‘Very high proportion of the top jobs, yes, Steve. The Dear Leader himself, our prudent Chancellor is a Scot-’
‘Worse, he’s a Fifer,’ Phil cut in.
‘Na, Phil, sorry,’ I said.
‘What?’ Phil asked.
‘Yeah,’ Steve said, ‘That’s what-’
‘Hold on, Steve, pal,’ I said. ‘Come back to you in two seconds, but I just need to straighten something out with Producer Phil. Okay?’
‘Ah,’ Steve said. ‘Yeah…’
‘What?’ Phil repeated innocently, blinking behind his glasses.
‘Sorry, Phil, pal,’ I said. ‘But you can’t do that.’
‘Can’t do what?’
‘Bring up divisions or petty squabbles between different bits of Scotland. Our internal prejudices and micro-management bigotries are our own affair. We’re allowed to indulge in that but you’re not. It’s like black people can call each other nigger but us white folks can’t. And rightly so, I might add.’
Phil nodded. ‘Things don’t mean what the sayer says, they mean what the listener hears.’
I hit the FX key for a quiet, minute-long sample of the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’, and over it said, voice raised, ‘Still our most elegant formulation of what really would be one of our mission statements if we didn’t spit on such foul aberrations from a great height and grind the ordure-jammed cleats of our Jockboots into their snivelling faces.’
‘Along with,’ Phil said, ‘If you don’t give people justice, they’ll take revenge.’
‘And, Never underestimate the greed of the rich.’
‘Not forgetting, Ditto the ability of people to take exactly the wrong lesson from a disaster.’
‘NMD? Come on down!’ I was laughing again. ‘Or our emission statement: I’m coming! I’m coming!’
‘Or the posh version: I’m arriving! I’m arriving!’
‘Indeed.’ I un-clicked the sample.
‘But anyway,’ Phil said, still grinning.
‘But anyway indeed, Philip.’
‘What it boils down to is,’ he said slowly, ‘that I can’t say the things about the Scots that you say all the time.’
‘Of course not! You’re English. A few of us clever Jocks still blame you for the whole Glasgow-Edinburgh antipathy thing. The good citizens of each very-much-equally-worthy conurbation just loved each other to bits until you guys came along. And frankly the utterly preposterous idea that if we hadn’t had the English to unite us in hate we’d still be a bunch of bare-arsed hill tribes marrying our sisters and murdering each other in caves holds no water with us whatsoever, no sirree. We reckon you were just dividing and conquering. So, like I say, just don’t start, okay?’
‘It’s a good job you’ve got us to blame,’ Phil said.
‘It most certainly is,’ I agreed emphatically. ‘Just don’t for a nanosecond expect the least scintilla of gratitude.’
‘As if,’ Phil said, smiling. ‘As apparently the young folk say, these days.’
‘Yeah, you’ll prise that copy of Clueless out of the video one day, Phil.’ Phil laughed silently and I went back to Steve. ‘Steve. Yeah. All these Scots in Westminster? Hear what you’re saying, but don’t forget: if you think the Scots are crap, and they’re the ones who’ve clawed their way to the top of this particular greasy pole, what does that say about the English politicians?’
‘I fink it’s a conspiracy, mate.’
‘Brilliant! Phil; a conspiracy form.’ I picked the paper copy of the running order from the desk in front of me and rustled it near the mike. ‘Thank you. Steve? Ready; shoot.’
‘Cos, like, you want to get us into Europe, don’t you?’
‘We do?’ I smiled widely at Phil. ‘Yeah! We do! You’re right. Steve, I think you’re on to something here. Possibly a rehab programme. But listen, this makes sense. It’s a Scottish conspiracy to get revenge for three hundred years of oppression, which we secretly feel we never did resist strongly enough.’
‘I fink it’s cos you’re jealous.’
‘Of course we are. Our invasions of you lot never worked. Same with yours of us, though obviously our impression is very much that you were always much better at killing lots of us than we were at killing lots of you. Then you guys realised where our weak spot is and just bought us. That was smart. Except we’ve never forgiven you for being cleverer than us; we’re supposed to be the canny ones in this relationship.’
‘Yeah, cos you lot do want to be in Europe, dontcha?’
‘Naturally. Scots’ll make great Europeans. When we hear the English say, We don’t want to be ruled from a distant capital where they speak differently from us and impose an alien currency on us, we think: hold on, we’ve had that for three centuries. We’ve been there, we’ve had the conditioning, we’ve done the apprenticeship. London, Brussels, what’s to choose? Better to be wee and ignored in a potential superpower than wee and ignored in a post-imperial backwater where the only things that arrive on time are the corporate bonuses.’
‘Yeah, well,’ Steve said.
‘Excellent work there, Steve. Fine contribution. Breaks my heart we don’t pay anything.’
‘Sawright.’
‘Of course this does mean, though, Steve, that having started to uncover the conspiracy, the people who really run the country are now going to be after you. Basically you’re on the run from here on in, chum. Sorry. And I’d get moving now, frankly, because these people don’t hang around. They’ve been known to collar somebody while they’re still making the phone call that alerted what little remains of our so-called free society to the threat in the first place. I’m not kidding, mate, while they’re still-’ I’d clicked Steve’s line off. ‘Steve? Hello? Steve? Steve? Steve! Are you… Dear God, Phil,’ I said in hushed, strangled tones. ‘They’ve got the poor beggar. My God they’re fast.’
‘That was quick,’ Phil agreed.
‘He’s probably already trussed into a head-to-toe strait-kilt and being bundled into an unmarked Irn Bru van even as we speak.’
‘Ayee,’ Phil said, in what was already recognisable as his incurably atrocious Scots accent. ‘He’ll be languishing in a pibrock on the Isle of Ocktermuckty before the day is oot, Ken.’
‘Och, Phil,’ I sighed happily, ‘when you speak, it’s like being home again.’
‘Shplendid. Sho, who’sh our nexsht caller?’
‘Well, we’re obviously shunted onto a deeply Scottish vibe here, Phil, as that spookily accurate Sean Pertwee impression of yours so powerfully testifies. Let’s have…’ I scanned the call-monitoring screen, paging down to where the new calls were still appearing. ‘Ah; Angus. Now there’s a fine choochter name.’ I clicked on his line. ‘Angus. Are you Scottish? Say yes.’
‘Aye, man, ah am. Hullo. How’re ye doin?’
‘Fine and dandy. Yourself?’
‘Magic, aye.’
‘And what have you and your magic eye been looking at, then?’
‘Aye, ah was jus listenin to what yur man there was saying about us an the English, an ah jus thought he wiz talkin a lod a shite.’
Beep. ‘Shite’ was a beepable word; Phil did the business this time, though we all had a button. Beepable words were: cunt, fuck (and variations thereof), shit (and variations thereof), shite (but not crap), bastard (but not, apparently, the Scotified versions I kept getting away with), prick (in context) and cock (in context). We could do this because the show went out with a three-second delay. This meant that, in theory, Phil could beep me if I said anything slanderous or likely to bring Capital Live! into disrepute, or court. Ha, ha.
‘So cogently put, Angus,’ I said.
‘Aw, sorry, man.’
I looked across the desk. ‘Beep count today, Phil?’
‘That’s the first.’
‘Thought it was. Seventy minutes in. Dear me. Standards are slipping. So, Angus, is that all you want to say? We do allegedly have a national reputation for cogent intellectual discourse we ought to be maintaining here, Angy, and frankly you’re not coming up to the mark. Or pound, or groat.’