The Generation Game

by Sophie Duffy

  ‘Nervous?’ she whispers, bending down to kiss the top of his head, right on his (increasingly) bald spot.

  ‘A little,’ he lies.

  Wink, on the other hand, is in her element, her nerves quite gone, a captive audience plus the prospect of meeting Larry the next day. She is telling them all how Larry has remained a man of the people despite his success. How he still likes to eat fish and chips out of the newspaper – he even keeps salt and vinegar in the glove compartment of his white Rolls. Looking at her, sitting there on the plush dining chair, far away from her whiffy terrace, you’d never know she was ill, she blends in so well with this new world. She is a chameleon. She could be anyone. She could be Bob’s mother. She could be my grandmother.

  Wink sleeps like a baby that night, not that babies snore quite so loudly to my knowledge – which is limited. You’d think she’d be restless but nothing keeps her awake. She’d sleep through the storming of the Bastille, most probably. Or a Black Sabbath concert. Bob, on the other hand, looks terrible the next morning at breakfast and rejects the bounteous buffet on display to feast on black coffee alone.

  Bob is infected with a life-threatening fear that he will make an idiot of himself on television. He worries that his customers will come into the shop for ever after and remind him of his embarrassing moments. That Linda will see him in a new objective light and switch off his life support.

  ‘Why on earth did you bloody agree to be on the show if you’re so worried?’ Wink asks, a little unsympathetically. ‘It’s not Panorama. It’s meant to be embarrassing. We’re meant to copy the professionals and get it arse-over-wotsit.’ With that she swoops off in admirable fashion to get her hair done in the hotel salon.

  Linda offers to give Bob a massage. This suggestion perks him up somewhat and they disappear, quick as you like, into the depths of the lift. I am left alone with a boy called Raymond from Preston. He is the same age and height as me, which puts him into a whole new category of boys as all my male contemporaries back home only come up to my chin. This spurs me on to a moment of recklessness.

  ‘Do you want to come with me on the Underground?’ I ask.

  ‘Alright,’ Raymond says.

  Raymond hasn’t been on the Underground before, though he has seen the Changing of the Guard (and can also confirm that he didn’t so much as change a light bulb).

  Raymond is a boy of few words and those he does mumble are quite different to the ones I’ve grown up with. But we get by.

  We only travel a few stops, then we come back again (is this all I am destined to do here?) and surface into the busy morning of Londoners going about their focused business. We go halves on a Coke from a news stand. Raymond is quite happy to share the bottle and doesn’t even bother wiping the germs off the top – a strangely moving gesture, full of intimacy and awakening sexual tension.

  ‘C’mon,’ he says. ‘Let’s get back. Me mam’ll be wondering where I am by now.’

  Not only is he tall, he is considerate. Just my luck he lives hundreds of miles away, up north – and me, a West Country girl.

  We make our way to the hotel, bumping and dodging the crowds, early Christmas shoppers, secretaries and businessmen, two provincial almost-teenagers holding their own in the big city.

  ‘Your gran’s alright,’ he says as we turn the corner to the hotel. ‘Your dad looks dead nervous though.’

  ‘Yeah, he is,’ I agree. ‘What about your mum? Is she looking forward to the show?’

  ‘‘Course. She loves Larry. Thinks he’s the best thing ever. Wishes he were her dad, or summat.’

  ‘Doesn’t she have a dad?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Oh.’

  And I picture this nameless, faceless dad/granddad and wonder why he isn’t up to the mark. Why he isn’t here. It has been a long time since I’ve wondered about my own dad, now I’ve commandeered my own Bob-one. But I do get a quick flash of him hacking his way through the Amazon jungle with a white shock of hair and a beard like Methuselah.

  ‘What about your brother?’

  ‘Robbie?’

  ‘Is he worried about tomorrow?’

  ‘Nah, nowt worries Robbie.’

  I can believe this confident assertion. Robbie is much older than Raymond; he must be in his twenties, born when his mam was too young to be worrying about nappies. He swaggers around the hotel, eyeing up the receptionist and ‘anything in a skirt,’ according to Wink so I imagine being on the telly is the sort of thing he’ll take in his stride (swagger).

  ‘Robbie loves Isla. He reckons she’s — ’

  But I don’t get to hear what Isla is exactly, in Robbie’s expert opinion, because a red double-decker – I don’t even have time to make out the number – zooms past us at terrifyingly close quarters.

