beaming out at you (according to whether they were good or evil).
Nanny Piggins pulled up in front. ‘I’ll admit, children, I’m torn. While I know it is my duty as a television viewer to give these television producers a stern talking to, I am overwhelmed by a feeling of awe and respect for such a hallowed and important place.’
‘It’s like walking into a cathedral,’ agreed Boris.
‘Or a supermarket with a two-for-one special on family-sized bars of chocolate,’ agreed Nanny Piggins.
But, nevertheless, Nanny Piggins summoned her courage and marched into the building. She had to kick in very few doors before she found the executive in charge. (It is easy to identify a television executive: he will be the one wearing cowboy boots and inappropriately propping them up on the table during meetings.)
‘I demand you return The Young and the Irritable to the air immediately,’ she declared.
‘We want to. We lose $500,000 for every day we can’t deliver an episode. But there’s nothing we can do, the writers are on strike,’ complained the television executive.
‘Why are the writers on strike?’ asked Nanny Piggins shrewdly.
‘You know writers, all they ever want is more money,’ said the television executive shiftily.
‘Boris, hold my handbag. I think I am going to have to bite this man. I can tell he isn’t telling the truth by the way his eyes dart around furtively, just like Vincent in the episode where he was caught putting a bomb in Manuella’s sewing machine,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘All right, all right,’ said the television executive who was, like all bullies, a terrible coward. ‘Maybe they went on strike because we needed money for the executive polo luncheon, so we sold all their desks and chairs and made them work on the floor of a disused shipping container in the car park.’
‘That sounds tremendously uncomfortable,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘Yes, in hindsight, we probably should have had a window put in and air conditioning installed,’ admitted the television executive. ‘I think it was the lack of natural light and the 45 degree-plus temperatures, as well as being crowded in a tiny space with 20 other writers that finally made them crack.’
‘You must get them back,’ cried Nanny Piggins.
‘We tried to. But they’ve been snapped up,’ said the executive producer.
‘By another television show?’ asked Nanny Piggins.
‘No, by a cleaning company that specialises in public toilets. Apparently the hours and working conditions are much better,’ said the executive glumly, ‘and it requires much the same skill set.’
‘Then hire new writers,’ demanded Nanny Piggins.
‘The problem with that idea is that we can’t find any writers who have ever watched the show. And the plots are so complicated, it would take them weeks to catch up on the backstory,’ said the executive producer.
‘Nanny Piggins knows all the backstory,’ said Michael.
‘You do?’ asked the executive.
‘Oh yes, I’ve watched every episode since I was a newborn piglet,’ informed Nanny Piggins. ‘And mother always made us watch the re-runs of the early episodes because she said it was important to study the classics.’
‘Do you want a job writing for the show?’ asked the executive.
‘Surely you need someone with professional experience?’ said Samantha.
‘Nah,’ said the executive producer. ‘Writing a script is just like talking, except that instead of saying the words you write them down.’
‘There must be more to it than that?’ said Derrick.
‘Have you ever watched the show?’ asked the executive producer.
‘Well, I don’t know, we do have plans for this afternoon,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘We can dress up as pirates and ransack Mrs Simpson’s mulberry tree tomorrow,’ suggested Derrick.
‘All right, I’ll do it. I do have a few ideas,’ admitted Nanny Piggins.
And so Nanny Piggins set to work. The executive tried ushering her into the writing room (the shipping container in the car park), but Nanny Piggins convinced him it would be a better idea if he gave up his palatial corner office and let her work there (there was a certain amount of foot stomping involved in the convincing).
She was soon tapping away at a typewriter. Nanny Piggins did not use a computer. She did not think it made a loud enough noise. With a typewriter you really get a sense you are making progress because of the ding it makes at the end of each line.
Boris and the children were busy too. It was their job to fetch cake – and act out scenes when Nanny Piggins was trying to work out who should be staring meaningfully off camera with a hurt expression on their face and who should be grinning wickedly and twirling his moustache. This was almost always Vincent, although occasionally Sabrina as well.
