by Adam Carter
“So,” Sam said, folding her legs beneath her and curling up with her tea as though she was a cat, “to what do I owe the visit?”
“I couldn’t just drop in because I was passing, hon?”
“You could’ve, but if you had, you wouldn’t be wearing that face.”
“What face?”
“The one which says you’re in dire need of help.”
“Well, I suppose your mother has told you about me leaving my job.”
Sam’s eyes widened. “No,” she said, drawing out the vowel. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No.”
“Oh.” For a moment Sam was silent, her gaze and thoughts centred elsewhere. Then she shook her head clear of any such things and said, “Well, what are you doing now?” She took a sip of her tea. Sam did not take either milk or sugar, and seldom drank traditional English tea from China. She favoured those modern herbal ones which had come into fashion a number of years back.
“Waiting, mostly,” Corsac said.
“Waiting for that agent of yours, you mean?” Sam pulled a face. “Dad, you know I never much liked Crotcher.”
“He’s found me work before.”
“He stuck you in the comedy clubs when he couldn’t think of anything else to do with you, and he knew you always hated them. You ask me, he knew you’d be quitting soon and just stuck out with you for as long as possible so he could get paid that little bit more. To be honest, you’d be better off to be rid of him.”
“And hence the reason for my being here.”
Sam noted a quaver to his voice, and her father’s continually averted gaze spoke volumes to her also. She understood his meaning immediately, and considered the matter. “Well, I’ll do what I can, but I’m more into the music business, you know. I have contacts, sure enough, but they’re more on the lookout for, well ...”
“Younger people. It’s all right, Sam, you can say it. I’m just too old to be jumping back into the same old game.”
“Maybe,” Sam said, still thinking. “Maybe that’s true, actually.”
“Well, gee, thanks for that.”
“Hmm? Oh, don’t listen to me when I’m rambling. What I meant was that perhaps you shouldn’t even be trying to go back to what you used to do.”
“What else is there? I’m an old dog, Sam.”
“I might have something for you, but it’s not comedy. Or at least not comedy on the front of it, although it would take a comedian to be able to pull it off. Or usually does anyway.”
“You have something? How do you mean?”
“Something was mentioned to me the other day. Not offered me exactly, but mentioned. I didn’t exactly turn it down, although they knew it wasn’t really my thing.”
“What are we talking about here exactly?”
“Television.”
“Well, that was something H and I were discussing, although I certainly can’t see it happening to me.”
“I’m not talking about variety shows, Dad, I’m talking about something they always use ageing comedians for. Uh, no offence.”
Corsac smiled. “I am an ageing comedian, hon. If I can’t accept the truth, I’m not going to be able to do much except live in the past, and I think I’ve had just about enough of that now. Give me the details.”
“What would you think about doing a game show?”
Corsac winced. “Oh.”
“Don’t dismiss it out of hand, Dad. It could well be good for you. Just what you need, in fact.”
Corsac sighed. “Hit me with it.”
“Well, we’re not talking prime time of course. Lunches, probably every day. Not on one of the major channels, although it will be terrestrial, fortunately.”
“Whoa, old man in the room. Olde English please.”
Sam smiled and sipped her tea again. “It won’t be BBC1 or ITV, but will be one of the channels you can get without needing a Digibox.”
“So people will watch it, then?”
“That’s the idea.”
“Hmm, not too fond of it now.”
Sam laughed. “Dad, you’re incorrigible.”
“I try. I’m told it was my greatest trait on stage. What’s the show called?”
“Deadlock. Although I would have called it Screwed, but I can see why they didn’t. From what I understand, the idea is that there aren’t any actual questions, but that the longer the game progresses the more difficult it gets to actually win.”
“Tell me it has more than just the one contestant,” Corsac moaned.
“It has three, I think.” Sam frowned. “Might have been two, might change anyway. Look, just think it over. Give it a go, and if you don’t like it, forget it. Can’t hurt to audition anyway.”
“You know, I think for your mother’s sake I’m gonna have to take something soon, and at least this ... game show,” he winced as he forced the words out, “can’t be as bad as running the comedy clubs. Yeah, I think I’ll give this a go, Sam. As you say, it couldn’t hurt.”
“Well, that was certainly easy. I’ll get some details faxed over and go through them with you. Who knows, this might turn out to be a bold new direction for the both of us.”
Corsac shrugged. He did not hold out much hope that he would be accepted as the host anyway, although it was at least something he could tell Marie. It would perhaps raise her hopes, although at least it meant he was doing something, and this time even off his own back. He felt himself relaxing at last. He was far from having made it, but at least this was a start into something new. At least he was at last realising he would have to adapt in order to survive. And with Sam acting as his guide, he could not see how he could ever go wrong again.
