'Look at this,' said Sharon, passing her iPad to me, opened at a website of a certain literary agency who shall be nameless. And although what follows is crass enough to fit like a glove it is not actually the website of the holy sainted, highly-principled Notso organisation. On their submissions page the anonymous agency had written: 'We are looking for extraordinary stories for children that reflect and celebrate the diversity of our world. We are not interested in stories about white able-bodied WW2 evacuees but would welcome that sort of story from a disabled, LGBTQ+ or BIPOC perspective.'
'What the effing eff is BIPOC when it's at home?'
'Well even Tessa had to look that up. Black, indigenous, and other people of colour.'
'Isn't that racist? Or at a push, reverse racist?'
'Well you'd think so. If you'd written we're not interested in black, gay or disabled stories…'
'Clown world.'
'Clown world,' concurred Sharon, raising her glass and taking an almighty swig. We were in The Bay Tree (where else?) and it was not yet midday, both of us seemingly seeking refuge from the insanity that had gripped the world and was particularly certifiable in the literary and theatre industry which we once both loved to distraction. 'If my dad were alive to see this…' she took the iPad back and scrolled through a few more pages. 'It doesn't seem to matter whether these people can write or not, it only matters that they are the right fit. Virtue signalling and art do not go together.'
Proprietress Miranda waddled past with some refills for the bar as we proceeded to moan. She had the kind of expression Napoleon might have worn after his disappointing holiday excursion to Moscow in 1812. Sharon, eager for any gossip that might lighten her day, asked her what's up.
'What's up?' repeated Miranda, nodding at the irritating TV screen behind the bar which currently displayed some soundless reporter outside 10 Downing Street. 'Downing Street hosting boozy parties while I was locked down and losing all my business, that's what's up!' She plonked her refills on the bar and took centre stage like Dame Sybil Thorndike about to deliver a monologue on the corruption of the realm, all the time waving at the idiot box in the background. There were only five of us in there but that didn't stop the stentorian sub-Shakespearean rant. 'ITV knew this back in May 2020, so why's it just coming out now? In January 2022? The fat, bloated dictator can't remember if he was there or not. Or declines to say. Depending on which report you are privy to.'
'He probably can't remember because the vile oaf was too pissed,' said a middle-aged woman nursing a glass of white wine and reading, I noticed, a print copy of The Guardian - eeek. Still, she loathes Boris Johnson so she couldn't be all bad. 'Put them all up against a wall and shoot them.'
'No, shooting's too good for them Claire (Claire was obviously a regular). Slowly garrot them with barbed wire.' Miranda took a deep breath before declaiming: 'And then cry: "God for Harry, for England and St. George!" because someone needs to come and save us from useless, toothless, thieves and brigands who have destroyed our bloody country!' She stood there as if waiting for a standing ovation. When none came she proceeded to replace her empty optics thereby signalling an end to the show and normal service was resumed.
'I have every sympathy,' said Sharon under her breath. It felt good to have Sharon as a comrade in arms once more and I said as much. 'I can't believe we ever fell out.'
'Lovers' tiff,' grinned Sharon, 'Without having to go through the messy business of actually being lovers.'
'That's the point of this whole bloody exercise though, isn't it?' I threw my arms open as if I was embracing the world. 'This whole bloody Covid bulshit has turned families against each other, broken up life-long friendships, marginalised people. I have friends - had friends - who have turned into absolute monsters because of this. Colleagues I've known for a lifetime who now define themselves as non-binary, just so that they're seen not to offend.’
'I had an enquiry from a theatre director last week wanting to cast a black non-binary actor as St. Joan in Shaw's play.'
'Oh, I bet that cheered you up.'
'I said I only represented male and female actors.'
'Oh man, they'll be after you. Goodbye SKA.'
'I don't care. Someone's got to stand up to these idiots. He was the artistic director of a theatre up in Lancashire. That's the industrial north of England, they're supposed to have common sense up there. It's not metrosexual arty-farty London.'
