Probably Phil’s longest diatribe; it was too laid-back to be called a rant. I looked at him. ‘So, when did they tell you it might happen now?’
‘Oh, tomorrow,’ he grinned.
‘Fuck off.’
‘Na,’ he said, leaning back too and stretching and yawning. ‘Lucky to be this year, now, according to my new close friend at Winsome, Moselle. Major rethink on format after the events of September the eleventh.’ He scratched his head. ‘What a brilliant excuse that’s turned out to be, for so many things.’
‘Yeah,’ I breathed. I toyed with my toast and stirred my already well-stirred tea. Part of me was deeply relieved. I’d come up with this great idea for what I was going to do on the programme if they put me on with the Holocaust denier guy, and it still excited me and scared me in equally intense proportions. Now I wouldn’t have to either do it and let fuck knows what happen, or chicken out and not do it and curse myself for evermore for being a sad, pathetic, hypocritical, lily-livered crap-out merchant. In fact, just the sort of sad, pathetic (etc.) who would feel as relieved as I now did that I wouldn’t have to make that choice, at least not for a while and maybe, the way I knew these things tended to work, ever.
I threw the teaspoon down and stood up. ‘Ah, come on, let’s go and do the fucking show.’
Phil glanced at his watch. ‘We can’t. Judy T’s using the studio till half past.’
I sat back down again, heavily. ‘Fuck,’ I said eloquently, putting my head in my hands. ‘Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.’
Five. MISSION STATEMENT
“Yeah, I’d just like to say that don’t you think these Eurosceptic people should be called Europhobes, yeah?’
Phil and I rolled our eyes. I leaned right up to the microphone. This has the pretty universally automatic effect of making people lower their voices, and I was no exception. It should sound like I was talking personally just to the caller. ‘Actually, Steve, we went through all this two years ago, on the evening show, and, if you recall, we did a sort of rolling Greatest Hits of the Evening Show for the first week of the daytime slot when that very point came up, oh, a few times. Kind of guessing here you’re new to the programme, Steve.’
‘Oh. Sorry. Yeah.’ Steve seized up, audibly. ‘It’s great,’ he managed. ‘Keep it up.’
‘Practically my personal motto, Steve,’ I said with a smile, sitting back again. ‘Thanks for calling.’ I clicked on to the next caller, which the screen said was a Mr Willis, from Barnet. Subject: Eurp & poound (Kayla may have put the ass in assistant, but her typing owed more to the carpet-bombing approach than any concept of precision targeting).
Mr Willis. Not a first name. That told you something immediately, without even saying Hello to the guy.
‘Mr Willis,’ I said crisply. ‘Mr Nott. Your point, sir.’
‘Yes, I just wondered why an apparently intelligent fellow like yourself was in such a hurry to get rid of the pound and throw in our lot with a currency that’s dropped so much value since it was launched.’
‘I’m not in a hurry, Mr Willis. Like most people in Britain I think it’s going to happen sooner or later, so it becomes a question of which is best, when is best, but I don’t claim to know. My point is that it’s all about economics and politics, and it shouldn’t be about sentiment, because the pound sterling is just money, like any currency. If the Germans can give up the Deutschmark, we can surely stop using bits of paper with the monarch’s head on them.’
‘But, Mr Nott, why should we? A lot of us happen to think the pound is important. We love the pound.’
‘Look, Mr Willis, you lost the pound… whatever it was, thirty years ago. I can just about remember this; the pound – the real pound – had two hundred and forty pennies; a third of a pound was six and eightpence-’
‘Yes, but-’
‘-there were thrupenny bits, sixpences, shillings, florins, half-crowns, half-pennies, ten-bob notes, and-’
‘I know-’
‘-if you were being fancy, guineas. That all went in the sixties and that was the end of the pound. What you’ve got now is a British dollar, basically, so why all the belly-aching about it?’
‘It’s not belly-aching to wish to preserve a vital part of our proud British culture. I am a member of an organisation-’
I looked at Phil on the other side of the desk and spread my hands. He did the throat-cutting thing. I nodded. ‘Mr Willis,’ I said, fading his voice down, ‘here’s a handy hint; attack the Euro via the interest rate. A single interest rate barely makes sense throughout the UK, let alone all twenty-five members of an expanded EU, unless you want – in fact to impose – absurd levels of worker mobility or a vastly increased centralised regional compensation fund.’
‘Look, we didn’t fight and win the Second World War-’
‘It’s been interesting talking to you, Mr Willis. Goodbye.’ I looked at Phil as I cut Mr Willis off. ‘We getting crossed lines with the Daily Mail letters page or something?’
‘I think it’s encouraging that we have a spread of listeners of various ages, views and ethnic and cultural backgrounds, Ken,’ Phil said, leaning towards his mike.
‘Phil Ashby, listeners. Voice of Reason. Singing in harmony from the hymnal of Corporate Mission Statements.’
‘That’ll be me, then. Hi,’ Phil said, right up to the mike. ‘Who’s our next caller?’
‘It’s another Steve, from Streatham.’ According to the screen he wanted to talk about Scotz & & Erop & U.
‘Streatham Steve, hello.’
‘Awright, Ken? Ma man!’ a deep voice shouted. I looked at Phil and crossed my eyes.
‘Steve, you’re doing some violence to the mike on that mobile. I’m sure if you return it promptly to its owner they may not press charges.’
‘Wot? Agh, ha-ha-ha! Na, mate, it’s mine.’
‘Well, bully for you. And the exact flavour of your beef would be what?’
‘Wot?’
‘What is it you want to say, Steve?’
‘Yeah, I don’t want to be a European!’
‘You don’t? Right. Which continent should we tow the British Isles to lie off then?’
‘Na, you know what I mean.’
‘Indeed I do. Well, so vote against it whenever you have the chance.’
‘Yeah, but it’s still gonna happen, innit?’
‘Fraid so. It’s called democracy.’ I hit the FX for Hollow Laughter.
‘Yeah, but the fing is, I blame you Scots, don’t I?’
‘Ah-hah,’ I said. ‘Any particular reason, Steve, or is this just some generalised anti-Caledonian prejudice?’
‘Yeah, the government’s all Scotch, innit? The Labour Party. They’re all Jocks, aren’t they?’