2nd June 2021

Standing in the Dock at Southampton…

Eight staff in today, that's nine counting Ms. Terrified on the desk who still recoils from a morning wave as if my hand were a viper's tongue wanting to kiss her muzzled lips. Eight! Have to be careful, Health and Safety will want to do us for overcrowding. Tina Parrish has even had the temerity to walk around with a naked face which would, when she's not working, apparently put her visage more on an equal standing with the rest of her body. Tina works with most of our reality TV clients (I refuse to use the word 'star'.) She shagged all the blokes on the last series of 'Love Island', rating them in order of their 'six packs', So passé if you ask me. Even so I applaud her for her daring, only to be disappointed when she tells me the mask has given her a rash on her lower lip and she'll go back to full wilful compliance once it's cleared up. I wondered if that was the explanation for her - alleged - lack of underwear and whether she has problems on those lips too. I utter a grunt of disapproval at her willingness to return to a state of voluntary captivity.  'We have to follow the science Anthony, and science says masks work.'  I wanted to say to her that knickers work too, but it would imply that I was privy to privileged information. And in any case masks don't work. Science doesn't say so at all Tina, you moron with two brain cells. It really is a miracle that you found your way out of the birth canal. You make Sarah look like she has a mind of conspicuous perspicacity. 

Kieran's secretary, Hilary, is at the coffee machine mumbling through her cloth of dancing children that Kieran told her on the phone this morning that his wife is filing for divorce.  

'Really?'  I'm quite shocked. Mandy seems like the devoted type.

'Yes. Apparently Kieran was doing some online banking last night and Mandy asked him to check her balance. It wasn't very good. He pushed her and she fell over. She's suing him for assault. '

Silence. I really had no idea how to respond to that. Eventually: 'Was that you or Kieran?' Kieran's always making schoolboy jokes. I couldn't tell by her expression whether she was culpable because I couldn't see an expression. 

'All my own work,' she said, removing her mask as if on cue, thereby rendering the whole face nappy thing meaningless. 

'Don't give up the day job then. And get some lessons on comic timing. ' She smiled directly at me, blue eyes dancing on a milk chocolate face, not an ounce of offence taken. 

'Yes sir massah,' she said teasingly. And that's her taking the piss out of me, not me peddling some racist stereotype. So all you woke terrorists can get off my back.

'Kieran's a joker, you do know that by now?'

'I think I do know that by now,' she said with a condescending look which said she knew a lot more besides. 'Even if I haven't been here that long I've heard the stories. But that was my own little effort. Actually, I understand that Kieran's and Alison's relationship couldn't be more stable.' 

Hmm, I'm doubting that. Or if it is then it must be one of those unions where nothing upsets the equilibrium since Kieran, all tousled blonde hair and puppy dog looks combined with a healthy bon-viveur's girth (not unlike a certain prime minister) is, like Henry Heinz, given to about fifty seven types of varieties and enjoys a certain liberty in his liaisons. His appeal is as much a mystery as his uselessness is evident (also like a certain prime minister - on both counts) but Kieran sails through life, letting it do with him what it will.

Hilary was an attractive, no-nonsense assistant manager at the Dos Hermanos bar in Earlham Street where Kieran did a lot of his wheeling and dealing.  One night after Hilary had been suitably impressed that Kieran was holding court with no less than Nicole Kidman, Peter Dinklage and Jeff Goldblum in one sitting (it must have been a height project: the long, the short and the tall?) Kieran took her home - her place - and in the midst of some delectable posture from the Kama Sutra (or Porn Hub)  offered her a job doubling her money. Since Hilary knows as much about show business as I do about the Japanese Tea Ceremony I'm assuming his motive was not so much philanthropic as carnal. (This was back in January but I can't see that being the same month as me seeing Kieran in Pattie's office as anything but coincidence.) Accordingly, today, if Hilary goes into Kieran's office and the blinds are pulled down people enter on pain of death.

Hilary smiled at me, still holding her mask rather than wearing it. I think she likes me and I want her to, because I might need her to help me win Kieran's trust and conviviality. My sarcasm and general rebellious comments in this straight set-up which is a supporter of the established narrative probably grate on Kieran's teeth. Hils told me she looked up my CV when she heard I was joining Notso as a senior partner and was quite encouraged to learn of a certain louche reputation I had obtained as a young actor. Maybe she thought we were kindred spirits.

