And it seemed that every miffed ex-employee, or indeed anyone who had ever known the Doveston, had some lurid story they wanted to sell. Even Chico’s now-aged aunty, who still ran the ever-popular House of Correction in Brentford, came forward with a ludicrous yarn about the young Doveston sexually molesting her pet chicken and running off with her favourite teapot.
But all publicity is good publicity and if you are very very rich it doesn’t matter what the tabloids print about you. Or even how true it might be. You sue and you win and the public loves you for it. And the damages make you even richer.
Mind you, there were moments when things got mighty dangerous. Someone — and it might very well have been the same someone who sent the video stills to the tabloid — someone tipped off a prominent investigative TV journalist that the British government was funding the importation of narcotics and that the Doveston was acting as middle man and taking one per cent of the profits.
It chills my very soul today when I recall the ghastly details of the freak accident which took that TV journalist from us. May his tortured body rest in peace.
But oh, I hear you say, enough of this. Relevant as all these details are and necessary to the telling of the tale, we really do want to get on with the guts and the gore.
Well, all right all right all right. I can beat about the beaver no longer, the story must be told and only I can tell it. The real guts and gore and the madness and mayhem occurred at the Great Millennial Ball.
Held at Castle Doveston, this was to be the social occasion of the century. Anyone who was anyone had been invited and anyone who wasn’t wasn’t getting in.
Evidently I wasn’t anyone, because I hadn’t received an invitation. The first I heard about the ball was when Norman told me about the costume he was working on that ‘would really impress the ladies’.
Norman had just returned from the balloon trip. What balloon trip? Well, the one the Doveston had organized for his closest friends to rise above the clouds over the English Channel and view the total eclipse of the sun.
What total eclipse? The one that the rich people watched and we didn’t. That’s what!
‘Good, was it?’ I asked Norman.
‘Bloody brilliant. You should have been there. Mind you, it fair put the wind up the Doveston. He’s expecting the end of the world as we know it. He seemed quite certain that the eclipse was a sign. A portent in the heavens. He wee-wee’d himself. In front of the Prime Minister.’
‘I’ll bet that made you laugh.’
‘Of course it didn’t. Well, it did, a bit. Well, quite a lot really. I nearly wee-wee’d myself, trying not to.’
‘So, he’s still as Richard as ever?’
‘Much more so. How long is it since you’ve seen him?’
‘Four years. Ever since that business with the videos and the vice squad. He pays me a retainer, but I’m no longer welcome at Castle Doveston. I receive press packages, so that I can continue to work on the biography.’
‘And how is that coming along?’
I made the face that says ‘bollocks’.
‘I’ll get us another round in, shall I?’
As Norman went off to the bar, I looked around and about me. I was in the Flying Swan, that drinking house of legend. No-one here had any plans to celebrate the millennium. They’d already done it. Last year. It had all been down to a tradition, or an old charter, or something. I’d missed it, but I’d heard tell that it had been quite an occasion. Second coming of Christ and everything. Norman had put on the firework display. I wondered if he would be doing the same for the Doveston’s bash.
‘Tell me all about this ball, then,’ I said when he returned with the drinks.
‘Oh yes, I was telling you about my costume, wasn’t I?’
‘Something about a peacock, you said.’
‘Yes, that’s it, the peacock suit. It’s not a peacock costume, that would be just plain silly. It’s a peacock suit, as in peacock mating display. You see, the male peacock’s tail feathers serve no purpose whatsoever, other than for attracting a mate. Female peacocks get off on males with big tail feathers. They always have. So those are the ones they mate with and, in consequence, natural selection has meant that the males have evolved bigger and bigger tail feathers. So big now that the blighters can’t even get off the ground. Not that they’re bothered; they’re too busy having sex.
‘I’m sure there’s some point to this,’ I said. ‘But so far it’s lost on me.
‘Well,’ said Norman. ‘Imagine a human equivalent. A suit that a man could wear that would attract females.’
‘There already is one. It’s called a Paul Smith suit.’
‘I seem to recall that yours didn’t work very well.’
I took a wet from my glass. ‘Whatever happened to Jackie,’ I wondered.
‘Died in a freak accident, I think. Tragic business. But I’m not talking about a very expensive suit that turns some women on just because it is very expensive. I’m talking about a suit that turns all women on. I have designed such a suit and when I wear it to the ball, I shall be able to have the pick of any women I choose.’
‘That’s bollocks,’ I said. ‘That can’t be true.’
‘I seem to recall that you said the same thing about my invisible paint. And where did that leave you?’
‘In hospital,’ I said. ‘With fractured ribs.’
‘Well, it served you right. The next time someone comes driving straight at you in an invisible car, hooting the horn and shouting out of the window, “Get out of the way, the brakes have bloody failed,” you’ll know better than to stand your ground, shouting back, “You don’t fool me, it’s a sound effects record,” won’t you?’
‘Whatever happened to that car?’
‘Dunno,’ said Norman. ‘I can’t remember where I parked it.’
‘So this peacock suit of yours will really pull the women, will it?’
‘Listen,’ said Norman, drawing me close and speaking in a confidential tone. ‘I gave the prototype a road test in Sainsbury’s. I was lucky to get out alive. I’ve adjusted the controls on the new one.’
‘Controls? This suit has controls?’
‘It works on a similar principle to the Hartnell Home Happyfier. But I’ve decided to hang on to the patent this time. I intend to prove to the world that a man with mutton-chop side-whiskers and an Arthur Scargill comb-over job can actually get to have sex with a supermodel.’
‘Only by cheating.’
‘Everybody cheats at something. The problem is that I’m going to have to keep my suit on while I’m having sex.
‘How about a pair of split-crotch peacock underpants?’
‘Brilliant idea,’ said Norman. ‘And to think that everybody says you’re stupid.’
‘Eh?’
Our conversation here was interrupted by a shout of: ‘It’s that bastard on the telly again.’ Knowing full well that the Swan did not have a television, or a jukebox, or a digital telephone, I was somewhat surprised by this shout. But sure enough, it was some out-borough wally with a tiny TV attached to his mobile phone.
Norman and I helped Neville the part-time barman heave this malcontent into the street. But while we were so doing, I chanced to glimpse the tiny screen and on it the face of the bastard in question.
It was the Doveston.
The photograph was only a still and one taken some years before. A publicity photo, of the type he liked to sign and give out to people. The voice of a mid-day newscaster tinkled from the tiny TV. The voice was saying something about a freak accident.