Inconceivable

Radio 2 anyway.

So there we are. It turns out that it is to be me who’s heading up the BBC Radio side of the operation, which is why today I found myself back in Quark in Soho having lunch with Joe London. Yes, the Joe London, as in lead singer of The Muvvers, a man who bestrode the late sixties and early seventies rock scene like a colossus. They might sneer, back at the office, all those shaven-headed boys wearing yellow sunglasses indoors and girls with little tattoos of dragons on their midriffs, but I was bloody excited to meet Joe London. This was my history. Joe was big when I was at school. I can remember him when he didn’t have a courgette to put in his trousers. Bloody hell, that man couldn’t half rock in the old days.

“We’re all absolutely delighted at Radio 1 that you can do this show for us, Joe,” I said.

“Oh yeah, tasty, nice one, as it ’appens, no problem, geezer.”

“And of course the Prince’s Trust are very grateful too.”

“Diamond geezer, the Prince of fahkin’ Wales. Lahvly bloke, know what I fahkin’ mean? Likes ’is rock does Charlie, big Supremes fan, and so good with the boys.”

Joe quaffed an alcohol-free lager.

“What’s it in aid of, ven, vis concert?” he said.

“Well, Joe, principally helping young kids with drug abuse.”

Suddenly Joe’s amiable manner changed.

“Well, I fink vat is fahkin’ disgahstin’, vat is,” he sneered. “Lazy little sods! When we was young we ’ad to go aht and get our fahkin’ drugs ourselves.”

I was just clearing up this misunderstanding and explaining that the point of the show was to help underprivileged youth when we were joined by Joe’s manager, a huge, spherical man with a cropped head and a cropped beard and no neck. His head just seemed to develop out of his shoulders like the top of an egg. He wore a black silk Nehru suit and silver slippers and he was bedecked in what must have been two or three kilos’ worth of gold jewellery. His name was Woody Monk and he greeted me with a nod before turning to whistle with approval at our waitress whose skirt was even shorter than on the last occasion I’d seen it. I imagine it had shrunk before the gaze of a thousand middle-aged media leerers who stare at it each lunchtime.

“I remember this place in the sixties when it was a knocking shop,” said Woody Monk. “The birds working ’ere didn’t look much different actcherly.”

I really was dining with the old school. Joe and Woody were rock ’n’ roll as it used to be, and it made me feel like a kid again. These days most pop managers look like Tintin with sunglasses.

I asked Woody Monk if it might be too much to hope that Joe would do some interviews to promote the show.

“He’ll do as many as you like, we need the profile,” Monk replied, and then, as if to quell any protests that Joe might have, he showed Joe a copy of the Sun featuring an article about the current Rolling Stones tour.

“Look at that, Joe!” Monk said. “Just look at it. I mean, it’s obscene, disgusting. That is just a totally ridiculous figure, out of all proportion.”

Joe took off his sunglasses and had a look. “I don’t know, Woody, I like a bit of silicone myself.”

Monk tried to be patient. “I am not talking about the bird, you divvy! I’m talking about this new Stones tour, one hundred million, they reckon! And the Eagles got the same. It’s the arenas and the stadiums,” Monk explained to me, “megabucks, these places gross in humungous proportions. In the old days when people talked about gross on tour they meant waking up with a mouthful of sick and a strange rash on your naughties. But nobody tours for the shagging any more. They do it for the gelt. Every gig is worth millions of dollars. Can’t stop for a bit of the other, accountant won’t let you.”

Basically, Monk’s point was that Joe needed to tour again in the near future. His latest greatest hits album would be out for Christmas and it needed supporting.

“Are we releasing another greatest ’its album, then?” said Joe.

“Yeah, but a prestige one. Nice classy cover, all in gold, the Gold Collection…”

“We done the Gold Collection.”

“Orlright. The Ultimate Collection.”

“Done vat too, and the Definitive Collection and the Classic, and the Unforgettable…”

“Look, Joe!” Monk snapped. I could see that he was a volatile chap. “We’ll call it The Same Old Crap in a Different Cover Collection if you like, it don’t matter. What we have got here is the Prince of Wales flogging your comeback.”

There, it was out, and Woody Monk did not care who knew it. As far as he was concerned this concert was a marketing exercise for Joe London and that was it. I didn’t mind. It meant Joe would promote it for us which was more than any of the modern stars would do these days (“I’m not doing any fooking press, all right?!”). Joe, however, seemed a little embarrassed, though not, as it turned out, about the charity angle.

“Vis ain’t a fahkin’ comeback! To ’ave a comeback you ’ave to ’ave bin away and I ’ave not bin. So vis is not a fahkin’ comeback.”

“Orlright,” said Monk. “It’s a fahkin ‘still here’ tour, then.”

“Vat’s right.”

“You can go on stage and everyone can shout… Fahk me! Are you still here, then?”

I honestly cannot remember when I have had a funnier lunch, and to think I wasted all those years lunching with comedians.

“Anyway, I gotta go,” said Monk, turning to me. “We’re all sorted, aren’t we?”

I said that as far as I knew we were extremely sorted.

“Good, ’cos we don’t want no fahk-ups. Vis gig is very important.”

“That’s right,” said Joe. “What with the underprivileged kiddies and all vat.”

“Bollocks to the underprivileged kids,” said Monk, hauling his massive bulk to his feet. “They should get a bloody job, bleeding scroungers. Fahk ’em.”

So that was that.

Anyway, enough of my day job, time to get down to my script. Lucy is sitting opposite on the bed, looking lovely as she always does. She’s very pleased with me at the moment because I seem to be doing so much writing. She thinks it’s all for my book. I’ll have to tell her soon because things are really progressing with the film. I’ve called it Inconceivable and I’ve been in to see Nigel to admit that the writer is none other than my despised self. He was a bit taken aback at first but then he laughed and was actually very nice about it. He congratulated me and said that sacking me was the best thing he ever did and that when I picked up my Oscar I was to remember to thank him. It’s interesting. Ever since he commissioned my movie script I’ve been warming to Nigel and now consider him to be a thoroughly good bloke. Is that desperately shallow of me or evidence of my generous and forgiving nature?

Anyway, the very exciting news is that the BBC really want to get on with it. Nigel feels that the idea is very current and that everybody will be doing it soon. Besides which, the film will be extremely cheap to make, which means that the Beeb can pay for it all by themselves. The reason films usually take years to get together is because that’s how long it takes to raise the money, but we’re already past that hurdle and Nigel is impatient to become a film producer.

“Movies work in a yearly cycle,” he explained. “The festival circuit is essential for a small picture. Venice, Sundance, Cannes. You need critical heat under you before the Golden Globes in February.”

He actually said “critical heat under you”. Strange. Whereas before I would have thought he sounded like a pretentious wanker, now I think he sounds knowledgeable and cool.

The reason Nigel is in such a hurry is that the whole thing about being a Controller at the BBC is that you have to make your mark. When you start looking for a fat job in the independent sector you have to be able to say, “It was in my time that we did The Generation Game,” or, “Oh yes, I commissioned Edge of Darkness and Noel’s House Party.” These days the scramble to be seen to be successful is becoming ever more urgent. People move on so quickly that you have to make your mark quickly too and it seems that, thank you, God, I am to be the beneficiary of Nigel’s haste.

Dear Penny

We went in to see Mr Agnew today at Spannerfield. He gave us our test results and everything