Today Johnny lives alone in a two-bedroom flat in Fulham (the second bedroom is for Hayley’s fortnightly visits). He is no stranger to the commodification of romance—indeed one of the early internet ventures was a dating site for toffs—and while there has been some success finding females in the target demographic, nothing has lasted more than a few weeks.
It’s rather as if his heart isn’t in it.
We agree, when I present my findings to my colleagues, that Johnny has cleared the notional “quality threshold” (“Yeah, only just,” says the TV). I repeat my “health warning” that it is not for us to find a man for Daisy; that in many ways a break from the sexual battlefield might be a good idea for her; that above all she needs to learn to love herself before she can properly offer herself to another.
This last point causes the TV set to manufacture a snorting sound effect and comment that I have been watching too much daytime telly.
But in Johnny, I continue, ignoring the television’s satirical remark, we have a character of merit whose life experience and feeling for his daughter might just map successfully onto Daisy’s biography. All we need now if we are to bring the two young people together is a brilliant wheeze.
But the toothbrush—who I am beginning to feel I have underestimated—has a plan.
The single most obvious quality they share (it argues)—aside from a taste for salty language—is a weakness for the pleasures of the table, and in particular for gelati. Each is perfectly capable of demolishing a 500 ml tub at a sitting, a personality flaw that the toothbrush’s scheme exploits to ingenious effect.
D and J would each receive a communication purporting to come from the manufacturer of an exciting new range of ice cream products. Your spending patterns have been analyzed (they are told) and you have been identified by powerful algorithms as a lover of frozen desserts. However, even more importantly, we think you are that rare and special thing, an opinion former, a maven among your cohort and we are confident that once you have tried our yummy new brand you will want to spread the good news to all your friends. Indeed we are so sure about this, that, as part of our stealth marketing campaign, we will give you a year’s free supply—delivered weekly—and all you have to do is turn up at a particular place at a particular time, sign a document, and prepare to have your taste buds blown away!
In the war room, we are all a little knocked out by the toothbrush’s plan. Yes, it’s crazy, we agree, but very possibly just crazy enough to work.
We like the fact it’s based on an appeal to human weakness. An insidious cocktail of fats, sugars and greed make it difficult to resist, we believe, and in any case, what do we have to lose? If they don’t bite, no one is any the wiser.
Much fun is had in the creation of the tempting email. In the spirit of Häagen-Dazs, which, if you didn’t know, is a totally made up name, we call our brand Schmaltzgruber.
“I love it!” says the microwave. “It’s so wrong, it’s right!”
“Sounds like a central defender for Borussia Mönchengladbach,” says the telly, but I think it too has a funny feeling about this one.
We create a logo—the letter Z does some useful swooshy stuff—and we ping off the email to the two unsuspecting parties. The half-timbered hut in the middle of Soho Square is deemed to be the (nicely public) gathering point for the “lucky fifty specially selected undercover ambassadors for our brand.” We choose a Saturday evening at 19:00 as zero hour, on a weekend when Johnny does not have his daughter to stay. The only stipulation is to wear something pink, the Schmaltzgruber “house color.”
And then, as they say in old war films, we wait.
Meanwhile, something—someone—has been preying on my mind.
The original Golden Nicky.
I’m no cyber-Sherlock, but when a person proves so very hard to run to earth, that has to tell you something.
It tells you that they are either no longer in the land of the living, or they do not wish to be found. (That they’re somehow “not on the internet” is no longer a viable excuse.)
The Golden Nicky does not feel to me like someone who would be dead. And of all the Nicholas Bells who have indeed hopped the twig in the relevant timeframe, none would appear to be our NB. At which point one begins to detect the distinct aroma of fish.
In the long watches of the night, I have spent literally hundreds of refrigerator-hours combing the web for traces of the elusive quant. I’ve tried every variant of his name, combining them with the widest spread of search terms, including those of finance houses, hedge funds, cricket teams, even that of his old school.
There is a lovely reference to Nicky Bell of the Lower VI who scored “a memorably flamboyant half-century against Oswestry before being caught at second slip off an unexpected popper from an otherwise undistinguished bowling attack.”
In a Facebook group, there is a telling exchange between former university friends trying to organize a reunion:
David Briggs: Anyone have any idea what happened to Smoothychops?
Jon Cleverly: Nicky Bell? Went sailing after uni. Dolly’s dad’s yacht.
Andy Watson: Banking, I believe.
Kim Chin: Ask Mad Martine. She’ll know!!!
David Briggs: I’ve tried her. And the banks. It’s like he’s vanished off the face of the earth!
Martine Priest: He still owes me a hundred quid!
There is a Nicholas Bell who robbed a bank in Eugene, Oregon, escaping capture by coolly stepping on a passing bus
