Hubert Brenton, Bishop of Cotchester, whom luckily Declan hadn’t bitched up during his New Year’s Eve interview and who was currently furious with Tony for deciding to televise Easter Communion at Gloucester Cathedral rather then Cotchester, was the first to be signed up. Declan invited him to lunch at The Priory the following week, and, as it was Lent and a Friday, Taggie cooked the most succulent Coquille St Jacques, followed by sole Veronique. Maud, with a cross round her neck and her titian hair drawn back in a bun, gravely asked the Bishop to say Grace, and pointed out the beautiful spring flowers in the centre of the table, which her children had sent her for Mothering Sunday.
Rupert, who, as part of his getting-fit-for-Cameron-Cook campaign, was off the booze, provided the most exquisite white wine. Caitlin, who, unlike poor Sharon Jones, had passed her religious studies O-level, was able to converse with the Bishop at length about St Luke, and particularly the Prodigal Son.
There was a dicey moment when she dropped her bread, butter-side down, and said ‘Shit’, but by then the Bishop was fortunately talking to Maud about his recent trip to the Holy Land. Fortunately, too, he’d been wandering round the Sea of Galilee last weekend and missed the newspaper reports of Declan’s exit from Corinium. Over the lemon sorbet, Declan and the Bishop discussed how thrilling it would be to dramatize Lytton Strachey’s brilliant essay about Cardinal Newman and Cardinal Manning, who had both lived in Oxford, which was, after all, within the franchise area.
After lunch Maud, Taggie and Caitlin discreetly withdrew, and Declan produced Rupert’s venerable port.
‘Not drinking?’ asked the Bishop, as Rupert passed the decanter on.
‘No, My Lord,’ said Rupert gravely. ‘I’ve given it up for Lent.’
The Bishop, who was very hot on sex and violence, had always thoroughly disapproved of Rupert, but perhaps at long last, after such a turbulent past, he was trying to shed his jetset playboy image and forge a more satisfying way of life.
Declan and Freddie steered the conversation round to Corinium Television and the appalling poverty of their religious programmes, and then raised the subject of their rival bid. They very much hoped the Bishop would join Venturer and become their Deputy Chairman.
‘Television today,’ said the Bishop warmly, ‘is a key factor for the quality of life and for establishing values.’
For the past ten years, he went on, he had had special responsibilities for communication in the diocese and he saw joining Venturer as a way of extending a work that interested him greatly.
‘We know busy people don’t do fings for nuffink,’ said Freddie, cosily. ‘If we win the franchise, there’ll be a very small director’s fee, say ten thousand a year, which could always go to your favourite charity.’
Signing up Henry Hampshire, the Lord-Lieutenant, was even easier. Freddie and Rupert wooed him over a very expensive lunch in London. Henry, as it turned out, was absolutely furious with Tony for flogging a field ten miles from The Falconry, but only a quarter of a mile from and in full view of Henry’s house, to some property developers. He was also a very old friend of Rupert’s, having a wife too plain for even Rupert to have had a crack at, and had liked Freddie when they’d met shooting at Tony’s.
‘Any money in it?’ he asked, having flogged two stone lions last week to pay a tax bill.
‘Fucking fortune,’ said Rupert. ‘We’d need a bit up front.’
‘Don’t mind that,’ said Henry. ‘As long as you arrange for me to meet Joanna Lumley. Suppose I could always sell a Stubbs.’
‘You needn’t go that far,’ said Rupert, shocked. ‘We only want about ten grand. What about that minor Pre-Raphaelite, the one over the chimney-piece in the sitting-room?’
‘Good idea,’ said Henry. ‘Never liked it. Silly girl lying in the water, covered in flowers. Someone should have taught her the backstroke.’
At the end of lunch, Henry tried to pay.
‘No, no,’ said Freddie. ‘Honest, it’s on Venturer.’
‘Oh well, if you can get it on corsts,’ said Henry.
Strong on his homework, Declan investigated the likes and dislikes of Lady Gosling, Chairman of the IBA. He also discovered that her best friend, Dame Enid Spink, was the composer interviewed so disastrously by James Vereker. Declan called on Dame Enid in her rooms at Cotchester University, where she was director of music, and found her ferociously conducting to a gramophone record of her latest opera, The Persuaders.
‘Worst programme I’ve ever been on,’ boomed Dame Enid, as she and Declan dipped pieces of stale seed cake into tea the colour of mahogany. ‘In fact Corinium’s whole attitude to music is utterly philistine. Last time the franchises came up for grabs, that treacherous little fart, Tony Baddingham, promised to finance a Cotchester Youth Orchestra. Not a penny have we seen.’
Declan said truthfully that Venturer wouldn’t be prepared to finance anything except television programmes until they broke even, but he hoped Dame Enid would advise them on their music programmes.
‘If you get the franchise,’ asked Dame Enid, ‘would you get rid of that little squirt James Vereker?’
‘Indeed we would,’ said Declan.
Once Dame Enid agreed, it was a piece of cake to recruit Professor Crispin Graystock, a rich left-wing English Literature don who had dry, unmanageable hair like Worzel Gummidge’s dipped in soot, wild eyes and a wet formless face, and who longed to be a television star because he thought it would help sell his slim and unutterably dreary volumes of poetry.
Although he was still smarting over not being included in the new Oxford Companion to English Literature, Crispin Graystock was regarded as a considerable heavyweight in the academic world.
Freddie Jones took Lord Smith, the even more left-wing ex-secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union, out to yet another very expensive lunch, where, with his mouth crammed simultaneously with lobster and Pouilly Fuissé, Lord Smith agreed to join Venturer, and provide a substantial cash investment from Union funds.
‘Doesn’t he feel guilty about getting involved with such a capitalist organ as Venturer?’ said Rupert disapprovingly.
‘Not at all. Once I told him the money to be made,’ said Freddie. ‘He feels television is for the people.’
Rupert, seeking a shit-hot money man, rang up Marti Gluckstein, arguably the most brilliant accountant just this side of the law.
‘How’d you like to join our bid for the Corinium franchise?’
‘I’ve already turned down four other groups,’ said Marti in his nasal Cockney twang. ‘I loathe television.’
‘You’d have to buy a house in the area,’ said Rupert. He could feel Marti shudder all the way down the telephone wires.
‘I loathe the country,’ said Marti.
‘Don’t have to live here,’ said Rupert. ‘Just buy a place and sell it the moment we clinch the franchise. Prices are going up so fast in the Royal triangle, you’ll double your money by the time you sell it. I’ll find you one.’
The prospect of making such a fast buck clinched it.
‘Marti Gluckstein’s a crook,’ said Declan in outrage, when Freddie and Rupert jubilantly told him the good news.
‘Don’t be anti-semitic,’ said Rupert primly.
‘And he doesn’t live in the area.’
‘He’s just bought a cottage in Penscombe,’ said Rupert blithely. He was quickly learning he had to box very carefully round Declan’s integrity.
Bearing in mind the IBA’s obsession with minority groups, particularly ethnic ones, Declan, who knew nothing about cricket, recruited Wesley Emerson, a six-foot-five West Indian bowler and the hero of Cotchester Cricket Club, whom he’d met at a Sports Aid drinks party.