I'm sitting in Martin Spangler's kitchen not a stone's throw from Brixton Station watching him pour Lapsang Souchong through a tea strainer into a cracked mug before me. I twist it round and look at it disdainfully, wondering if it’s going to leak all over the worktop.
'I know. More cracks than Miss Havisham's lonely heart. It's a family heirloom.' said Martin proudly. 'Older than me.'
I should hope so, I thought, since it commemorated the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. Sadly not older than me though. Martin on the other hand is only thirty five, though the booze has probably put ten years on him. Right now the tremor in his hand is probably about an eight on the Richter scale. I don't comment for fear of multiple lacerations from Martin's well-armed vocabulary. We've exchanged about three sentences since I arrived twenty minutes ago, which is three more than when we departed La Espanola some weeks back. We’d arranged this meet by text.
'I think we need to address the elephant.' I said eventually.
'What elephant?' said Martin, being deliberately difficult.
'The elephant in the bidet.'
'My bidet's not big enough for an elephant.'
'Martin - '
'Well actually, I don't have one. A bidet.'
'I'm just saying - '
'Nor an elephant actually.'
'We have to get past the fact that you got us thrown out of La Espanola.'
'Come on Ant, look on the bright side, I saved you a huge bill.'
'I paid for the wine.'
'Notso paid for the wine.'
'They're not going to let me back in there, unless you apologise.' And there's a better chance of seeing swine flying formation than Martin apologising. Which is tantamount to a tragedy since La Espanola is my favourite place to eat in all the West End.
'The manager can't take a joke. Fancy being offended because I suggested he thought Vermicelli was an Italian renaissance artist.'
'He's part owner of a two star Michelin establishment. I think he knows his pasta from his painters. You also said he probably thought that Boticelli was a red wine from Tuscany.'
'So?'
'It was the way you said it Martin! You were implying that a restaurateur has no edification. When he asked you politely to leave you unsubtly likened him to Mussolini by telling him to get a job making the trains run on time.'
'I did? Blimey, I do come out with them sometimes, don't I? Do you think he got it? Was the reference too veiled?'
I shook my head in disbelief and frustration. Martin sat back and smirked, simultaneously rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hand. This is his trademark 'regrets-I've-had-a -few-but-then-again-too -few-to-mention' pose. There is now a mutual suspicion between us and I'm wondering whether my philosophical fisticuffs with Kieran regarding me offering Jerome Tickler's ghost to Martin were wise. I'd had a call from Tickler apologising for bailing on Monday. He was on some train junket to Brussels and hoped we could meet next week. I have to get Martin on board before then and, given his present volatility, today may be my only opportunity.
'Okay,' Martin suddenly conceded, 'I'm sorry about La Espanola. I was upset Ant. Tessa Rogers nicked my girlfriend.'
'That was bloody years ago!'
'After the Audio Academy Awards was a one off! Now they're as permanent an item as Tom and Jerry. I keep on envisioning unspeakable contortionist permutations involving that famous Irish air hostess Connie Lingus.'
'You what?'
'Having a mutual tongue shag in Petticoat Lane. '
That's the first time I've heard one of the most iconic streets in London associated with certain sexual shenanigans. I didn't know how to respond so retreated into banging on about my bereavement from La Espanola until Martin apologised and I ate a lorry full of humble pie. And how disappointed I was Martin was still drinking. I thought he had given up - apart from an occasional bender for auld lang's syne.
'Le Espanola was my occasional bender.'
'One seems to run into another.'
'Ant, I've made peace with my drunken forays into delightful oblivion. Like beautiful women. After a while it gets tedious fighting them off. Besides, I'm reconciled to living dangerously. After all, we don't know how long we have on this mortal coil. Rubbing shoulders with organised crime is a dangerous business.'
I wondered if Martin had inadvertently wrong-footed himself here. Organised crime? Has he uncovered something in his research? And was this research on behalf of Pattie? Every time I've broached this subject he's waved me off.
