Inconceivable

So of course I had to reverse back up the street (with people reversing behind me, and making V-signs as if it was my fault). By a miracle I managed to park in a space exactly the same size as my car. I don’t know how I did it. Extraordinary achievement and it only took seventy-two manoeuvres, which isn’t easy when you’re trying not to judder your insides. Thank God for power steering!

Anyway, out I got and hobbled back along the street to the clinic, still trying to keep my knees together, past the car with its hazards on. I’m afraid to say that I gave way to anger and snarled at the bloke at the wheel, shouting, “You’re blocking the road, you fool!” which was rather stating the obvious. Then of course I felt all guilty because perhaps he was waiting to pick up a disabled person. On the other hand, there was no yellow sticker, but even so it never helps to be aggressive.

So, feeling all hot and bothered I announced myself at the reception desk. Most embarrassing.

“Hello. I’ve come to see if my vagina poisons my husband’s sperm.”

I didn’t actually say that but the receptionist knew anyway. She smiled wearily and told me to take a seat. There were two or three other women waiting as well and I must say it felt very strange and slightly creepy knowing that we’d all been shagged within the previous hour or two and that we were all desperately trying to hang on to the dollop within.

As it happens, the clinic was very good and got through us quite quickly. I only had time to get halfway through a fascinating article in Woman’s Own about Prince Andrew’s exciting engagement to his new fiancee Sarah Ferguson, who is known to her friends as Fergie. I must say medical waiting rooms are incredibly nostalgic places. They are the only places where you can pretend that the Princess of Wales is still alive. I got quite sad all over again just thinking about that dreadful Sunday when she died.

So anyway, then it was into the torture chamber and all the usual appalling cervical intrusions, legs up in the stirrups, fanny prised apart, invaded and inspected. “Ah, well,” I thought, “another day, another duck-billed battering ram shoved up my poked, prodded and provoked privates.” There was a student there as well, having a good old stare.

I hate that!

I absolutely loathe it. I mean I know they have to learn and all that but I really can do without spotty teenagers wanting to mess around between my legs. It reminded me of being back at school.

Anyway, what with one thing and another I was in a foul mood as they slapped on the freezing cold lubrication and the doctor shoved up his horrid contraption, cold again, of course, and began scraping out my cervix. And what did he say? Well, of course, he said what they always say.

“Do try to relax.”

Oh well, of course. A perfect stranger is sticking bits of cold, greasy metal up your vagina, staring deep within, tutting in a worried manner and then asking an adolescent boy what he thinks of it, but do try to relax.

I always want to say, “Sit on a traffic cone, mate, and you try to relax,” which would be brilliant and utterly unanswerable, but of course I never do.

Well, anyway, it turns out that Sam had not disgraced himself. There was enough of the stuff up me for the test and to my surprise I got the result immediately. Normally these things take ages to come through but amazingly the doctor whipped his spatula out of me, slapped the smear under the microscope and gave me the result there and then. Satisfactory, he said. Everything had turned out fine. Except, that is, for the fact that when he extracted the metal duck it made a disgusting loud wet raspberry noise, which was excruciatingly embarrassing. It’s all that jelly they use and he used far too much. Every time I braked on the way home I slid off the car seat.

Anyway, as I say, long story short (EastEnders is nearly starting and the new barmaid is considering turning to prostitution to support her child. Juicy, or what?), the news is good. Sam and I are definitely chemically compatible. My juices do not reject his seed (although he’s been such a pig lately I would not blame them if they did!). I am of course very pleased about this because despite his being a pig I do love him and I had been dreading having to pop round to our gay friends with a turkey baster and asking them to fill it full of sperm.

So there we are. It seems that compatibility is not the problem. Nor is my ovulation and nor is the motility of his sperm.

And yet we are still not preg! Why? WHY? Bloody why?

It is completely baffling and most distressing. What’s more, we’re running out of options. I fear a laparoscopy looms. Oh, shit. The very thought of a doctor inserting a television camera into my bellybutton makes my knees wobble! I’m not good with bellybuttons at the best of times; they make me go funny. I won’t even let Sam kiss mine (not that he’s offered to in years) and now I must face the prospect of a CNN news team clambering through it and sending back live bulletins from my ovaries.

I can scarcely believe I’m going to write this but I’m beginning to seriously think about Drusilla’s theory re: ley lines and Primrose Hill. She does seem very certain of her facts. Shagging in Highgate is less conducive to connecting with the ancient forces of rejuvenation and fertility than shagging on Primrose Hill. I know that Drusilla is a witch but she’s a good witch, which is a very different thing from the wicked variety.

Dear etc.