CHAPTER NINE
The following months seemed to whiz past Corsac. He was aware of everything he was doing, although the passage of time seemed to become as nothing to him. He worked hard in practice for his audition, and when finally the date came he felt as nervous as he had when he had first stood up on stage all those years ago. He had left the audition believing he had given a mediocre performance, although Sam was there with encouraging support. “I always feel,” she had said, “that if I came out of an exam thinking I’d done well, I’d really messed it up, but that if I walked out thinking I’d done badly, I’d actually done really well.” The words did little to help Corsac’s anxiety, although finally did the call come through from his daughter and agent that the studio had accepted him as their new host.
It took a few moments to sink in, although when it did Corsac was happier than he had been in truly a long while. At last he could supply food for the table and at last could he look his wife in the eye. He had gone down a road he had not ever conceived possible, but it was perhaps a new direction that his life needed now anyway, and he was not about to cast aside the inflatable being thrust his way.
Over the next few weeks, Corsac met with the executives in charge of the entire business. He had known nothing about television beforehand, let alone game shows, and he was learning something new every day. Sam was around less and less now, for her work was done and the rest was down to him.
His two main points of contact at his new job were an executive and the floor manager for the show. He had yet to meet the floor manager, although had been told his level of contact with her was mainly before and during filming. The executive was his contact for whenever they were not filming. Corsac supposed this was the way things were usually done in television, although since he had seldom done it he had no real idea.
The executive of the company and director of the show, a man in his mid-forties named Herb Castle, was presently informing Corsac just what the show would entail. Castle was a large man who had given up on exercise a lifetime ago. He wore no glasses but tended to squint a lot. His voice was loud and intrusive, his laugh genuine and his appetite insatiable. He was far from jovial, although his seriousness had served him well in life, for one did not progress by playing games. Castle had worked hard his whole life and had become something be
cause of it. He was a man of vision, and of limitation, but he fully recognised that limitation. Corsac had known him for only a few minutes to ascertain this much, and he wondered what else he would be able to reason through their initial meeting.
They had retired to Castle’s office, where he had closed the door and supplied his new game show host with liberal amounts of coffee, and seemed intent on talking until his throat burst from the exertion.
“The problem with people today,” he was saying, “is that they don’t like to have to think. Slowly, over the years, these shows have been phasing out questions from their format. I remember when Blockbusters used to be popular, but, to be honest with you, we’re not going to see its like again. I’m amazed Mastermind and University Challenge have lasted, because most people tuning into those aren’t going to know any of the answers.”
Corsac stifled a comment about tuning in. It would have been his comedian self speaking if he pointed out that people didn’t have to tune in their sets any more, although he did not see it as a particularly beneficial thing to start poking fun at his new boss on the first day.
Castle continued. “Those two fill the niche for the intelligent viewers. Those who want to think. Those who would always do the cryptic clues for a crossword. In the nineties they tried to change the format of game shows. They weren’t working any more, they weren’t as big as they used to be. So they came up with Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? A stroke of genius, pure genius!” Castle’s mind seemed to drift off at this point and Corsac wondered briefly whether he had himself come up with the idea, or at least just thought he had. “It mixed the intelligent with the stupid,” Castle continued. “It began with questions even a simpleton could answer. ‘What fruit grows on an apple tree?’ or ‘Where would you expect a fireman to work?’” Castle grunted. “Stupid. But genius. The questions would get more difficult, so the simpletons could only guess, but they still had four options, and they knew that as soon as the contestant lost, you’d be back with the simple questions. Meanwhile the intelligent people watching it would be answering the later ones, and even struggling with them towards the end. Genius!
“Next they devised The Weakest Link. They put in even easier questions so anyone could watch it. Literally anyone. ‘What is your name?’ Give me strength! They’d throw in a few harder ones to make the game interesting, particularly in the final, but they seemed to make the programme just so people at home could laugh at the contestants. Which was liable to have been their intention. If we learned one thing from Jeremy Beadle it’s that the general public loves nothing better than to laugh at other people’s misfortune or stupidity. And, of course, they could always make special Weakest Link programmes with the best of the idiots, like they used to do with Family Fortunes when Les Dennis still did it.
“You’ll note something similar between those two programmes?”
Corsac blinked, unprepared for the question. “Uh ... they’re still going?”
“They’re still going! And going strong, man! The formats work. The more we ridicule, the more they’ll continue. People love them, they’re on prime time. Every day.”
“Like Deal.”
Castle nodded vigorously, draining a cup of coffee. “Deal was the progression. They seemed to ask themselves ‘What can we do to simplify the format even further? I know, let’s take away the questions completely.’”
“Save one,” Corsac said, in his best Noel Edmonds voice, “deal or no deal.”
Castle nodded once more. “Brilliant. They focus the attention upon the contestants, they’ve even published hardback books detailing precisely who every player was and how much they won. I mean, who cares about that? Clearly someone, otherwise they wouldn’t be making books like that.”
“Deal has an atmosphere.”
