Scene One: central London café with low hubbub; it is around 9.30 in the morning on a rainy, wintry day; Alastair is listening to conversation at a nearby table, but we can’t hear it; he talks in a kind of angry whisper, with harrumphs
Why don’t they hang up signs in public places? “Please desist from doing easy crosswords out loud if you are phenomenally stupid.” This was supposed to be MY ten minutes: MY ten minutes when I have a double espresso – which they do quite well here, although I told them last time quite clearly, biscotti being a plural form in the first place, there can obviously be no such word as “biscotties”. Anyway, this is supposed to be my ten minutes, in which I peruse this stunning 1895 vellum edition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses – the one with the Beardsley linocuts – before swooping down on the biannual Chelsea Book Fair in search of similar leather-bound treasures for Nick’s shop. But can I concentrate? No. Why? Because of some idiots, equipped with a copy of the Daily Idiot, trying to fill in the more idiotic of the idiots’ crosswords. “Bee-oh-wolf,” she said just now. And I’m supposed to sit here, studying an illustration of Philomel being turned into a nightingale, and not interfere? “Bee-oh-wolf, four letters, second letter P,” she says. [Stupid sing-song clueless noise] “Oh,” says her clueless friend. I haven’t seen either of them properly, but the second one sounded remarkably like that woman Nick set me up with for his fortieth birthday – which he did, as usual, without conducting even the most basic compatibility research. “What’s a Bee-oh-wolf then?” “Dunno,” says the first one, “I don’t think there ARE any four-letter words with P as the second letter, are there? Perhaps your “Nipple” is wrong—” and I think I can’t stand this, so I call across, [snappy] “Epic, the answer’s epic, you stupid woman!” and then go back to my book. Of course, that was only the beginning. “Who said that?” “He did. Bloke with the beard.” “What’s it got to do with him?”
[Pause; hubbub; he stirs coffee and sips it] I’m trying not to listen, but … [sigh]. I made a policy decision some years ago, you see, that in this sort of situation, I just won’t suffer in silence. And sometimes it does prevent more agony, because, all right, they may laugh at me and call me names, but I manage, on occasion, to [raises voice a bit, to be heard] SHAME THEM INTO SILENCE.
[Short pause; the hubbub is continuous; he picks up something new. Impatient] Not these two, though; it’s unbelievable, unbelievable; they’re still at it. [He blurts out another answer] Waterfall! The answer’s waterfall! Cataract! Nine letters beginning with W! Water, five letters. Fall, four letters. Meaning: a cataract. It’s no good, I can’t stand this. It’s torture. [Calls out] It’s all right, madam, I’m going.
[He gathers his things hurriedly, swigs his coffee] I’m going, you win, welcome to the Kingdom of Barbaria! I’m going, I’m going, the field is yours.
Scene Two: evening: Alastair is at home; classical music in background. He is quite tired and oddly happy; having a hot drink at bedtime
[He drinks] Ah. Cocoa. Those Aztecs knew a thing or two. Yes, after a day of hard, gruelling human sacrifice and baking poor little guinea pigs inside lumps of mud, curl up with a nice cup of cocoa. [Drinks] Life Groomers, I’d never even heard of it; apparently it gets an audience of two million, but then, let’s face it, so would hanging, drawing and quartering if they brought it back, so that’s hardly a watertight argument for taking part in it. I still don’t quite believe the way today turned out. I mean, it started typically enough, with those Thicky Sisters at that café cudgelling their atom-sized brains over simple synonyms. [Sips happily] The Fair went well, I returned to Nick’s shop at 3 p.m. with my antiquarian treasures, which had been hilariously under-priced by Thatched Cottage Books of Alfriston, and we had a cup of Lapsang to celebrate, and Nick complained about the customers, who were (as usual) within earshot, while I re-shelved the fiction, having noticed that M. R. James had got alphabetically the wrong side of Henry James, which is typical of the sort of morons you get browsing in Charing Cross Road bookshops these days, and I was just back to leafing through Metamorphoses when Nick coughed and mentioned in a rather uncomfortable way that, ahem, well, the thing was, a couple of people were coming in this afternoon to see me. Of course, at this point, I was still blissfully innocent of what was about to unfold. “To see ME?” I said. “Why?” For one wild moment, I wondered if I was winning a pub quiz trophy – for my years of dedication or outstanding brilliance. But it wasn’t that. He looked at the clock, gulped, and said in a rush, [quite anxious] “Alastair, I hope you won’t mind, but I put you forward for Life Groomers.” I said, “Oh.” Well, I didn’t know what Life Groomers was, so I waited for a bit more information. He said, look, it’s been a long time since Geraldine, hasn’t it? And I said yes, ha, twelve years, why d’you ask? Well, he said, I’m going to tell you straight here, Alastair, as a friend. [Hard to say it to best friend] You’re not attractive to women.