There was a knock at the door.
‘How are you going with the script, Nanny Piggins?’ asked the executive producer. (She had banned him from her writing room because she said the smell of his hair dye put her off what she was writing.)
‘Huh,’ said Nanny Piggins, which is what she said when she did not want to distract her brain with trying to think up words.
‘It’s just that the actors are arriving for the read-through, and when we get them to read the back of cereal packets instead of scripts, they notice and complain to their agents,’ said the executive producer.
At that very moment Nanny Piggins slapped the carriage of the typewriter across, giving one final ‘ding’.
‘All done,’ she announced.
‘What happens?’ asked Samantha. ‘Does Dante learn to speak again and tell Isabella that he loves her?’
‘Does Crevasse climb out of the well and tell Sienna that he loves her?’ asked Michael.
‘Does Elizabetta recover from the snake bite that she got when Bridge put a cobra in Dyson’s bed, because he thought he was having an affair with Bethany?’ asked Derrick.
‘And do I need to go and buy another box of tissues?’ asked Boris.
‘Yes, to all your questions!’ announced Nanny Piggins, ‘and a whole lot more.’
After photocopying the script, Nanny Piggins, Boris and the children went down to the rehearsal room. The actors were sitting at tables arranged in a horseshoe shape. Nanny Piggins took her place at the head of the horseshoe, while the script assistant (a young woman who Nanny Piggins had largely employed to scour the city looking for more sherbet flying saucers) passed out the scripts.
‘Shall we begin?’ said Nanny Piggins confidently.
‘There are an awful lot of lines saying, ‘Mmmfff om-mmm-m-m,’ noticed the actor who played Crevasse as he scanned through the script.
‘Yes,’ agreed Nanny Piggins. ‘That’s because that is the noise you make when you eat cake.’
‘I don’t make that noise when I eat cake,’ contradicted the elegant actress who played Sabrina.
‘Then you have never eaten a truly delicious cake,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘Here, I’ll give you some. I happen to have a slice of caramel-coated angel cake that I whipped up this morning.’ Nanny Piggins fished the slice out of her handbag. There was some lint and old cough lollies from the bottom of her handbag stuck to the toffee icing. Nanny Piggins just picked them off and handed it to the actress.
The actress looked disgusted. But she had a large mortgage and did not want to offend the only remaining writer on her show, so she took a bite. ‘Mmmfff-om-mmm-m-m,’ sa
id the actress.
Nanny Piggins smiled, ‘Good, isn’t it?’
‘Do you have more?’ asked the actress as she gobbled down the entire slice.
‘Oh yes,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I never leave the house without basic supplies. Michael, would you mind running out to the car and bringing in two dozen, no, better make it four dozen cakes?’
‘Sure,’ said Michael, running from the room.
‘Today I’d like you to try method acting,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘What’s method acting?’ Samantha whispered to Boris.
‘It’s kind of the opposite of what you think acting should be,’ explained Boris. ‘Instead of pretending to do something, a method actor actually does it. So if a part required them to act like they were jumping off a cliff, a method actor would actually jump off a cliff.’
‘Really?’ said Samantha, not truly understanding. ‘And is this a popular style of acting?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Boris, ‘with actors who don’t like to act.’
‘Since there is so much cake-eating in the script, I want you all to eat cake while you’re reading your lines,’ instructed Nanny Piggins.
‘But won’t we get fat?’ protested a young slim beautiful actress.
‘Probably,’ conceded Nanny Piggins, ‘but that is a good thing. Then you’ll be able to take up more space on the TV screens and you’ll be even more famous.’
And so the read-through progressed. The actors ended up having a wonderful time, because Nanny Piggins let them improvise. She did not mind if they said, ‘Mmmm-mmm-mm’, ‘Aawwww-mmm-yum’ or ‘nyumnyum-mm-mm-mmmm’ when their characters were eating cake.