Well, this morning was a pressure job all right, our postcoital compatibility test. Doctor’s orders. Shag and then straight round to the clinic to check the juices. Not much fun for the woman certainly but let me tell you it’s a horrible situation for the bloke who is called upon to provide the wherewithal. I mean it’s not ideal, is it? Sex on demand is tricky enough at the best of times, but in the morning, particularly after a big night at the Director General’s, it’s a very tough call indeed. The truth is we haven’t done it on a weekday morning in years, well you don’t, do you? We’re not bloody students, are we?

Besides which, the whole problem was compounded by the fact that we slept through the alarm, dammit, and I happened to have a particularly early and rather important meeting.

Lucy says, “When don’t you have a meeting?” But actually that’s not true. I am, in fact, often there at her beck and call. The point is when I am available to her she’s not interested. She’s only interested in presuming on my time when she knows I have other things to do.

So, what with the hangover (which I think I managed to disguise from Lucy), the earliness of the hour, and the impending meeting, instant and impressive erections were not massively in evidence.

Lucy tried to be nice about it but quite frankly she didn’t try very hard. I don’t think women have any idea how difficult it can be. They think that because most men seem to have erections pretty much all the time we can summon them up at will. They do not understand that when it comes to dicks, the captain is not in control of the ship.

Lucy said, “I cannot believe this! Every morning you have a horn you could hang a bath-towel on. What’s the problem now?”

She simply doesn’t understand. I admit, of course, that on almost every other morning of my life I have woken up with an erection but that, and this is the point, is because I didn’t need one.

It really is unfair. Any bloke can get a stiffy when he doesn’t need one, and of course he almost always does. On buses; in the checkout queue at Sainsbury’s; anywhere, really. But what women do not understand is that these unasked-for horns are normally not bonking horns but useless, sexless, pointless, unlooked-for protrusions.

Anyway the point I’m making is that the dick has a mind of its own, considering itself entirely autonomous and impervious to orders from the bridge. This is something that women need to understand, something that they should be told by their mothers at an early age. The fact is simply this: trying to tell a knob what to do is the very last thing it will appreciate or respond to.

I’m going on a bit, I know, but the injustice of the situation moves me deeply. Anyway, we pulled it off in the end, so to speak, but it was a very, very close-run thing.

I did, however, manage to make my meeting, which I was pleased about because it was a special one, concerning as it did Nigel’s major new film-making initiative, an area in which considering my current standing with the Controller I cannot afford to screw up. Actually, I was rather excited about it. After all, film is film and we humble telly people do not normally get to dabble in so exalted a medium.

It was to be a “breakfast” meeting at a posh hotel, I’m sorry to say. Whichever American it was who invented such a deeply uncivilized idea should have his eggs boiled, his muffins split and his pop-tarts toasted on an open fire. You can’t make sense of a meeting over brekkie! How the hell are you supposed to take anything seriously when you’re eating Rice Krispies? Or, worse, Coco Pops, which was what I had.

I can never resist the kids’ stuff when I eat in hotels. I always want to order sausage, chips and alphabetti spaghetti from “Sidney the Seal’s Jolly Menu for Whizz Kidz”. Well, let’s face it, that sort of stuff is normally the only thing that British hotels can actually cook. If you’re fool enough to order anything “steeped” in a sauce or containing the words “jus”, “julienne” or “trio” you might as well diary in half an hour in the bog for the afternoon while you’re at it.

In fact this was Claridge’s, so all the posh nosh was probably superb and I could have ordered porridge or salmon or the full English but I’ve never been big on breakfast, and the smell of kippers and kedgeree before eleven quite frankly makes me nauseous. Fish for breakfast has always struck me as wrong, like having a croissant for supper or coffee in a pub. Apparently, however, fishie brekkie is the last word in traditional crusty, old English chic (“chic” I believe being the traditional spelling of “shite”), so Claridge’s of course offers it. Not for me, though, nor salmon and scrambled egg on a lightly toasted muffin. Let’s face it, how often in my life do I get the chance to have a bowl of Coco Pops?

Anyway, to “cut to the chase”, as people in film say, I was meeting some people from Above The Line Films.

I do beg your pardon, I was meeting with some people from Above The Line Films. One must of course speak American English when moving in film circles these days (sorry, motion picture circles) and since those circles are the ones in which my Controller wishes me to move, American English I must speak when I meet with all sorts of motion picture wankers, or, rather, jerk offs.