'Organised crime?' I asked, not really expecting a straight answer.
'The government. They're all bloody crooks.'
'Oh, I see.' I tried to neuter my disappointment. 'Are you rubbing shoulders with them?'
'We all are. We're all subject to their devious policies. We're all being shafted. Edward Snowden said "When exposing a crime is treated as committing a crime you are being ruled by criminals." Pretty sure he had Julian Assange in mind, amongst others. Now, though, virtually every government on the planet has demonstrated their criminality by committing a massive crime against humanity and making most people terrified of a virus that probably doesn't exist. And even if it does, it has a survival rate after infection of 99.75%.'
Now I've been suspicious of official narratives myself ever since JFK was murdered when I was twelve, but compared to Martin I'm an innocent at slumber. Martin is a conspiracy theorist's conspiracy theorist. He is full-on, weapons-grade David Icke. He was convinced Covid was a con while most of us were becoming nervous about travelling on public transport. He was crying 'foul' before Boris Johnson locked us all down. No doubt he knew 9/11 was a false flag before WTC-7 collapsed the same day. The reason that people like Martin are so easy to ridicule is because their claims seem so outlandish. To most of us the thought of vile conspiracies is horrifying. How could human beings be that evil? And even if they were once, surely terrible massacres are confined to history, many centuries ago. We don't do these things today, we're far more civilised. Really? Is the Holocaust so long ago? Holodomor? Rwanda? Who baulked at little Jewish kids being paraded to the gas chambers in the 1930s? Most of us would prefer to think this stuff doesn't happen because what does it say about us if it did? Martin, on the other hand, lives and breathes it. Consequently everyone thinks he's mad. But two years ago I wouldn't have believed it was remotely possible for (so-called) democratic governments to want to harm their own citizens.
Martin has a bee in his bonnet about children's farms. I'm not talking about cute little places where kiddie-winkies go to pet a mangy old goat or two and come away with a healthy dose of E Coli, I'm talking about - well Martin is - where they breed children, literally to be sexually and physically abused. It's a horrifying thought and the evidence is all hearsay really so we disregard it. Even though history tells us there were farms for breeding slaves and secret farms for breeding Nazis. What's the odds, asks Martin vociferously when he's had a few, that the contacts of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, once she comes to trial, never become public?
Pattie loved Martin but knew she could never sell his more extreme stuff, besides no-one would want to look at that sort of content. She thought he was a brilliant writer but needed to be more mainstream. Martin, however, is on a crusade and only does the (his words) 'money grubbing stuff' to put food on the table.
When I met him ten years ago I thought he was bonkers but interesting. But then, ten years ago I would never have believed what has transpired in the last year and a bit could happen. Even so, I argue, massive conspiracies like 9/11 could never be covered up. There's just too many agencies you would have to keep quiet.
Martin looks at me pityingly whenever I offer this theory and today he went off on one: 'Really? Too big to orchestrate? Yet for the past year the whole world has been manipulated into thinking there is a pandemic from a virus. Billions conceding to be jabbed by toxic chemicals. Nay, not conceding, in some cases fighting to get to the front of the queue. There is no pandemic, there is no virus!'
'So what's making everybody ill then?'
'How about the flu? Like it does every year, only in the last eighteen months it's taken a sabbatical.'
'Up to a point I'd agree - ' I wanted to say there was much I agreed with but with reservations, only I didn't get the chance.
'Anyway, bollocks to the virus.' he interrupted. 'I need an agent. What are you going to do about it?'
'Yes well…'
'I'm the best writer Notso never had. And one of Pattie's best.'
This is Martin in confidence-boosting mode. At root he's as insecure as a twelve year old trying to buy condoms in a chemist.
'Moot point Martin. How do you grade writers? What is best? The maestro who was greater than Beethoven but never got performed because he couldn't get anyone's attention? How many geniuses are there out there whose masterpieces never got to see the light of day? How brilliant is a writer if no-one's paying attention?'