And the cake-eating really added to the exciting bits. Screaming ‘I’d die before I married you!’ or ‘She’s not your baby, her real father is Enrico the Bolivian polo player!’ is even more dramatic if you spray cake everywhere while you’re doing it.
The network executives were so excited to get The Young and the Irritable back on air that they decided to make the first episode back a live episode – that way they would not have to waste time on editing the footage. And they could start earning advertising revenue again more quickly. The only problem was that in live TV, if anyone makes a mistake or accidentally rips another actor’s wig off, then that gets broadcast live. Live TV is like a sporting event: there are no do-overs, which is nerve-racking for the actors. Fortunately it is not hard to learn a script when over fifty per cent of the lines are just eating noises.
On the day of the shoot, the Slimbridge Cake Factory sent over their biggest truck full of cake so there would be ample supplies to get the actors through the recording session. The actor who played Crevasse had become so good at dramatically spitting cake while proposing to women that he went through a whole chocolate mud cake in every scene.
The Slimbridge Cake Factory promised an unlimited supply of free samples on the condition that Buff Snr mentioned their products three times while proposing to the woman dressed up as a man pretending to be his pool cleaner (Sabrina’s rival).
Everything was going swimmingly well until suddenly the costume designer came screaming out of Sabrina’s dressing-room.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘Is Buff Jnr trying to wear a blue shirt with a green tie again? If he is you can give him a short sharp bite on the leg and say it is from me.’
‘No, much worse,’ said the costume lady.
‘Worse than wearing clashing colours?’ asked Boris. ‘Then it must be something very bad.’
‘Sabrina’s run off,’ wailed the costume designer.
‘Yes, with the pool cleaner in scene seven,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I know. I wrote it.’
‘No, the actress who plays Sabrina has run off. She left a note,’ said the costume lady waving a cake-smeared letter at Nanny Piggins. ‘She has run off with the truck driver from the Slimbridge Cake Factory.’
Nanny Piggins could not be angry. ‘A very wise woman,’ she said. ‘Earning millions of dollars as a glamorous actress is one thing. But a man with access to entire truckloads of baked goods – that is too good to pass up.’
‘It’s like winning the lottery and marrying Prince Charming on the same day,’ agreed Boris.
‘Plus she can spend the rest of her life living in the cab of a truck. Think how wonderful and glamorous that will be,’ agreed Nanny Piggins.
‘But what are we going to do?’ exclaimed the producer. ‘We start recording in an hour and there is no-one to play our lead vixen.’
‘There must be another option,’ muttered Nanny Piggins.
‘Beautiful glamorous women who can act brilliantly and consume vast amounts of cake don’t just grow on trees, you know,’ complained the executive.
‘I know where we can find one,’ said Michael.
‘You do?’ said Nanny Piggins and the executive.
‘Nanny Piggins!’ exclaimed Michael. ‘She’s beautiful and glamorous, she can eat cake better than anyone else in the whole world and when she performed Hamlet last year she was brilliant.’
‘It’s true,’ agreed Boris. ‘When Nanny Piggins performs Shakespeare she does it so well you can understand one in three words, which is a lot more than I can usually follow.’
‘But do you know the lines?’ asked the producer.
‘Pish! I don’t need to learn the lines,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘I’m the writer. If I can’t remember what to say, I’ll just make something up.’
‘But what about the other actors?’ asked Samantha. ‘How will they know what to say if you’re just making things up?’
‘Half their lines are just eating noises,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘so that shouldn’t be a problem. And then if they start to say something that doesn’t fit with what I want to say I’ll just slap them hard in the face.’
‘That seems a little harsh,’ said Derrick.
‘Oh no, they’re soap opera actors, so they’ll be used to it,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘People in soap operas get slapped all the time.’
‘What if someone tries to slap you?’ asked Michael.