The people from Above The Line are very hip at the moment, the reason being that they recently made a film that some Americans quite liked. It’s an interesting thing about the Brit film industry (such as it is) that for all the gung-ho, Cool Britannia jingoism we spout about our cool new British talent, we judge our product exclusively on whether or not people in America go to see it. You could make a British film which every person in Britain went to see twice, plus half the population of the European Community, but unless at least five thousand Americans have also been persuaded to go the style fascists will judge it naff and parochial. On the other hand, if we make a movie which flops everywhere and which only five thousand Americans go and see, the director will still be seen as a major burgeoning international talent. This is what the Australians call a cultural cringe. They used to have the same thing about us. In the sixties it was no good being big in Oz, you had to be big in Britain. They’ve dropped that now and concentrate on America like everyone else. I believe that some New Zealanders still see success in London as important but probably only the ones who supply the lamb to Marks amp; Spencer.

Anyway, long story short as Lucy would say, there I was, post deeply unsatisfactory shag, sitting at Claridge’s “doing” Coco Pops and kedgeree with three of Britain’s brightest motion picture talents. Justin Cocker, an estuary Oxbridge mid-Atlantic drawler who called the toilet the “bathroom” and asked if they had any bagels and lox. A snarling Scot called Ewan Proclaimer, who took one look at the Claridge’s breakfast room and said, “God, I fuckin’ hate the fuckin’ English. I mean they are just so fuckin’ English, aren’t they? D’you ken what I’m saying here?”

Also a pencil-thin woman called Petra. On the phone the previous day I had asked Justin Cocker if Petra had a surname and he said that if I needed to ask that question I did not know the British motion picture industry. Which is right, of course, I don’t. Which is why I work for sad old telly.

Weird meeting. Like a summit between people from different planets. The BBC being vaguely located on earth, and Above The Line Films being located somewhere far beyond the galaxy of Barkingtonto. The extraordinary thing is that they think that they are the ones who live in the real world. This is because the BBC is publicly funded and is hence some dusty old pampered 1940s welfare state relic which thinks the eighties never happened. Amazing how these days it’s hip to assume that the money supplied by vast multinational media conglomerates (writing off their tax losses) is somehow more tough and real and proper than that raised by the public for the purposes of their own entertainment.

Anyway, on this occasion licence fee money appeared to be good enough. (It certainly paid for the breakfast, anyway.) I told them that the BBC was interested in co-producing more films with a view to theatrical release prior to TV screening and that my special area was comedy. It seemed I had come to the right people. They said if I wanted comedy they had comedy. Real comedy. Not crap comedy, they assured me; not all that fuckin’ crap that the BBC passes off as comedy, not shite comedy, but sharp, witty, edgy, in-your-face, on-the-nose and up-your-arse comedy. “Two words,” they said, “Zeit” and “Geist”. In other words, “Tomorrow’s comedy today.”

Well, I can’t deny I was excited. This surely was what we wanted. I had only to steer this lot towards Nigel and my standing would again ride high. Ewan Proclaimer produced his script, the eagerly awaited follow-up to his film Sick Junkie, which had been “hugely successful”, i.e. some American critics liked it, although it was actually seen by less people than watch the weather on Grampian. Sick Junkie had been a career breaker for Ewan, but now he explained that he wanted to move totally away from all that stuff.

His new script is called Aids and Heroin.

“It’s a comedy about a group of normal, ordinary kids,” said Ewan Proclaimer, “all heroin addicts, of course. Probably Scottish, perhaps Welsh or Irish…”

“Although we’d shoot it in London,” interjected Pencil Petra.

“Well, of course we’d shoot it in London!” Ewan snapped. He was clearly not a man who liked to be interrupted. “Morag and I have only just got wee Jamie into a decent school… Now these kids survive on the edges of society, right? Dealing drugs, stealing, whoring, ripping off the social. The movie is a week in their ordinary mundane lives. They inject heroin into their eyeballs, they have babies in toilets, they get Aids, they try to raise veins on their private parts in order to inject more heroin, they kill a social worker, they have anal sex in exchange for heroin which turns out to be cut with bleach and kills them, they have abortions, they’re raped by gangs of English policemen…”

My head was spinning at this apocalyptic vision.

“Excuse me,” I risked an interjection. “I hope I’m following. This is a comedy we’re discussing here?”

“Total comedy,” Ewan assured me, “but real comedy, about what’s actually happening to kids today, not escapist English crap.”

It all sounded very post watershed to me, but you never know these days. Things are moving so fast I confidently expect to see them making bongs out of Squeezy bottles on Blue Peter. But anyway, broadcastable or not, I wasn’t having any of it. Well really, it makes me so tired. This never-ending diet of sex and drugs and urban horror that well-heeled highly educated young film makers seem to feel duty-bound to serve up as stone-cold naturalism. For heaven’s sake, I know that life is tough out there but not exclusively so. There are more adolescents in the Girl Guides and the Sea Scouts than there are teenage junkies, but nobody ever makes a film about them.