  ‘Bugger,’ says Raymond, using one of Wink’s favourite words, which goes to show we do share the same language after all. ‘That were close.’

  We slip into the hotel before either his ‘mam’ or my ‘dad’ has even noticed we’ve gone. Bob is presumably still having his massage. Raymond’s mam is propping up the bar along with her firstborn, Robbie, and the father/daughter combo from Littlehampton.

  ‘Bugger,’ says Raymond again. ‘I don’t think they should be doing that. Them researchers said they had to take it easy on the bevvies.’

  Call me selfish, but I feel a certain something when I see the red faces of Raymond’s family and the Littlehampton pair. At least my family will be sober.

  This can only stand them in good stead when it comes to the recording later this evening. It is the couple from Inverness I am worried about. They are inscrutable.

  The researchers are back in a different set of trendy clothes but with the same gusto. They are called Imogen and Amber, like characters from a Jilly Cooper novel, and both of them speak the way I remember Helena and Auntie Nina speaking. The way Helena would’ve made me speak if she’d stuck around to enhance my elocution. They encourage the contestants to overcome their butterflies and eat a ‘good lunch’ from the buffet in the dining room. They don’t practise what they preach, pecking at their sausage rolls like malnourished baby birds. Captain would have them for breakfast.

  Two hours later Linda and I are sat in the studio audience listening to the warm-up act, an extremely tall man with bendy legs and an annoying way of talking. Still, he does the job and we are now completely ready to be a fantastic audience – though those of us who have a loved one as a contestant are also all of a quiver. My stomach is crying out for a share of the packet of Rennie in Bob’s pocket, so I have no idea how he and Wink – my family – are feeling right now. They’ve spent this afternoon going through the schedule with Imogen and Amber and having make-up done (to Bob’s shame). There have been no rehearsals because the show’s success relies on spontaneity (or humiliation according to our cynical Linda).

  Are they really ready for this?

  There is a sudden change in the air. A wave of something or other, excitement most probably or the dispersing gas in Bob’s dodgy stomach. Anyway, every one of us in the audience is sitting up, hands clasped to the seat or leaning forward in expectation. We are in the presence of a light entertaining legend: Larry Grayson.

  Larry speaks to us in an unassuming way, as if he’s just walked into Bob’s News and asked for a quarter of sherbet pips. He talks about his imaginary friends Pop-it-in-Pete and Everard. We laugh and laugh because we are near hysteria at being in Larry’s confidence. Even Linda can’t help herself; she is now well and truly entranced by the world of Saturday Night Television.

  Larry goes on to introduce the charming Isla St Clare. Though not in Anthea’s league in the glamour stakes, Isla shines in her own wholesome, intelligent glow. Before they leave to prepare for the recording, Larry reminds us that we need to be a great audience so the people at home can enjoy the show even more when it is transmitted on Saturday night (maybe he knows there is trouble brewing here at the BBC and before long they’ll be lucky to get any
viewers at all). Not that we need any encouragement. As soon as the music starts, Linda and I go crazy, clapping till our hands hurt and whooping like wild things, (in a way that will be commonplace on the television of the future).

  Then my heart does a double-take. I feel a surge of worry for my Bob-Sugar, out there in the limelight, supporting his mother-in-law, the pressure of performing, the full horror of being watched by millions – though not half as many as in a year’s time when the Beeb’s trouble will pass to the Dark Side where there’ll be nothing but a blue screen with a white caption apologising for the lack of programmes.

  But still. This is now. No going back. This is it…

  …and it all passes in a dream-like, surreal-type, hazy-blur kind of thing. The next fifty-five minutes are condensed into but a fuzzy few moments…

  And 3-2-1, action.

  Cue opening number:

  Shut that door and en-joy The Generation Game

  What’s in store? The best of relations

  Here’s our aim.

  Larry Grayson is here to play so…

  Shut that door.