'Woke is more pervasive than a dose of clap running through a gay, touring dance company.'
'Anthony Eastwood, wash your mouth out with bleach!'
'Why?'
'You've just voiced a prejudice against a minority group.'
'Where's the prejudice? They're human beings with human needs!'
'You're saying gays are more likely to catch VD.'
'In my day that would have been a compliment! And actually, I'm not - '
'You're saying they're more promiscuous.'
'Again, in my day that was a merit badge. Look, on tour everyone's far more promiscuous.'
'Well you're a dinosaur from the pre-Aids era.'
'Okay, straight touring dance company. Does that satisfy your sensibilities?'
'Actually, I don't care. I'm just trying to save you from a lynching.'
'I think there's already a warrant out for that. Sarah Soper called me a misogynist last week and I told her not to use such long words.' Sharon looked at me as if she was losing her patience. 'It was a joke Sharon. Don't you know me by now?'
'Anyway, he took offence.' Sharon continued as if the last exchange hadn't taken place.
'Who took offence?'
'This theatre director up north. I told him my clients are all one of two genders. Either they're a double x or an xy.'
'I bet he loved you,'
'He had a home counties accent, which probably explained his wokery. I looked him up. Winchester and Oxford educated.'
'So did you put up a black actor for St. Joan?'
'Not immediately. I asked him if he would cast a white actor as Harriet Tubman.'
'What did he say?'
'He said: "Who's Harriet Tubman?"
'Oh dear.'
'I said "Come on Skye - " (yes his name really was Skye, maybe that gives you a clue) - '- you wouldn't really cast Tom Hanks as Harriet Tubman would you?" My reasoning being that if you can distort the colour of a character you can distort the gender.'
'Well, I guess you're off their Christmas Card list. '
'Chorley effing Library Theatre? Who cares? They play to two men and a dog up there. Let's get this straight, I've got nothing against a black actor playing St. Joan or bloody Hamlet except when it's virtue signalling and strangling bloody art. Art is neither democratic nor diplomatic. ' Sharon, by now seething goes back to scrolling through her iPad. 'Here's another bloody agent stating what type of literature they're after. "BIPOC, queer and minority groups are always the most welcome”. And another that says he is “specifically looking for work written by LGBTQIA + and/or BIPOC authors”. Don't worry if you can't string a sentence together, that's largely academic.'
'Nope , you just have to be - and I say this with such vehemence - a non binary person of colour with a disability. Forget about submitting a work of art that captures the imagination. That is so non-woke and yesterday.'
'Thank God I don't have to deal with writers. If Tessa took that attitude I'd ask her to leave.'
'The trouble is, the people who buy books are not stupid. Stupid people, on the whole, don't read. Reality TV and footie are for stupid people. So if a reader picks up a book in a bookshop by an unknown author from - perish the phrase - "an under-represented group", they're going to think it's been published because it ticks so many identity boxes, not because it's any good.'
'So chances are they won't buy it and thereby, in a few short years, the woke fanatics will have killed the publishing industry. Cool.' Sharon gave an ironic knowing nod to the insanity that was pervading our times.
'Bloody glad I'm in my twilight years.'
'Whatever. Being a hotelier in the Lake District looks like a suitable and alternative career right now. My sister's not going to manage it any longer.'
'You? Giving up all that money?'
'I don't care about the money. I'm beginning to hate half my clients. Look at Joe Bachelor. Huge Hollywood career about to take off. But I don't know what makes him tick anymore. Half of me hopes it's a time bomb. Here's a weird thing: did you know his new bit on the side was in "Eyes Wide Shut". One of the more scantily dressed artists.'
'That was twenty three years ago Sharon. Likely to be in her forties by now.'
'Well Bachelor's sixty bloody four.'
'Will you still need me, will you still feed me…'
'What?'
