Therapy

stage. Is she? Well, I wouldn’t know, I never go to the theatre if I can help it. Can’t stand it. It’s like being strapped to your seat in front of a telly with only one channel. And you can’t talk, you can’t eat, you can’t drink, you can’t go out for a piss, you can’t even cross your legs because there’s no room. And they charge you twenty quid for the privilege. Anyway, she’s adamant, so we’ve got to write her part out of the show. It’s still getting great ratings, as you know. Absolutely. At least one more series, probably two or three. So we asked Tubby to rewrite the last episode or two of the present series so as to get rid of Priscilla, you know, Debbie’s part, to make way for a new woman in Edward’s life in the next series, see? We gave Tubby some ideas, but he wouldn’t buy any of ’em. He said the only way was to literally kill her off. In a car accident or on the operating table or something. Yeah, unbelievable, isn’t it? We’d have the whole fucking country crying its eyes out. Debbie’s got to go in a way that leaves the viewers feeling good, stands to reason. I mean, nobody’s pretending it’s easy. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from twenty-seven years in television, it’s that there’s always a solution. I don’t care what the problem is, whether it’s scripts or casting or locations or budget, there’s always a solution — if you think hard enough. The trouble is most people are too fucking idle to make the effort. Only they call it integrity. Tubby said he’d rather see the show come to an end than compromise the integrity of his characters. Did you ever hear such bullshit? This is sitcom we’re talking about, not fucking Ibsen. I’m afraid he’s getting delusions of grandeur, the latest is he wants to write a — Oh, well, fortunately we discovered that under our contract we can hire another writer to take over if Tubby declines to write another series. Yeah. Of course, we don’t want to. We’d prefer Tubby to do the job himself. Oh, fuck his moral rights, George! The point is that he could do the job better than anybody else, if he would only make the effort. Well, it’s a standoff at the moment. He has five weeks to come up with an acceptable idea to ease Debbie out of the show, or else we get another writer. I dunno, I’m not very hopeful. He doesn’t seem to be living in the real world these days. His private life is in deep shit. You know his wife’s left him? Yeah. First I knew about it was when he called me up one night, at home, very late. He sounded a bit pissed — you know, breathing heavily and long pauses between words. He said he had an idea for writing Debbie out of the show. “Suppose,” he said, “suppose Priscilla just walks out on Edward without warning? Suppose she just tells him in the last episode that she doesn’t want to stay married to him? There isn’t any other man. She just doesn’t love him any more. She doesn’t even like him any more. She says living with him is like living with a zombie. So she’s decided to leave him.” I said to him, “Don’t be ridiculous, Tubby. There has to be more motivation than that. Nobody will believe it.” He said, “Won’t they?” and put the phone down. Next thing I hear is that his wife has walked out on him. You saw that piece in Public Interest ? Well, that was the point, wasn’t it? There was no other man. The bloke was gay. Looks as if Tubby’s wife walked out because, like he said, she just didn’t want to be married to him any more. He’s taken it very hard. Of course, anybody would. Will you have another? Same again? What was it, the Club red? Oh, the Saint Emilion, right. You think it’s worth the extra, do you? No, no, you shall have the Saint Emilion, George. I don’t know anything about wine, never pretended to. Small or large? I think I’ll just have a half myself, work to do this afternoon. Oh, right. I’m going to get myself a pie, what about you? Chicken and mushroom, right.
    There we are. One large glass of Saint Emilion. They’ll call out when the pies are ready. We’re nineteen. I was in a pub the other day where they give you playing-cards instead of these cloakroom tickets.
    The girl at the bar calls out “Queen of Hearts” or “Ten of Spades” or whatever. Clever idea, I thought. I’m always losing these fiddly little things and forgetting my number. Your pie was one twenty-five by the way. Oh, ta. That’s all the change