  Then… Larry in his cream suit and brown tie, Isla in her dress (nothing flash like Anthea, more girl-next-door). Larry: Let’s meet the eight who are going to generate. And there they are, paired up and perched on their chairs: the father/daughter combo from Littlehampton, Robbie and his mam from Preston, the Inscrutables from Inverness, Bob and Wink from Torquay. And soon it’s… Round 1: Littlehampton v. Inscrutables in ‘Ice that Cake’. The four contestants watch the professional at work, smoothing royal icing over a fruit cake with a perfect knife action and a flawless finish. Cue Robbie and his mam making a complete hash of it, Larry joining in, rolling his sleeves up and lending a helping hand and making even more of a pig’s ear of it in the process, the audience beside themselves. Meanwhile the Inscrutables from Inverness are almost as good as the professional. Larry (covered in icing): What are the scores on the doors, Isla? Isla: The names in the frames are Robbie and Beryl 4, Jackie and Donald, 9. And then, Round 2: Name that Dog where the four contestants battle it out again. Robbie and his mam know almost nothing about dogs, whereas the Inscrutables must have been dog breeders in a former life. They have streaked into the lead, guaranteeing themselves a place in the final. Robbie and his mam shrug it off light-heartedly, they are on the telly and will live off this night down the pub for some years to come, and Raymond is relieved not to have to sit through yet more embarrassment. So now it’s the father/daughter combo from Littlehampton v. Bob and Wink. Round 3: Yes, it’s pottery-throwing. Wink is full of confidence, you can see the spark in her eye, though I suspect her confidence is ill-founded judging by the effort above her gas fire at home. Bob – in his smart new suit – looks like he’s on the verge of fainting and Larry is doing his best to prop him up. The professional crafts the perfect pot and now the contestants are having a go, Larry joining in, getting covered in sludge-like clay, the audience shrieking. The father/daughter combo from Littlehampton make the usual lop-sided versions and the professional gives them each a respectable 6 out of 10. Bob’s creation looks like a drunk has tried to copy the leaning tower of Pisa. As Larry looks at it from all angles the tower suddenly leans dangerously and then keels over in a way that Larry can infuse with maximum innuendo. To counterbalance this amazing lack of skill, Wink’s creation is almost on a par with Clarice Cliff. It’s as if she’s been invested with special powers (maybe from mystic vibes generated from Wonder Woman sitting next to me, biting her nails). Wink scores a whopping 9 out of 10 and Bob, who could only realistically hope for a 4, earns an extra point for ‘trying so hard’. Then, Round 4: Name the Famous Baby. Bob finds his niche. Being a newsagent he has seen virtually all of these photos before and those he hasn’t, he makes accurate guesses at. They score full marks whilst the Littlehampton duo scores a dismal 5. Wink and her son-in-law are through to the final against the Inscrutables... not a play but a dance; this is going to be tricky as Wink must surely be tiring by now. Luckily it’s not a quick step but a slow tango, not with a partner but with a dummy. The Inscrutables perform the steps, demonstrated and judged by a celebrity from Come Dancing, in a perfectly good imitation, in time to the music but it has to be said with precision rather than passion. And it is this passion that carries Bob and Wink, carries them all the way, because it’s certainly not their timing or their grace or any sense of balance as at one stage Bob falls over on top of his dummy to the delight of Larry and the hilarity of the audience who have a clear favourite – as does the judge who, spurred on by Larry, gives our Bob and Wink the higher mark. That’s it. They’ve done it. They move, Wink and Bob, into position, one each side of Larry for the play-off, one question that will put the winner through, and of course the first to answer correctly is Wink, and it doesn’t matter whether Bob let her win or not, though it seems unlikely as Wink has that killer look in her eyes compared to the terror in Bob’s and so now there is one last hurdle to perform, one last dream to enact. We can’t believe this is actually happening! We are waiting for the futuristic, sparkly doors to mechanically pull back to reveal our very own Wink sitting behind them like a cashier at the Co-op. Her chance of a lifetime. The conveyor belt starts up, Larry standing to one side announcing the luxury goods that seem to whizz past at breakneck speed. All too quickly the buzzer goes, the objects are out of sight and Wink is left, under the spotlight, her face perfectly calm. Larry: You have forty-five seconds starting… now. And Wink reels them off, the pencil sharpener and the packet of Rizlas replaced by the bigger more expensive items that have been watched over all day by a security guard. Wink (to the accompaniment of the audience): Suitcases! Golf clubs! Radio Alarm Clock! Dinner service! Coffee percolator! Teasmaid! Electric blanket! Toaster! Canteen of cutlery! Basket of fruit! Champagne! A tiger! She doesn’t even use the opportunity to say ‘cuddly toy!’ on national television. She is above all that. She is Wink, TV star. She is our Wink.

