Better to watch the truly despicable suffer, which was why I was here, I supposed.
Here was a Victorian warehouse in Clerkenwell converted into a TV studio and the place where Winsome Productions would be making their new, if much-delayed and re-scheduled, late-evening news magazine and analysis show Breaking News. Most of it would be live but the bit I’d be doing was being recorded. Sensibly. After I’d had my mad, bad idea for what to do here, I’d felt really deflated when I’d learned that the piece with the Holocaust denier would be taped rather than shown live; I’d wanted the buzz of it happening for real (but then I also started to feel relieved, thinking, Well, no point in doing it at all, then… before I caught myself, and thought, Oh yes there is; no chickening out).
Though I might still chicken out. There was a heavy metallic lump in the right pocket of my jacket reminding me that I had something to do here, something nobody was expecting, but I knew that when it came to the moment, I might still ignore it, play along, do what everybody expected me to do, and do nothing more than shoot my mouth off.
It was late afternoon. I felt over-briefed. Phil had gone through the obvious stuff with me, and so had yet another young, attractive, breathless, awfully well-spoken researcher.
Our presenter would be Cavan Lutton-James, a slim, darkly handsome and energetic guy with a quick, clipped but clear delivery and a natty interview style, which could veer from emollient to biting in the turn of a phrase. He was Irish, so I’d already stockpiled one or two remarks about Ireland ’s inglorious part in the great war against Fascism, to keep in reserve just in case any misguided ideas about balance caused him to start siding with the bad guy. A bad guy I hadn’t seen yet; they were keeping us apart.
The only person I’d met in the Green Room – apart from a couple of attractive but breathlessly awfully production assistants, at least one of whom was called Ravenna – was a young comedian called Preston Wynne, who came across as a bit of a fan boy and was supposed to record a topical, robust, cutting-edge, irreverent, yada-yada piece on something or other, after we’d done the big Holocaust denial discussion/confrontation. He was still working on his script while he sat in the Green Room, clattering quietly on his iBook, staring at a plate of gourmet sandwiches and drinking too much coffee. I almost felt like telling him to let the piece run longer than he’d been told, and even be prepared to pad a little, because the bit I was going to be on might not have quite the run-time the producer was expecting, but of course I didn’t.
I didn’t even have a drink in the Green Room. I really wanted one, but I kept myself sober because I wanted to be sharp and fully alert for what was going to happen.
Phil and I had spent a sober lunch in the corner of the Black Pig, another basic Soho boozer similar to the Bough. Phil was obviously worried I was going to make a mess of things, lose my rag, freeze, rant incoherently and start foaming at the mouth; whatever. He’d really wanted to come along with me but I’d told him weeks ago he wasn’t going to. Partly this was for the stated reason, that he wasn’t my dad and I didn’t need my hand held, but partly also it was because he might, a) guess just from my look or behaviour closer to the event that I was going to get up to something seriously off-piste and so give the game away, and b) catch a little less flak from our mutual bosses after I’d done what I intended to do. If I had the guts to actually do it.
‘Umm… what else. Oh, yeah, and obviously, the whole thing about the Second World War not happening, too; that’s obviously a brilliant line to take. It’s so basically ludicrous, yet it’s not intrinsically any more so than claiming the Holocaust didn’t happen.’
‘I know, Phil,’ I sighed. ‘We have kind of been through this.’
‘I know, I know, but you’ve got to get this rehearsed.’
‘No, I don’t. Actually rehearsed is the last thing I want it to be.’
‘Too risky. What if you make a mess of it?’
‘Look, I don’t make a mess of it in front of a million radio listeners five days a week, why should I make a mess of it in front of a late-night Channel Four audience of probably fewer people… when it’s taped, for fuck’s sake?’
‘Oh, yeah, and you won’t swear, will you?’
‘Phil, have I ever fucking sworn on air?’
Phil looked like a man with severe diarrhoea sitting in a Land Rover heading quickly down a bumpy jungle path towards extremely distant toilets. ‘Well, no,’ he admitted, ‘but I still don’t know how you do it. I mean, it doesn’t seem possible you’ve managed to avoid it all these years.’
‘Well, I have.’
‘What, even on Inverclyde Sound?’
‘StrathClyde Sound; the radio station where the creative’s typist missed the space bar rather than accidentally hit the exclamation mark key, and no, not even there. It’s because even though it might not sound like it, I do have a pretty accurate idea exactly what I’m going to say the instant before I say it, I never forget the context – am I in the pub or the studio? – and there’s just sufficient time for my on-board censor to step in and make the relevant – if not always perfectly elegant or sometimes even grammatical – amendments.’
‘Right. Well.’
‘Anyway, it’s late-night Channel Four, for Christ’s sake, not Blue Peter. If they can say “fuck” on Sex and the City I don’t see why I can’t. Christ, I heard a “cunt” on Larry Sanders once.’
Phil’s eyes went wide. ‘Oh, no, I really don’t think you should-’
‘Look, will you just calm down a bit?’ I told him. ‘I’m not going on intending to swear, okay?’
He said, ‘Okay,’ but he still looked worried.
Of course, what I wanted to add was, Dammit, man, I won’t have time to swear; it’ll probably all be over in about five seconds and I really wouldn’t worry your ugly big head about what I’m going to say.
Again, though, I didn’t.
I was plumbed in. I’d half expected it would be radio mikes (always attached to you with a warning not to visit the loo with them switched on, in case you want to cause the sound engineers, ooh, seconds of hilarity), but they were using hard wire instead. What appeared to be a clone of one of the attractive but awfully assistants slipped the wire beneath my jacket, under the button of my shirt just above the waistband of my trousers and then – once I’d worked it upwards – attached it between the top two buttons of my shirt. I was going for the relaxed, casual, open-necked look. Besides, they take your tie off you in the nick, along with your belt and laces.
The awfully assistant smiled as we were negotiating the cool black wire up between my chest and the fabric of the shirt, and I smiled back, but while we’d been doing this her bare arm had swung against my jacket and made the pocket clunk off the seat and I was secretly terrified she was going to see the sweat prickling up underneath my make-up and ask, ‘Hey, what’s that hard, heavy, metallic thing in your jacket pocket?’
Paranoia. The terrible thing about paranoia is you always have the sneaking suspicion that the moment it passes is when you’ll be at your most vulnerable.