I finished my Coco Pops in a marked manner, resisting the temptation to drink the chocolatey milk out of the bowl, and rose to leave.

“Well, thanks for explaining your idea to me, Ewan,” I said. “Unfortunately the BBC is not in the business of funding cynical tales about drugs and prostitution which purport to reflect everyday Britain merely so that the fashion junkies who make them can swank about at Cannes and then bugger off to work in the States the first chance they get.”

“Look, bollocks to the English bullshit,” Ewan Proclaimer replied. “Do you want the picture or not?”

“Ah dinnah,” I said in what I hoped was a Scottish accent, although it almost certainly wasn’t. Then I took up the bill and left the room feeling proudly self-assertive. I may not be able to write myself but I can at least protect the public from the self-indulgent witterings of those who can’t either.

By the time I got back to Television Centre I had worked myself into a right old self-righteous lather. The first thing I did was to get Daphne to take down a sarky fax telling Above The Line Films where they could shove it. I had no sooner finished doing this and was contemplating a calming game of Tomb Raider on my PC when Nigel called and summoned me to his office.

I trudged along the circular corridor convinced that this was it, that the long-awaited shafting was about to be administered. It seemed obvious that Nigel intended to get rid of me before the Prime Minister’s imminent visit (set for this Saturday) so that he could take all the credit himself. As I entered the hallowed office, however, it seemed that I was wrong. Nigel was positively beaming at me and actually asked if I wanted a coffee.

“Sam!” he said. “I just heard you did breakfast with Above The Line and met with Justin, Ewan and Petra.”

I was about to protest that I had only been following orders but he gave me no choice.

“Congratulations, mate! Excellent move. Ewan is a genius and a God-sent antidote to all the crap your department normally commissions.”

Alarm bells began to ring.

“Yes, that’s what he said,” I replied limply.

“He’s just the kind of raw, edgy talent we need for the new film initiative. It would be absolutely sensational if you could bring him and the whole Above The Line ethos into the Beeb. As it happens I’m having dinner with Justin and Petra at Mick and Jerry’s tonight so I’ll do everything I can to push it along. OK, mate? Well done.”

My coffee had just arrived but I was already rushing out of his office, scarcely bothering even to attempt an excuse. I ran as fast as I could back round the circle, bashing into internal mail trolleys and PAs with trays full of tea as I went. I arrived back in my office just in time to see the fax I had dictated to Daphne emerge from the machine having been transmitted as instructed. Fate deals me blow after blow.

Dear Penny

I’ve decided. Since the next medical step for me is a laparoscopy, which is intrusive and not to be entered into lightly (like my bellybutton), it is foolish for me to ignore other possibilities.

Tomorrow is a full moon, my traffic light says I’ll be ovulating and Sam will just have to like it or lump it.

Oh my God.

I got home today and Lucy told me that tomorrow night, at midnight, she wants me to take her to the top of Primrose Hill, which is a public park, and shag her under the full moon.

I’m still hoping that this is some kind of joke.

Dear Penny

Tonight is the night! Full moon! What’s more, the forecast is for a mild night with gentle breezes. Perfect. Perhaps the fates are finally going to be on my side.

Drusilla and I went to a fairy shop in Covent Garden at lunchtime and got some crystals. I don’t really believe in that sort of thing but I must say they really are rather beautiful and Drusilla assures me they’ll help. We sat together on a bench in Soho Square and energized them. This involved squeezing the crystals in the palms of our hands and, well, energizing them. Drusilla made a sort of low groaning noise but I just concentrated. I had a tofu pitta bread sarnie from Pret A Manger in the other hand so I imagine that I energized that too, which can’t hurt, can it?

I’ve also bought a nice thick picnic rug from Selfridge’s, because you want to be as comfortable as possible on these occasions. Also one of those inflatable pillows that people use in aeroplanes. This is to prop up my bum afterwards because I want to give Sam’s sperm as good a downhill launch as I possibly can. I have this vision of millions of them tumbling down some sort of water shoot (like the Summit Plummit at Disneyworld), hurtling off the end and then getting knocked unconscious in a fruitless effort to penetrate my cold unyielding eggs.

I also went to Kooka’i and bought an incredible new frock. It’s just a sheath, really, and I’m afraid my tum will bulge, but I’ll hold it in. The dress cost an entire week’s wages but Drusilla insists that this must be a sensual and erotic event, not just a sly bonk in a park. There’s to be wine and candles and I must reek of musk and primrose oil and ancient pagan scents. I really didn’t know where I was supposed to get ancient pagan scents in London on a Friday afternoon but Drusilla had it all sorted out. Rather conveniently, Boots do a set of soaps that cover the lot and she’d bought me a box as a present.