“The others tried to do that as well. Millionaire has that dramatic music, different music for when someone wins, someone crashes and burns, when we’re waiting for Chris to tell us whether the guy’s won or lost. They even released a CD of the music! And Weakest Link had atmosphere because of Ann Robinson. Same with Deal. If they didn’t get Noel to do it, would it work so well?”
“Noel doesn’t host it in every country.”
“True. But there’s something else about Deal. It brings good and evil to the game. The country verses the Banker. And Noel is our ally. He wants us to win, he tries to help us any way he can. He doesn’t know where the big money is, but in other countries the host would know precisely which box contained what. Strangely enough they’ve altered their formats to be more like ours, which just shows to go how good our one is.”
“I always like to see people lose on Deal.”
Castle shrugged. “You get people who watch it for that, I know. I like to see the smug ones lose, they really get on my nerves. Yay, Banker! You know, they did an end-of-year thing for oh six? Told you just how much money the show had given away in its first year, or, more specifically, how much the Banker had given away. Made him out to be the real villain, made it seem like a grand old victory. What they didn’t do was a tally of how much they’d won or lost over that year. For instance, when someone sells a ten-pence box for two grand, the Banker’s two grand out of pocket, but if it’s the other way around, he’s making money, or at least not letting it go. I reckon he wins more than the players ever do, and even if more players have beaten the Banker than have lost to him, I reckon the total money the Banker’s saved outweighs what he’s given out. Sure, he loses a couple of games here and there, and loses them big some of the time, but overall? I reckon he’s licking them.”
“It’s like poker, I suppose,” Corsac said. “Even an excellent player has bad days if the cards are against him, and it’s just a matter of damage control rather than trying to win a certain game.”
A light came to Castle’s eyes. “Ah, a poker player.”
“I try not to these days.” Corsac needed no reminder of his former gambling debts, because no matter how much of a good player he considered himself, he knew in his heart that there were always better players opposite him. It had always just taken him too long to figure that out. At least one hand too long.
“It should give you an insight into the contestants’ minds, though. I’ll tell you now, most people we get on these shows are grade-A thick. They’re the funny ones, the ones we can laugh at while watching at home. No one wants to turn on the TV and watch some science swot correctly answer all his questions about bio-genetics, but when someone comes on and is asked the question ‘How do you keep milk fresh?’, only to reply, ‘Keep it in the cow’, now that’s television worth watching.”
“So,” Corsac said, “what’s the show all about, then?” He had been given a brief run-down, had needed it in order to audition, although did not yet know all the ins and outs and was eager to get started.
“What have you been told so far?” Castle asked, pouring himself more coffee when he realised he had emptied his cup a few minutes earlier.
“Not a lot.”
“Well forget it. All of it.” He took a sip. “This show is yours, so make it your own. You listen to what other people tell you, and you lose your audience. People know you; they may not remember you, but once they start seeing you on the tube again they’ll point to the screen and say ‘isn’t that the guy who ...?’. Trust me, once the parents recognise you again and the kids warm to you, you’ll have the whole family watching.”
“How many of these succeed?” Corsac asked. “I’ve noticed a few game shows over the years hosted by comedians. Not sure if they were all arranged to kick-start a dying career, but how many of them actually make it back to the big time?”
“Big time’s what you make of it, I always say. Me? I’m not famous, never going to be. I make people famous, but I don’t get famous myself. Do I want to be?” He shrugged. “Don’t care really. I’m where the money’s at, and that’s all that’s important to me. Got a wife to look after and kids to put through college. You got kids, Jack?”
&
nbsp; “Uh, yeah.”
“Had to think about it there for a moment.”
“I have two. Both grown up now.”
“Fantastic. Best things in your life, kids. And the worst. God, the things I could tell you about my Sarah which ... but that’s beside the point.”
Despite his boorish attitude, his seeming addiction to coffee and his general inability to stop talking, Corsac was warming to Castle. He seemed a down-to-earth no-nonsense kind of man, and one whom he could learn to respect. He was also, apparently, very good at his job. He knew his place in life and didn’t try to be anything else. Corsac wondered whether he should himself adopt a similar principle and go back to the comedy clubs. Then he shuddered and promised himself he would avoid them so long as he was able. Which would, with any luck, be somewhere bordering the edge of forever.
“So,” Corsac said, shifting in his chair, finally comfortable with the entire situation, “what’s the programme about? You’ve told me why you’ve made it the way you have, but not what it actually is.”
Here Castle grinned. “We have questions, but it’s the same question in each round that gets answered, over and over again.”
Corsac blinked. “Uh, wouldn’t the contestants know the answer after the first time it’s asked? Ah, I see, it must be a really difficult question so they have to keep guessing? Like ... uh, what is the square root of pi to fifteen decimal places? That way you could last it out all through the show until someone gets it exactly right.”
Castle’s grin turned into a full laugh. “No. The questions will be something like: ‘Name an animal you might find in a zoo’ or ‘Name a colour’.”
Corsac blinked. Again. “No offence, but that sounds a tad silly. There’s having easy questions, and then there’s having easy questions.”