'Kieran's in Liverpool by the way. I know you wanted a chat about Martin Spangler.' Hilary stirring milk into her coffee.

'Again?'

'The show's had another hitch.'

'Now what?'

'John and Yoko have run off.

'Isn't that what they're supposed to do?'

'What?'

'Trying to get to Holland or France.'

'How do you know? We'd better tell Kieran. Bit drastic to want to leave the country.'

'You know they didn't even give them a chance.'

'Who didn't? Management has even delayed the opening by two weeks.'

'Christ you know it ain't easy.'

'What's not easy?'

'You know how hard it can be.' 

I think she thought I was talking in riddles. 'Yes, I know it can be hard putting on a show. I haven't been in the business that long and I don't know the ins-and-outs up there in Liverpool Anthony, but I do know they've trouble at t'mill. And Kieran said the way things are going they're going to crucify him.' 

I chuckled. Two hundred and twenty miles north and Kieran gets the joke too.

'What's so funny?' Hilary frustrated, she knows she's missing something. I sang, in order to give her a clue:

'The way things are going, they're going to crucify me.' And then added as she stared at me like a guppy fish gasping for air: 'It's one of his jokes Hilary. What were we just saying about Kieran being a joker? 

'I can't see that there's anything funny about being crucified.'

'I dunno. Always look on the bright side of life.' I sang again and then whistled a bit hoping to remind her of Brian, but she still didn't get it.

'How can you be so callous? It's Kieran's money and if the critics crucify him it won't come into town and - '

I sometimes think cultural references are wasted on anyone under the age of forty. 'He's punning on the Beatles' lyrics Hilary!'

Pause, while the penny drops. And then Hilary, all business-like, as if she's tired of two schoolboys making in-jokes: 'Well I'm glad he's just punning. I wouldn't want it to be anything serious. I'm thirty two, how am I supposed to know anything about Beatles' lyrics?'

She had a point, although Kieran was only thirty five. On the other hand not everyone has such a devoted Beatles' fan for a father. By the time he was eleven and his dad had sent him off to that posh boarding school, Kieran knew practically all The Beatles' back catalogue. He's been obsessed with them ever since. Like father, like son. Which is probably why he has an instinct for this show. But why I thought a thirty-something from St. Lucia would get the joke I've no idea. Perhaps I should lighten the mood with a Bob Marley lyric to show my cultural erudition but then thought better of it. Marley was from Jamaica after all and, for all I knew, there was as much kindred spirit between Jamaicans and St. Lucians as there was between the Welsh and the English.

'Kieran lived just off Penny Lane when he was studying at Liverpool University,' I said, as if continuing to explain his obsessiveness. 

Another blank look.

I sang a line about a barber's shop showing photographs and then thought I was milking it too much.You can't help it. When you get going it's very hard to stop.  Every actor/performer/comic needs to learn to leave the audience wanting more. Instead I provided an anecdote to illustrate Kieran's schoolboy sense of humour.

'He's known for his joking about in this business. He once paid a Marilyn Monroe look alike to jump out of a cake and sing Happy Birthday Mr, President at a party for the Society of Authors' President, Patrick Flannery, hosted by Pattie. Unfortunately Flannery, who had just won the Booker and was twenty five sheets to the wind, took 'Marilyn's' come on literally and ended up in a knee trembler with her outside the loading bay of the Cafe Royal.'

'Why unfortunately?

'Because Pattie and Flannery were having a thing at the time and she was none too pleased to catch them in flagrante delicto when she'd nipped out to take a call from Spielberg wanting to turn Flannery's Booker into a screenplay and thereby netting "Mr. President" a cool million dollars.'

'I thought Kieran and her didn't get on,' said Hilary, apparently ignoring the irony of Flannery fiddling (knee trembling) while Pattie burned (out). 

'They haven't since then and that was about twelve years ago when Kieran was getting started. Pattie always thought he was too cock sure.' Which begs the question, therefore, as to why they were having an assignation in Pattie's offices at midnight back in January? Although now's not the time and place. So instead:

'So why is the show in Liverpool in trouble?'

'I told you. John and Yoko have done a runner. They've walked out. '

'For why?'

'They're protesting because one of the male stage stage crew is making a thing about the right to use the women's toilets. Usual boring transgender stuff.'

'What a stage hand. In Liverpool? A bloke?'

'Yes.'