WHAT? I said. I mean, [hollow laugh] I’m sorry, but this is NICK! “Alastair,” he says, “you’re a nice person. You have a lot of love to give. These Life Groomer people will give you techniques to make you come over AS a nice person instead of – instead of as [this still stings] a lonely pedantic short-tempered beardy-weirdy. Change is a good thing. I mean, that book you’re reading. That’s all about change, isn’t it?”
So I was just saying, “Yes, Nick, but the people in this book are mostly turned, against their will, into TREES” when half a dozen people came in, just like that, door opens, bell goes ding-a-ling-a-ling, man with a camera with a light on top of it, Nick says, “Oops, they’re here,” and in they march. [It’s an awful memory] I stand there blinking like the proverbial rabbit in the headlights. “You must be Alastair!” says this man with a comical haircut and thick orange make-up. “Good man! I’m Jake from Life Groomers. Great stuff. Meet the team! Great stuff! Jancis (“Hello!”) is going to help you with haircut, wardrobe and, er, strategic shaving; Baxter (“Hi, man!”) will improve that oh-so negative body language of yours; and Phoebe (“Lovely to meet you!”) will attempt to train you out of certain linguistic habits. We’ve been filming you secretly for a couple of weeks already. Are you surprised?” [Pause, stunned] “Yes, I am surprised.” “Good man! The girl with the very thick glasses is the production assistant Shakira ([a whisper] “Hello”), she’s a bit shy, and that’s Chazza with the clipboard ([idiot voice] “Hi, man”), anything at all you want to know, ask Chazza.” He paused for me to say something about how thrilled I was. I didn’t. I merely wondered, since Jake had said I could ask Chazza anything at all, what would happen if I asked him the capital of Botswana. “Great stuff. Excellent. What more can I say? Welcome to Life Groomers!” At which point, everyone in the shop, including a couple of my least favourite customers who were loitering in the travel section, burst into wild applause.
[Drinks] The only good thing about the whole experience was seeing Nick’s expression. He looked like he’d just watched his best friend and long-time employee run over by a tank. Which, in a way, he had. I let him stew. I wasn’t so much angry with him as shocked. When Jake and most of the others had gone, leaving Chazza and Shakira behind to explain the formalities, I went and stood in the back yard, in the drizzling rain, and I was actually shaking. Before they left, the Life Groomers had given me some bits of instant advice, by way of a free sample. And these helpful hints were: stop hunching; lose the floppy bow-tie; and stop passing hurtful snap judgements on other people’s inferior intellectual capacity.
[Drinks] Morons. I came back inside.
[Serious] “Do you have any misgivings, Alastair?” said Shakira. Her glasses were so thick, I noticed, that her eyes behind them looked quite tiny. She was frowning and serious.
“You might say that,” I said. “Look, the way I see it is this. If I come across as a lonely, pedantic beardy-weirdy” – I looked at Nick when I said this, in the hope that he would have the grace to look embarrassed, instead of which he prompted, “Don’t forget short-tempered”. “All right,”
I said. “If I come across LIKE THAT, isn’t it just possible that a lonely, pedantic, short-tempered beardy-weirdy is what I am?”
Shakira folded her arms and for a few moments looked at them in silence. Chazza – concentrating on his clipboard – started drawing pictures of windmills to pass the time. At last, she spoke. “Do you know Michelangelo’s unfinished sculpture in Florence?”
[Impressed, but suspicious] “Er, yes,” I said. She had a sweet little face behind those glasses.
“Well,” said Shakira, “to me, you see, that figure, the way it’s half-emerged from the block of marble, sort of struggling to be born – I think that answers your doubts about Life Groomers.”