'Beatles. Sergeant Pepper. Never mind.'
'Thing is Ant, I can't pretend anymore. It goes against all my principles. Everything my dad taught me about being open and honest.'
'Seriously? Your dad was a closet gay for heaven knows how long.'
'Different times Ant. He was honest about what was important.'
'Define important.'
Touché. Well I can't lie easily. I thought I could, I have the actor's genes in me, but I can't.' She tapped her iPad. 'Presumably you're dealing with this sort of crap at Notso.'
'Oh sure, Kieran's doing virtue signalling as if it's going out of fashion. He doesn't want me to sign any more white middle class male writers. Not that I've seen many I want to take on. The other day I wanted to blow his brains out but then thought why bother, there's nothing there for him to lose. I'd commission someone to break him in half only I don't want two of them around. I'm dealing with art, I'm dealing with literature, it doesn't matter what colour or sexual orientation they are. I'm dealing with writers - of all ilks. I'm not representing aviators or emancipated slaves - unless they have written something on which they want my opinion. If my trade was aviators or emancipated slaves then I wouldn't care about writers, but it's not. Possibly because there's not that many emancipated slaves in Chislehurst where I live.'
'All that grief. And to think you only started at Notso to get to the bottom of the Pattie stuff - '
'Well, and to subsidise the Chardonnay.'
'Working with me could have subsidised the Chardonnay.'
'That discussion’s over. Been there, done that.'
'But you're no closer to finding out why they Kieran and Pattie were secretly meeting in her office just before she was killed -'
'Well, I say secret. They were breaking lockdown rules so they had every reason to be furtive. So was I actually, by kipping there the night…'
'Yes, but they couldn't stand each other. That's the point. Why were they meeting?Furtive or otherwise doesn't come into it. Surely you're not forgetting these things Ant? Not losing the plot are you?'
'Ho ho ho. There may be certain bits of me which don't work anymore, but I haven't got dementia just yet.'
'So what happened with Mary Barton?'
'Is that a dig? You know full well I didn't go because she was arrested.'
'Oh yes, it skipped my mind.' Sharon with all the phoney innocence of a child who's let your tyres down. 'Our seventy three year old microbiologist has been sticking it to the fuzz.' She pronounced the word 'fuzz' as if it were some ancient relic she'd extricated for posterity, not without some mischievousness. I think it was a dig at people of Mary's and my age since the pejorative for police in the 'Swinging Sixties’ was 'fuzz'.
'Not exactly sticking it to the fuzz. She got nicked for a Tweet that someone complained about.'
'That stopped you going up there?'
'They held her overnight the sadistic bastards. I mean a seventy three year old woman. A potential terrorist and danger to society. What the police lack in intelligence and common sense they make up for in petty spitefulness.'
'What was the Tweet?'
'It was asking whether Jonathan Ripple, MP for Churley Valley in South Yorkshire, was part of an organisation called Sod the Ragged Arseholes. Though she spelt it Assholes, as in the American way. Apparently one of his constituents complained.'
'What's offensive about that?'
'I don't suppose Plod had any idea. They don't arrest people for crimes anymore. They arrest people because they fancy it. A kid carrying a Teddy Bear down the street could be construed as offensive these days.'
'So what the hell is "Sod the Ragged Assholes" when it's at home?'
'I don't have a clue. Mary said in her Tweet that Ripple would know exactly what she was referring to.'
'Has it got anything to do with why she wants to see you?''
'I dunno, I'll find out if and when I finally get up there.'
Well, hold on a minute now, I feel like this particular entry was written just for me. I feel so seen!! I tip my hat to you, this is precisely what everyone in out business needs to hear so they can just stop with their performative bat shit crazy nonsense. Also, I laughed OUT LOUD on several occasions. This was quite funny. So so good. You have a way at delivering a punch line and then let it simmer and really sink. As they say, it’s the fish in the air that sells it so well.