'A Liverpudlian, salt of the earth, with visits to Anfield or Goodison Park every Saturday as though they were religious pilgrimages? That sort of stagehand?'

'Well they wouldn't be going to a football match if the show played Saturday matinees.'

Hilary missing the point by turning my sarcastic lyricism into logic.

'A hairy-arsed, bandy-legged sort of bloke with a propensity for passing wind in the most audible fashion whilst dropping his false teeth down a blocked urinal after ten pints of heavy? That sort of stage hand?'

'Bit too much detail, but along those lines.'

'A bloke who hails from from the birthplace of that working class hero who's something to be, one John Lennon, with a guttural accent so broad that it could you eat you for breakfast along with two kilograms of black pudding, and who has biceps so profound and big that he's had a copy of the sistine chapel tattooed on them. That sort of stagehand?

'I guess.'

'Pigs do fly then.'

'I'm not sure he's from Liverpool. I think someone said he might be Dutch.

'Well that explains it then.'

'He - sorry they - want the union brought in. They're slagging off those who don't want unisex toilets.

'Which I guess will be most of the women. Look, I'm all for people being who they want to be - we live in a make believe world after all.  But if you currently possess a prostate and a penis I think you should take one on the chin for tradition, suck it up and use men's waste disposal technology, And let the women's toilet be used by, you know, women. In other words, put up or shut up. I didn't want curly hair when I was a kid but I didn't make a song and dance about it, I didn't start slagging off people who weren't curly and nor did I demand mine was straightened. I got on with it.'

'Times have changed.'

'I know, the perverts didn't sexualise five year olds either when I was younger. He wants to get a life, this Dutch bloke or wherever he's from.'

'They!'

We both turned in the corridor to the distant voice.

'What?'

'They want to get a life - ' Sarah had sauntered down the corridor from her office, ears at the ready as per normal. Clearly she intends to combat my allergy to virtue signalling. With this ridiculous masking being so pervasive it's been so long since I saw her face I'm wondering if her teeth really do protrude as much as I remember, like St. Jacinda of Ardern, or whether I'm just tarring her with the same brush. Hilary replaced her mask as if in deference to Sarah so that her Carribean children were once again limbo-dancing across her fulsome lips. I'm not so over fond of anyone being deferential to Sarah.

'Did you say something?' I asked, addressing my actual boss as if she was an uppity servant from downstairs who didn't know her place.

'If they've got gender identity issues it's not he, it's they.'

'He! You can stick your non-binary proclamations up your back passage. He's a perv with a prostate and a penis.' 

'You don't know whether they've got either.'

I ignored this. 'Gone are the days of noble industrial disputes, the ship builders against the owners, the miners against the government, the print against Murdoch. Now it's a dispute because you were born with a dick and you wanted a  c - '

'Careful!' warned Hilary, adopting the stance that the C word was an affront to women and feminism. 

'Tuesday.'

They looked at each other bemused .Neither knew what I was talking about. Seemed like I'd rather brought the chapter to an end. 

Silence. Sarah cleared her throat. She looked as if she was dressed to leave the office, holding the customary overnight bag she kept here for sudden business trips. 

'Are you going somewhere?' I said in  a more conciliatory tone. 'I need to talk to you about Martin.'

'Not today. Have to be Thursday.'

'Why is everyone avoiding the Martin thing?'

'We're not. I have to make a lightning trip to Vienna. '

'You what?'

'I've got to get a flight to Austria.' 

'Eating Chocolate cake in a bag?'

'Eh?'

'Did the man in the mac say you gotta go back?'

'What are you talking about?'

'You've swiped the lyrics!'

'I don't know what you mean! Joely Davidson is on location in Vienna, they've changed the script to include some salaciousness not in her contract, she's threatened to walk unless they up the fee - ' 

'Plagiarist! You've swiped The Ballad of John and Yoko!'

Sarah looks at Hilary as if to say 'how long has he been like this?' She almost looks at me pityingly as if I'm a candidate for the funny farm. Gently she says:

'Hold the fort Ant. I'm back on Thursday, we'll discuss Martin then. '

'Maybe you could drive from Paris to the Amsterdam Hilton.'

'I'm not going to Paris, I'm going to Vienna,' she said mock-patiently as she descended the stairs.

She still didn't get it.

Perhaps I should have pointed out that the newspapers said she had gone to his head, but that would have just added to the confusion. The song has been sung, as they say.

Meanwhile, me fighting Martin's corner has been pushed back again.