“Er, in what way?”
“Some of us don’t want to be helped out of our blocks of marble, even though we sense we are only half-finished. But if we are released, with expert help, we are still the same material, you see. [She’s warming up] I mean, the statue is still marble. Which shows that it’s possible to change yet remain the same. I promise you, Alastair, you will ALWAYS be essentially a pedantic beardy-weirdy. You just may not always be a lonely one.”
Nick gave me a look, as if to say, “You see?” I gave him a returning look that said, “Oh bog off, you Judas.”
She had another thought. [Light] “Chazza, do you remember Jeremy?”
[Puzzled] “That geezer who’d never had a girlfriend?”
“Jeremy’s problem was that he was like the unfinished statue.”
Chazza snorted. “Yeah. But he also had a gigantic conk.”
Scene Three: the date. The bathroom of a restaurant, where Alastair is being filmed on a date; he is agitated. Sounds of loos flushing, taps, hand-driers, etc. When he impersonates Caroline, she’s quite posh-sounding
I am trying. But I think this may be the worst torture ever devised by the mind of man. “Just have to go to the Gents,” I said – and I could tell she was a bit puzzled; after all, this is the third time I’ve come in here, and we’re only halfway through the soup. I just keep thinking, look, I’m in here trying to be pleasant to a complete stranger in an extraordinarily provocative frock, and outside in a surveillance caravan there’s Jancis, Baxter and Phoebe, all making [exaggerated “that’s interesting” sound] “O-o-oh” noises, and ticking a box every time I say the word “stupid”.
A shame they wouldn’t let me do this dummy-run with Shakira. I did ask. If it was Shakira, you see, I wouldn’t have to pretend to be interested in her. [Knows it sounds mean] Oh, look, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. It’s just that before she left the shop the other day, she bought a book about early French cinema, and when I said, “There’s a complete Jean Vigo DVD out now,” and she said, “I know, I’ve ordered it,” it was just like, you know, chatting. If it weren’t for the chronic myopia and the crippling shyness, she’d be all right. It turned out she’d even booked to see some of that Jean Cocteau season at the NFT, featuring that rarely seen extra footage from La Belle et la Bête.
However, the Life Groomers just laughed when I suggested Shakira for the date, and instead I’ve got this agonising bore called Caroline, and I’ve been trying SO HARD to take an interest in everything about her: her job, her ex-husband, her friend’s ex-husband’s catastrophic skiing accident (actually, that was quite interesting), and her ex-husband’s friend’s daughter’s cat. They said to me the other day, “All you know is facts, Alastair. Most people like to talk about THEMSELVES.” But, God, it’s tiring when you have to fill in the pauses. “Tell me about that, Caroline; oh but WHY did you do that; how did you FEEL when you did that?” And then I have to pinch myself, literally, at the top of the thigh, otherwise I’ll slip into a coma. Even her solecisms are dull – “disinterested” for “uninterested” [sigh], although [perversely impressed] I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say “aircrafts” before. I don’t dare correct her. The Life Groomers will be alarmed enough already, I reckon, what with me nervously drinking pints of water, and reaching compulsively under the table to interfere with my own leg.
[Loo flushing or other bathroom noise]
Scene Four: at home
It was only when I was signing the release form that I realised the problem. We were in the production office, it was quite intimidating, brightly lit, hundreds of computer terminals, dozens of under-25s in fashionable specs, wearing tech-y earpieces and important, faraway expressions. But, strangely, I felt quite welcome. And when we watched the tape to see how scary I was to Caroline – who characterised me afterwards as “hairy and weirdly aggressive, like an angry hobbit” – I knew I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t go back, because I’d already started. They were all delighted, thrilled, and so on – not least because, with me on board, they now had a full series, the plan being to slot me between a woman with self-esteem issues and a bloke who stinks, a pair affectionately nicknamed “The Cringer” and “The Whiffer”. But there was one problem. They want to groom me in May, culminating on Sunday the 17th, which happens to be the date of the London Pub Quiz Championship final in Highbury. “Sorry, Alastair,” said Baxter, “but can’t your saddo quiz mates manage without you?” – which is the most insensitive thing any of them has ever said to me, and you should hear Jancis on the subject of my cardigans.