  Once Bob’s make-up has been removed, he looks older and when he bends down to tie up his shoe lace, I notice his shiny patch has visibly grown. But Wink is a new woman. You’d think all the strain and excitement would be too much for her but tonight, when the after-show party has finished, snaps taken of the contestants with Larry and Isla, and the car has taken us back to the hotel, along with all the prizes, Wink walks straight-backed and with a skip in her step into the lobby where she orders nightcaps all round (except for the Inscrutables who’ve vanished, presumably back to Inverness, never to be seen again).

  It is only when we get home, back home to Torquay, that catastrophe comes looking for us.

  The next morning, Raymond and I share one last bottle of Coke.

  ‘We could be pen friends,’ I suggest, regretting it immediately as he looks like I’ve offered myself to him in marriage. His horror gradually dissipates after a slug of Coke and he manages to pull himself together.

  ‘Alright,’ he says.

  I hand him a beer mat procured as a souvenir while the barman is busy filling up the optics. He produces a pen (also procured with sleight of hand from the hotel reception desk) and scrawls his address. A street and a town that might as well be in a foreign country. That might as well be in Manitoba or Alberta or Inverness.

  And I write down my address for him. Bob’s News. My home.

  I am leaving London again, this time in a car. I’ve merely sniffed at all that lies in store in the capital; it has been snatched away too quickly from under my nose, for a second time.

  Wink is full of it, regaling yet more Larry Facts she’s gleaned from Amber and Imogen. How Larry was born out of wedlock. Put up for adoption. Brought up in a foster home. She looks at me as she is telling us all this, partly because I am the one stuck in the back of the car with her gammy leg on top of my lap. But I wonder if she is making comparisons with my life. After all, I was born out of wedlock too. Unfortunately there the similarity ends as I’ve never been put up for adoption. Where would I be now if I had? Not on my
way home from BBC Television Centre that’s for sure, so I should be grateful for my unofficial foster home (but I am almost a teenager and gratitude is not in my repertoire).

  Eventually Wink shuts up and I am able to sleep, the tiger in my arms, dreaming of a tall boy called Raymond. My pen pal. Another friend I’ve had to relinquish all too soon, as Linda’s Maxi speeds me away, back to the likes of Christopher Bennett and Terry Siney. Not that I’ve seen Terry in a long time though I’ve heard he is now known as T-J. However, something tells me we’ll be seeing something of Auntie Sheila in the not-too-distant future if she switches on her television set on Saturday evening.

  We arrive home to find Torquay in the midst of another power cut. Wink says I can keep the tiger in return for all my supportive shouting. She says she could pick my voice out from the audience and it had kept her going, which surprises me as Wink looked the picture of self-containment. But then you never know what’s going on inside someone else, as Wink’s always telling me.

  She also gives Bob and Linda the golf clubs (‘something for you to take up together, all that massaging can’t be healthy’) and the bottle of Champagne because it gives her heartburn something chronic. She tells us she is going to give the toaster to Miss Goddard who still makes do with a grill (someone should tell her the Japanese have surrendered) and Mr Taylor has earned himself the set of suitcases so he can take his proud wife and his knobbly knees on a second honeymoon. Christopher Bennett will get the digital alarm clock so he has no excuse for being late for his paper round. His time-keeping is shocking and Bob is possibly beginning to see through his flimsy veneer of Nice Young Man.

  This will leave Wink with enough luxury goods to keep her happy for a long time to come – though something about the way she is so keen to hand out the prizes makes me dread she hasn’t got as long as I’d like. Surely she isn’t trying to tell us something?

  The next morning we get a wake-up call, early, even before the paperboys arrive. Bob is still in his dressing gown as he lets himself out into the frosty morning where there is a commotion going on in the street. I am a deeper sleeper than Bob and it is only the sound of sirens that wake me up. In those first few seconds I try to calculate which emergency service it is. I am sure I’ll see an ambulance as I draw back the curtains, the Cavalier sneering at me before I yank him to one side. But it isn’t. It is the fire brigade, busy at work outside Wink’s house, where thick orange-black flames swarm around her bedroom window. I can almost kid myself I’m watching television but for the now unmistakeable crackle and smell of smoke and the heat I can feel as I push up the window, scanning the people outside… but there’s no sign of Wink. Wink, who can sleep through anything, even fire. Even fire!