Nanny Piggins scoffed. ‘I’d like to see them try.’
‘But if you’re playing the lead role, when will you have time to write the scripts?’ asked the executive.
‘Oh, I can write those in next to no time now,’ explained Nanny Piggins. ‘Once I put in all the mmm-m-mmm noises, and the chomping sounds and the cutaways of people looking longingly at cake, there is barely any space left for actual dialogue. A sentence here and a sentence there and it’s done.’
‘All right, you can go on for Sabrina,’ said the executive. ‘I suppose we’ll have to make some kind of announcement letting the audience know that a new actress will be playing the part.’
Nanny Piggins just laughed. ‘Don’t worry about that. I am good enough at acting so that no-one will notice the change.’
‘But you’re two feet shorter than her,’ protested the executive, ‘and a pig!’
‘What’s your point?’ asked Nanny Piggins.
‘She really is that good,’ said Derrick.
‘You might as well trust her to pull it off,’ said Samantha. ‘She usually does pull off everything she tries.’
And so Nanny Piggins played Sabrina and, naturally, she was brilliant in the part. The scene where she brought Granite out of a coma by shoving cake crumbs in his mouth made everyone cry. The scene where she put him back in a coma by shoving poisoned cake crumbs in his mouth made everyone angry. And the scene where she fled Vincent’s amorous advances and takeover bid of her lawn-mowing empire by blasting herself out of a cannon and onto a yacht five miles out to sea was a brilliant finale.
When the floor manager called, ‘Clear! We’re on an ad break,’ the crew spontaneously burst into applause. Academy Awards were not usually given to daytime soap opera actors, but they thought there was a very good chance they would rewrite the rules in this instance.
‘You’re doing really well, Nanny Piggins,’ said Samanth
a encouragingly.
‘I know,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘but I think I could do more with the part.’
‘What did you have in mind?’ asked Michael.
‘Pass me that script,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I’m going to make a few adjustments.’
‘But you can’t change the script now, the other actors won’t have time to learn their new lines,’ protested Derrick.
‘You’re right,’ agreed Nanny Piggins. ‘I’ll just have to cut their lines.’ With which she took out a big blue felt-tip pen and started doing a lot of crossing out.
‘Ten seconds and we’re back from the ad break,’ called the floor manager.
‘Perfect,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘All done.’
What followed was the most spectacular episode of daytime television ever. In just thirty minutes, Nanny Piggins’ character got married and divorced three times. And married and widowed twice (both times to the same man). She was kidnapped, unkidnapped and lost at sea; possessed by a poltergeist and forced to work in a travelling circus as a flying pig. (Nanny Piggins thought it would be nice to add an autobiographical touch.)
The other actors were in a state of shock. Fortunately they had so much cake in their mouths that they just had to say ‘Mmmbff’ whenever Nanny Piggins proposed to them, accepted their proposal or announced that they only had three minutes to live.
When the end credits rolled the actors and crew alike slumped down, exhausted from the emotional roller-coaster.
‘Nanny Piggins, I’m afraid we’re going to have to let you go,’ said the executive producer.
‘But why? I thought the show was better than ever,’ protested Nanny Piggins.
‘For a start, we’re concerned our viewers will develop type 2 diabetes, because watching this show will make them want to eat so much cake. Secondly you’ve just burnt through five years’ worth of plot in one episode,’ explained the executive.
‘It was a good episode though, wasn’t it?’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘Yes,’ agreed the producer, ‘but frankly, we’re more comfortable making mediocre episodes. It’s what we’re good at.’
And so Nanny Piggins retired from her career as a television writer. As a severance package, the studio arranged for her to be driven home in a fully stocked truck from the Slimbridge Cake Factory. They expected her to ride up front in the cab, but Nanny Piggins had them open the back doors so she could dive head first into the jam rolls and teacakes, then instructed the driver to drive slowly. The children and Boris joined her as soon as she had eaten enough cake to make room.