'I see. Is this a bit like: does a tree falling in a forest make a sound if there's no-one there to perceive it? I'm like the tree in the forest, my work doesn't exist because there's no-one there to perceive it.'
'Well in a tree's case, of course it does make a sound.'
'No it doesn't. A sound doesn’t exist unless there's a sensory apparatus to receive it.'
Arguing with Martin is like fighting your own shadow. It'll never come to anything. Actually the tree thing would depend entirely on the definition of sound but minds like Martin's don't brook argument. If sound is the vibration of a tree falling through the air then it does. If sound is a perception and it has to be received by the senses, then it doesn't. Hoary old question: If there were no conscious life would the physical universe exist? Which leads to dumb questions like: what do we mean when we use the word mean? Or even dumber ones like: why doesn't onomatopoeia sound like it is? Or: why isn't palindrome spelt the same way backwards?
'Money Ant! That's what I want! Money!' Martin's shout pierced my little reverie. Suddenly, God forbid, it sounds like he might break into song. 'As Liza Minelli once sang: Money makes the world go round. '
Martin wouldn't have even been an embryo when the film Cabaret was first released but I was still marginally concerned he might do a Joel-Grey-as-Emcee impression. Even in the privacy of his own home so he couldn't humiliate himself it would be too much to bear. I've seen him do his karaoke 'Stairway to Heaven' at the Islington Red Lion when in his cups. Robert Plant he ain't. If he did that karaoke turn as an audition the casting agent would probably resort to another Japanese tradition: hara-kiri.
'Martin, you're ahead of your time. No-one wants to do your plays. Pythagoras is a work of genius but no-one understands it and, right now, it's far too controversial.'
'You mean topical, because I'm talking about concealed tyranny? What happened to the rebelliousness that was theatre? What happened to the resistance?'
'It had a vasectomy Martin. It had its balls boiled off.'
‘I need money!’
This is the opportune moment to introduce Tickler into the conversation but I can't bring myself to do it. Instead I reminisce on Martin's pecuniary successes of the past. He was, after all, a regular writer on one of the most popular police series of all time.
'Pity "Coppers" closed. That was your bread and butter.'
' "Coppers" had to close. Back in the day each episode had a separate crime story and since police don't investigate crimes anymore but spend their time poncing about in rainbow painted cars and doing the Macarena at Pride festivals there aren't any crime stories. Occasionally they might arrest someone for an errant Twitter post. Televisual tension of the highest order! It's impossible to write about the police anymore, they're just too unbelievably thick. If you put on screen how stupid they are in real life these days viewers would find it implausible. How can you write a drama about two plods going to someone's house to arrest them because they made the wrong post on a Twitter feed? Because that's all they do nowadays. Are we surprised that the crime clear-up rate is under 2%? Think about it, if you commit a rape you have a 98% chance of getting away with it.'
Martin's rants about real justice and law and order are legend, but right now I could do without them.
'Right, first things first. We need to find you an agent.'
'Which I'm not going to get, because I don't earn money. Isn't that why Kieran wanted rid of me? In the old fashioned days an agent would take you on because you had talent and then go about getting you work. These days agents take you on when you're already earning, take their 10% and immediately you're out of work they fire you.'
'That's a bit cynical Martin.'
'Exactly what happened to Jerry Meckler. He directed three of my "Coppers” episodes. He was doing the rounds on all the popular dramas, without resorting to soaps, and bringing in a hundred and fifty grand a year. Ten percent of that is pretty handy. Then, when the work dried up all of a sudden, he asked his agency to start pulling their fingers out - because up until then they'd never done anything - and they sacked him.'
'Yeah, I've heard things like that, but they're rare.'
Martin ignored me. 'Agents are as bad as pimps really. They take your money and let you, the client, get screwed.'
