Charles was back where he started. Barber’s comments had told him nothing new about Janine. They had opened up possibilities for investigation of other characters involved in Sun ’n’ Funtime, but Charles found it difficult to concentrate on more than one suspect at a time. Until he had seen Janine, any other course of inquiry seemed a bit futile. Once she had been eliminated. . Even as he thought it, the word ‘eliminated’ took on sinister overtones. What had happened to Janine Bentley?
The producer of the show arrived with the dishy researcher. Lennie Barber slumped back into his posture of glazed incapacity.
‘All set?’ asked the producer with imposed joviality. (Incidentally, the producer was not Walter Proud, who, though responsible for the original idea of recreating the Barber and Pole routine, seemed since to have been pushed into the background.)
‘Set? I’m as set as a bloody blancmange, thank you.’ Lennie Barber rose to his feet expansively, then seemed to lose his balance and sank back, arms windmilling, onto the side of his chair. Chair and comedian collapsed in a sprawling heap on the floor. The producer and the dishy researcher hastened forward to scoop Barber up.
‘Are you going to be all right for the show?’ The acid in the producer’s tone was trickling straight down to his stomach to feed his incipient ulcer.
‘No problem.’ Lennie Barber oriented himself towards the door and got through it, hardly hitting the frame at all.
Ignoring Charles, the producer and the dishy researcher scuttled after. As they passed, he heard them muttering, ‘Thank God we keep that interview with Greg Robson in reserve. Just need a quick announcement from continuity about a change to the scheduled programme.’
Alexander Harvey’s high viewing figures did not exactly reflect his personal popularity. Indeed, many of the people who watched the programme did so merely to confirm how much they disliked him. Being the host on a chat-show is, by its nature, a thankless task, because everyone tunes in to see the guests rather than the presenter anyway, and the host has the options of either keeping a profile low to the point of anonymity or high to the point of irritation. Alexander Harvey had chosen the latter course.
Sometimes this paid handsome dividends. He was very good at stimulating the reticent and cutting short the long-winded, and often the guests, in sheer exasperation at the manner of his questioning, made newsworthy indiscretions. Also he was clever — no one denied that — and was quick at picking up nuances or spotting potentially interesting new directions for the conversation.
His approach also had disadvantages. Apart from the obvious one that the viewing public, who didn’t basically like him, were constantly having their attention drawn back to him, he sometimes tended to cut short an interviewee too early into an anecdote and not to allow his victims to pace the conversation to their own style.
He was also ‘very into’ The Arts and considered his guests on a sliding scale of esoteric snobbery. Opera stars he held in highest esteem, breathing adulation over them with every word. Other classical musicians got a fairly high rating. Theatrical knights and dames scored well, though the rest of the acting profession came rather lower down the scale. Authors and playwrights were OK, so long as they weren’t too successful with the public. Popular singers had to have unexpected sidelines to rate anything other than contempt. And comedians. . Well, comedians were there to be patronized with ill-disguised disgust.
Though that was the basic outline of his scale of values, there were other variables which made predictions of his treatment of a guest difficult. For instance, Hollywood cast a special glow. Any performer, however terrible, who had appeared in some black-and-white ‘B’ feature in the forties and who could drop the names of a couple of superannuated directors, immediately shot up the league. Being American also improved the credit rating. And being old was an enormous asset. The older the better. Old people gave Alexander Harvey the opportunity to show (a) How good he was with old people; (b) How well he (or in fact one of his researchers) had researched his guest’s career; and (c) How important Alexander Harvey was to have such venerable figures chatting to him in such a convivial manner.
So to receive optimum treatment on the Alexander Harvey Show a guest should be a hundred-year-old American opera singer who had made a lot of Hollywood films in the course of a long and anecdote-littered career.
Exactly where all this left Lennie Barber, Charles was not certain, but everything pointed to a patronizing roasting. The only plus point the comedian had on the Alexander Harvey scale was age, and he didn’t really have that in sufficient quantity. Lennie Barber was only sixty-two and Alexander Harvey came into his own with octogenarians and nonagenarians. And, Charles discovered from the dishy researcher, Barber also suffered a big minus — he had been someone else’s idea. It should have been mentioned that theideal hundred-year-old opera singer must have been suggested for the show by Alexander Harvey himself.
Charles lurked round the back of the set as the interview started and watched events on a black-and-white monitor. It was clear from his first words that Alexander Harvey was in a carving-up mood. His introduction was couched in a camp sneer. He gave exactly the sort of information that Barber would have hated. ‘. . whom you may remember from the forties and fifties when he was very successful in the apprentice days of television. Unfortunately, with the death of Wilkie Pole, the act was over and public taste seemed to change. However, we are delighted to say that he is still a working comedian and it’s a great privilege for me to welcome tonight — Mr. Lennie Barber!’
From his vantage point Charles could see both sides of Barber’s entry. The reeling approach behind the flats (for the benefit of the producer’s coronary and the dishy researcher’s hot flushes) and the upright dignified appearance on camera (for the benefit of the viewing public).
The studio audience’s applause was surprisingly warm. In spite of the changes time had wrought, they still found Lennie Barber comfortingly familiar, like cups of Ovaltine and ration books and tram tickets and suspender belts, a link with a simpler time.
But it was clear as Alexander Harvey came in over the applause that he was out for blood. ‘Now, Lennie, you’re a comedian, you have been one all your life, you must have thought a lot about the nature of comedy, so tell me. .’ He paused ingenuously. It was clever. He was going to get the comedian to talk about the nature of comedy, knowing that analysis of humour reduces intelligent people to incoherent wafflers and brilliant comedians to unfunny bores. This was an ideal start for the Alexander Harvey method. His victim was bound to go on at inordinate length, until an incisive interruption from Harvey would point up his long-windedness. The question was poised delicately in the air. ‘What makes a joke funny?’
‘An audience laughing at it,’ Lennie Barber replied immediately, and by doing so, proved that he had just made a joke. The audience laughed. The line itself wasn’t funny, but Barber’s speed of delivery and obvious contempt for the question, coupled with Harvey’s expression of surprise, made it a very funny moment.
Alexander Harvey was disconcerted to the point of looking at the notes on his clipboard (something which usually happened much later into one of his interviews). He had to come in quickly with another question. The longer the break after Barber’s reply, the longer the comedian’s triumph. But Harvey was a professional and he shaped his next question skilfully. He asked something which would make Barber define his own success or failure. ‘You’ve been a comedian all your life and comedy is a notoriously insecure profession. One day you’re on top, the next nobody wants to know about you. When in your career did you feel really confident that you had made it?’
‘Tuesday nights mostly.’ Again the response was perfectly timed and the audience picked up the sexual innuendo instantly.