Inconceivable

summoned all the commissioning editors in the Entertainment Group (if indeed that is what we are), plus the finance and marketing people, for a big strategy meeting, so there were about ten of us festooned about his office. The subject of the meeting was the BBC’s plans to get into movies, so it should have been an exciting discussion, but with the cloud hanging over me I couldn’t get worked up. What’s more, I was the last to arrive, which is always a dodgy thing to be with a sarky up-himself swine like Nigel.

“Good of you to pop in, Sam.”

I should have told him to stuff it but I didn’t, of course, I started to try and explain. What is it Churchill or Thatcher is supposed to have said? “Never apologize, never explain.” Well, they were right. Nigel didn’t let me get any further than, “Sorry, I was…”

“I see,” he said. “So having wasted our time being late you want to waste more time telling us why. Is that it?”

I couldn’t believe it! The bloke is younger than me. George and Trevor were both in the meeting but they were no help, they just studied their briefing notes intensely.

“Uhm…” I said. Not a brilliant retort, I’m prepared to admit.

“Uhm,” Nigel repeated. “Well, as answers go it has the virtue of brevity, but I think that completes its list of recommendations.”

Some of the others actually laughed at that! Snivelling sycophants. Not George or Trevor, of course, but a couple of the accountancy people and a young woman with pink hair who came over from Sky. I’ll remember you, I thought, but why bother? She’ll probably be my next boss.

Anyway, I slunk into a corner and Nigel got down to some serious pontificating.

“Nobody watches television nowadays,” he said, “or at least none of my friends do. Television is wallpaper. Television is fast food. Television is arse produce. Movies are the millennial art form. Where do you think I’m going with this? Come on, come on, anyone!”

Honestly, it was like being back at school.

“The BBC should be getting into movies,” said the young woman with the pink hair and Nigel positively beamed at her. “Hullo,” I thought, but actually I think Nigel could only ever properly fancy himself.

“Exactly, Yaz,” he said and proceeded with great self-importance to rap out the names of recent British movie hits.

“Four Weddings, Full Monty, Trainspotting, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Emmanuelle Goes Beaver Hunting…”

This last one took us all a bit by surprise but we let it go.

“British movies have never been more healthy,” he continued, banging his desk. “There were at least three last year that the Americans quite liked. We need to be a part of that revolution. We need to reposition our goddamn asses.”

I swear he said it: “reposition our goddamn asses”.

“We need to be making movies.”

Everyone seemed terribly excited at this idea but I always thought the BBC was a television company and said so.

“Boots is a chemist, Sam. That doesn’t stop them selling chicken tikka sandwiches with yogurt and mint dressing.” This got a big laugh from Yaz, who leant forward to pick up her coffee conspicuously pointing her cleavage the Controller’s way. Nigel didn’t notice, being the sort of man who’d rather harangue his subordinates than look at a nice bosom.

“Jesus Christ, Sam! At least try setting your brain for the twenty-first century! As Britain’s premier media provider, the BBC is perfectly placed to connect up with the real cutting-edge talent that is out there making New Britain hip. Writers, producers, directors, women, the cream of Cool Britannia, the tip top of Britpop. We need to interface with these people. We have the resources to make films, we have the budgets to make films, all we need is the ideas.”

Later, discussing the meeting in the BBC bar, George and Trevor were very excited about it. After all, for people like us who spend our time commissioning new ways of humiliating the public for the early Saturday evening schedules, the idea of making proper films is pretty seductive. I tried hard to join in with their enthusiasm but I couldn’t summon up much jollity. Jealousy really, I suppose. I don’t want to commission films, I want to write one. The idea of going about Soho searching out shaven-headed twelve-year-old film-school fashion junkies with rings through their scrotums made me tired. Unfair of me, I know, but as my mother said, life wasn’t supposed to be fair.

George and Trevor saw things differently. They thought it presented a golden opportunity.

“This is your big chance!” they said. “Commission yourself. Write a script and green light it. The man’s crying out for ideas and he’s asking us to find them. You’ll never get an opportunity like this again! It’s gamekeeper turned poacher.”

For a moment I was almost seduced, but then I remembered two things. Firstly my current relationship with the Controller does not lead me to imagine that he’d accept a script with my name on it. And secondly, even if he did, what script? I haven’t written a thing in years. I’ve forgotten how to write and even if I hadn’t I have nothing to write about.

Trevor said he’d always thought that a gay alcoholic in recovery would make a great subject for a movie.

“But that’s your story, Trevor,” I said.

“And a monumentally fucking dull one it is too,” George added.

Of course they’re both right. Nigel’s new initiative is an opportunity I should be seizing with both hands. But I just can’t do it. They say comedy is about conflict and pain. Where’s my conflict? Where’s my pain? I’m a boring bloke in a boringly happy marriage. Apart from my own monumental lack of talent and an impending sperm result there isn’t a cloud on my horizon.

Dear Penny

I simply cannot believe it. Sam handed in his sample three days ago and since then he has been jumpy as a kitten. He pounces on the post in the morning even though he knows the result will take five days. He grabs at any envelope that comes through the door, ones containing offers to join bookclubs, others containing enquiries about whether we want to sell our house. He tears them all open in terror that they might also be concealing a failed sperm test certificate. I swear that’s what he thinks he’s going to get, a certificate, possibly with a ribbon on it or a red wax seal, saying “sperm test FAILED”. I’m afraid it seems that nothing, absolutely nothing, turns a man into a wanker so much as having to take a sperm test.

Anyway, my blood test result came through with the second post and it seems my body has passed that particular hurdle, insomuch as the indications are that I ovulate. Hooray and whoopidydingdong. There are now only fourteen million things that could be wrong with my sad, dysfunctional tubes. Sometimes it really is hard to be a woman.

I had to send off loads of signed pictures of Carl “Will you fuck me for a sandwich?” Phipps today. I have very mixed emotions about that whole episode. Obviously I’d never do anything about it, I mean obviously. Nonetheless it’s quite flattering. At thirty-four and married it’s rather nice to discover that one could still get laid if one wanted to which one doesn’t and one certainly wouldn’t even if one did.

When I told Sam that my blood test indicated healthy ovulation he acted most unpleasantly. Instead of being pleased that at least one part of my body functions as it should, he immediately took it as proof that he’s going to fail his sperm test and that he’s some kind of sexless eunuch. It really is most thoughtless of him to be so self-obsessed, and not very attractive. I must confess to having briefly entertained the unworthy thought that Lord Byron Phipps, the brooding, smouldering Tenant of Wildfell Hall, would not be so ungentlemanly or uncaring of a lady’s distress.

He would also have more faith in his testicles.

Sam

Still no news on the sperm test.

Also still no word from Tosser about giving me a job.

However, I’ve also still heard nothing further from the Channel Controller about my sensational faux pas over