'Thank you very much.'
'There are - were - two honourable exceptions. Pattie Regan Associates, but Pattie's dead and the agency is wound up. And SKA. With whose literary director I have visceral issues of a carnal nature. Sometimes I fantasise about shoving a bloody great dildo up Tessa Rogers - '
'Dearey me - ' I interrupted, painfully obvious in my intentions to deflect Martin from his embarrassing sexism. Now's the time: ‘And to think I came here to ask you if you were interested in ghosting Jerome Tickler's memoirs.'
'I thought you'd never ask.'
Silence. That was hardly the response I was expecting. 'I beg your pardon?'
'I wondered when you'd get round to it. That's what you're here for isn't it?
'How do you - ?'
'Sharon.'
'Sharon?'
'She phoned me. She wanted to explain how difficult it would be for her to take me on given Lady Macbeth, sorry Tessa, runs her literary wing. I concurred, given I break out in hives even thinking about her and Pamela. I must have sounded downhearted because she told me you were going to make an approach regarding Tickler.'
'She's not your bloody agent!'
'Nor are you! '
'And it's supposed to be top secret!'
'She told me that. And at least she got to the point very quickly. We've been meandering over the foothills of Nowheresville for over an hour.'
'I don't recall you resisting our topics of conversation.'I was getting resentful now. How was I expected to go straight to the Tickler matter without clearing up the post La Espanola impasse first? ‘So?'
'So what?'
'What's your reaction? Would you be interested? Presumably, since Sharon told you, you've had enough time to think about it.'
'Dunno, can't stand politicians as a rule. They're like babies' nappies. They need changing often and for the same reason. Sorry, not an original jokette.'.
'Well to be fair, he's got to agree he wants you first. But I won't put you forward if you're not interested.'
'Not sure - '
I'm trying to earn you some money you ungrateful bastard!
'Wow Ant - '
'I don't understand you! You're still leaving messages with Hilary at Notso because you want to interview Kieran's dad - '
'I told you, research!' Martin sounded almost weary.
'Now I'm offering you access to a bloke who's been in touch with, or very much immersed in, the corridors of power since 1997.'
'Not so much since he retired, what, four years ago? And he won't know anything about the bulshit of the last year and a half.'
'How do you know?' Martin shrugged. 'Look, I know you're up to something. I'm pretty sure you were in league with Pattie though you refuse to admit it. You talk about governments and organised crime.'
'Yes, in the sense that one is indistinguishable from the other.'
'Then getting to know Tickler can only help.'
'What do you think I'm up to Ant?'
'I don't know. But I don't think you're jumpy like Pamela said you were because you're scared - '
'I'm not jumpy at all - '
'When you're not pissed you're on edge. I think you're jumpy because you're onto something.'
'Before today, when was the last time you saw me when I wasn't pissed?'
I don't know.'
'So why would you say I'm on edge?'
'Alright! So do you want to be considered for the Tickler gig or not?'
'On one condition.'
'Which is?'
'Tell him I don't want to invite the sort of fate reserved for someone like Edward II in Chris Marlowe's play.''
'What?'
'He's an ex actor, he'll get the reference to Marlowe's play.'
'He won't. He doesn't have the literary background. But I get it. Why would you - ?'
'Metaphor for being shafted. He was in a government that went to war. On false pretences. If truth were told - '
'You're being a drama queen Martin.'
'And another thing - '
'Yes?'
'Who gets 10% of my fee if Notso doesn't represent me anymore?'
I really like Martin. :) also, it’s uncanny how you tend to mention or quote plays I’ve also been involved with in my past. I mean, Edward II wasn’t even Marlowe’s popular one.
Favourite quote from that play:
“But what are kings when regiment is gone, but perfect shadows on a sunshine day. I know not, but of this I am assured: death ends all and I can die but once. Come sweat death and with thine fingers close mine eyes. And if I shall live, let me forget myself.”