Then Jake had an idea. “Look,” he said. “I’ve got it. Shakira takes Alastair’s place in the quiz team. Problem solved. Great stuff.”
Shakira looked a bit panicky. Her glasses steamed up. She bit her lip.
“Oh come on, Shakira!” he said. “You’ve got this IQ of – what is it? A hundred or something?”
“A hundred and eighty-five,” she said.
Jake looked at me. “What do you say to that?” he said.
[Alastair can’t get over it] “A hundred and EIGHTY-FIVE?”
[As Shakira] “But I’ve never done a pub quiz.”
“Quick, Alastair, ask her a question.”
“Oh. Right. Um, Shakira, which London Underground station shares its name with a station on the Paris Métro?”
“Er … [works it out, quickly; with assurance] Temple!” she said.
They all looked clueless.
“Is that good?” Jake said.
“Oh yes,” I said. “That’s very good.”
“Well, that’s solved that, then,” said Jake. “Well done. Great stuff. Good man. Top job.”
I signed the form. I’d done enough shilly-shallying. And something was happening to me, I knew that. I didn’t just want to know facts any more. When Shakira said “Temple”, she suddenly had this special look, you see, the look known to quizzers as “the flash” – it’s the look of pure joy you get when you just KNOW. And I felt pleased for her, because it marked her out as “one of us”, but sort of melancholy for myself, because that flash is the only happiness I know, and it comes from being one hundred per cent certain how to spell the word “minuscule”. While we’re on the subject, though, Nick frequently has the flash with questions about motor racing, and the thing is, motor racing doesn’t interest him and it NEVER HAS. Spooky, eh? “Emerson Fittipaldi!” he says; “Ayrton Senna!” We think Nick may have a direct psychic connection to Murray Walker’s brain. We don’t know how it came about. But it’s tremendously convenient, none the less.
Scene Five: a pub. It’s a few weeks later; Alastair is waiting for Nick
Nick should be along in a minute. I’m not going to put up with any more of his nonsense about these fancy specs. ALL this is his fault, from the tip of the trendy haircut to the soles of the shiny shoes. Even the proceedings of last night can be laid at his door, come to think of it. [Drinks] Which makes me feel slightly better about it. Oh, they were so pleased with me on Life Groomers, you see. Right up until last night. Four weeks of slog, and they were saying mine might be the best personality make-over ever. I went for hours at a stretch without calling anybody stupid. I was a success story. I was going to be great TV.
And now I’ve blown it. Oh, where’s Nick got to? Yesterday, you see, was the nigh
t of my last filmed date, and also the final of the pub quiz. Shakira and I met beforehand at the office, to wish each other luck. Over the past four weeks I’ve seen a lot of her, obviously, as she’s trained for the big night; I’ve become quite proud of her, to be honest. We both, separately, went to see La Belle et la Bête, and interestingly we both preferred it WITHOUT the extra footage. We both thought Cocteau had been right not to labour that crucial transfiguration scene. Meanwhile the quiz team – Nick, plus Trensher and Hoppy – all welcomed her on board, and I enjoyed watching a natural quizzer really come out of herself. So last night when we met to say, “Good luck, Alastair,” – “Good luck, Shakira,” it was a bit unsettling when she suddenly fixed me with this meaningful look and said, [very serious, very upset] “Oh, Alastair!” and ran off in the general direction of Highbury.
I was confused, to say the least. What was all that about? Then Chazza came over with a cup of tea. He’s an idiot, Chazza, although obviously these days I try to avoid the “I” word, but I’ve grown to like him. I thought how amazing it was that a month ago I’d never even met these people: now they appeared to be my whole life.
“Big night, Al, yeah?” said Chazza.
“Yeah,” I said.
“What gel you using?”
“Couldn’t say, mate.”
“Scared?”
“Not really.”
“Huh,” he said. [Between you and me] “Hope you do better than the Whiffer, eh!”
I laughed. I’d heard on the grapevine that the Whiffer’s muscular BO had effortlessly triumphed over all attempts to quell it. On his final date, the woman had edged further and further away from him until her chairleg went off the edge of the platform they were sitting on, and she’d somersaulted backwards down some stairs.