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Anyway, for whatever reason, we’d been invited. We were “in”. I nearly stood to attention when I told Daphne to accept!
“When is it?” I said. “I’ll cancel everything. If my mother dies, she dies alone.”
“Tomorrow night,” she said.
Slightly disheartening. Obviously an invitation at such short notice means we’re to be fill-ins for somebody who has jacked. Still, I thought, I’d never have expected to have been asked at all, so even being a replacement is an honour.
Then the phone rang. It was George.
“Guess what?” he said. “Melinda and I got asked to a DG’s di
“When did you get your invitation?” I asked.
“Yesterday, late afternoon,” said George. “I rang the DG’s office first thing this morning to say we couldn’t do it. I could scarcely believe I was actually turning down the Director General this morning. I suppose in a way it’s pretty cool.”
After George got off the phone I tried not to be miffed. “Who cares?” I thought. “So what if I was second choice?” We were still going to dine with the…
And then Trevor rang.
“You’re not going to believe this,” he said, “but Kit and I got invited to have di
Kit, sadly, is HIV positive and although he’s doing incredibly well and you would never know he carried the virus he does have to be careful about over-exertion. He and Trevor have a strict rule that they have only one social occasion a week.
“And we used it up having you to di
So there it is. Lucy and I are to be the replacement for a replacement for a replacement. Nonetheless we are going to di
I spent all day expecting Keith Harris to phone and say he’d had to turn down an invite from the DG because Orville has a cold.
Tosser also phoned me today. No chance of a job with his company, which was a bit dispiriting, I must admit. I had thought, vainly, that he’d jump at the chance of recruiting me, that I’d be rather a prestige signing for his company. You know, top BBC man and all that, but obviously he doesn’t think so. “The BBC is just another player,” he said to me, which is a bloody ridiculous thing to say considering the BBC is the largest broadcaster in the world and he has a floor and a half in Dean Street. Quite frankly, I suspect him of only giving work to gorgeous young women with pierced bellybuttons and small tattoos of scorpions on their shoulders; there certainly seem to be a lot of them employed at his office, though that might just be coincidence, I suppose.
Dear Pen Pal
I’m writing this having just got back from di
Anyway, when I say we had di
Of course actually having di
We attempted smalltalk for about a minute.
Me: “So you’re in the shadow cabinet? How fascinating. Although I always imagine that being in opposition must be very frustrating.”
Swine: “Hmm, yes. So your husband works in television comedy, you say? I really don’t think that any of that rubbish is fu
After that he completely ignored me until the cheese, by which time he was pissed enough to try a bit of bored flirting in a lazy, patronizing, off-hand sort of way.
Swine: “I expect with you both being in showbusiness there must be terrible temptations. Do you ever get jealous? Does he?”
I wasn’t having any of it. “What a strange question,” I said, not only hoitily but also fairly toitily and turned back to the bishop, with whom I was getting on like a house on fire. He must have been ninety-three if he was a day and he was telling me about his hobby, which was collecting eighteenth-century Japanese erotic art! Extraordinary! Where does the church get them? What’s more, whilst describing a porcelain figurine of a naked ninja (in rather too much detail), he squeezed my leg under the table! The randy old goat. What is it about men? They’re pathetic. A couple of drinks and they start sniffing about like dogs. Sam was scarcely being any better than the bishop. He was sitting next to this tart with extraordinary knockers (not entirely her own, I fancy) and I could see him just ogling them. I mean at first he’d at least tried to be discreet, although I knew what he was up to, of course, all that reaching for the salt and passing the bread. Sad, really. And after a few glasses of wine he just gave up any pretence at subtlety and started simply staring at them with his tongue hanging out. I mean it couldn’t have been any more obvious if he’d said, “Phwoar! Look at the jugs on that!” I’ve no idea who this overly boobed slapper was, she was only about twenty-three or four and clearly a second wife to someone, but I didn’t find out whose. I looked for a man with a smug smile on his face but there were too many contenders. It may have been the shadow cabinet minister. On the other hand why would a man with a girl like that be flirting with me? I’m not exactly spectacularly blessed in the knocker department.
All in all, what with Sam drooling and the shadow minister sneering and the bishop’s hand begi