She also reminded me that I must remember to wear my silkiest pair of split-crotch panties and when I told her that I do not possess any pairs of split-crotch panties, silky or otherwise, she was quite surprised. Drusilla is definitely a dark horse, except I shouldn’t be surprised really; in the end being a witch is just about sex, isn’t it? Anyway, she insisted that we go immediately to a sex shop and buy some erotic underwear, but when we got in there I just couldn’t. It wasn’t that I was embarrassed, I was just laughing too much. I mean these places are ridiculous. They have these dildos the size of draught excluders! What on earth you’re supposed to do with them I just don’t know. Stand them in the hall for people to hang their hats on, perhaps? They also had these sets of Oriental Love Balls, which a girl is supposed to push up and then walk around with them in. I was just saying that I didn’t believe any woman ever walked around with Love Balls up her doo-dah when the assistant came over and said, “How are the Love Balls going, Drusilla?”

“Lovely,” replied Drusilla dreamily, giving her hips a little jiggle and smiling.

Do you know, I swear I heard a clanking sound. I am so parochial.

In the end we agreed that the most sensual thing of all would be to wear no knickers at all. I’ve always thought naughty underwear was curiously sexless. Except perhaps a sheer silk teddy, or French knickers, but I don’t think they’d be right for Primrose Hill and I doubt that you can get grass stains out of silk.

I played Celtic music and clannaed on my Walkman on the tube on the way home to get me into a mood of fertile pagan spirituality. I’m quite excited in a funny sort of way. It’s not often I shag alfresco these days. Quite frankly, it never has been a common occurrence with me. Insects and bare bums don’t mix.

I hope Sam cheers up about it, though. I regret to have to report that last night, when I told him what was expected of him, he was most unenthusiastic. In fact he got quite hostile. Obviously I can sort of understand his doubting the effectiveness of the plan. It’s a long shot, certainly, relying on the faint echoes and rhythms of the ancient world to jolly his sperm along. I’m highly sceptical myself, but I do wish he’d see that we must try everything. We’ve now been infertile for sixty-two months and all the doctors can think of doing about it is to pump me full of dye and video my uterus. Well, forgive me if I sound feminist, but with that in prospect I feel I have a right to expect Sam to explore every other avenue first.

It’s always the way, though, isn’t it, Penny? The poor woman gets the short end of the stick. Our bodies are so complicated! It’s like with contraception. The things women have to go through (all pointless in my case, it seems) and yet still men only worry about their own pleasure. I remember when Sam and I first started doing it regularly he wanted me to go on the pill or have a coil fitted because he didn’t like condoms. He said they were a barrier between us (well of course they are, that surely is the point). He said that they spoiled the sensual pleasure of our love-making. Basically what he was saying was that he didn’t want to put his dick in a bag. So instead would I mind either filling my body with chemicals or having a small piece of barbed wire inserted into me? In the end, I got a Dutch cap and God was that a palaver! Trying to put one of those in when you’ve had a bottle and a half of Hirondelle is not easy. The damn thing was always shooting across the bathroom and landing in the basin. Then there was that awful cream you had to put on. The nights that I nearly shoved toothpaste up my fanny and brushed my teeth with spermicidal lubricant! Makes my eyes water just to think about it.

Anyway, I’m digressing. As I often do when on the subject of the selfishness of men. Well, let’s face it, there’s just so much scope. But as I was saying re the Primrose Hill bonk, I just have to give everything a try, it’s a matter of life and… Well, I don’t know what, life and no life, I suppose, which is a pretty terrible thought. And anyway who knows what strange and powerful forces there are in the world? I mean the moon does definitely affect people, we know that. You only have to look at dogs. They go potty at full moon. And as Drusilla has pointed out, even vaginal juices have a tidal flow and so, when one comes to think of it, does sperm. I mean it might all just be a case of never having done it when the tide’s in. As for ley lines, well I admit that it sounds pretty unlikely. On the other hand certain places do have a special energy. I can remember once feeling very strange during a walk in the Devil’s Punchbowl in Surrey, and that’s supposed to be a mystic place, I think, isn’t it? Sam claims it was the macaroni cheese I’d had for lunch in that pub, but I know it wasn’t.

And what’s more, apart from any spiritual and mystical considerations, I had hoped that Sam might find the whole idea a bit raunchy. After all, we are lovers, aren’t we? Besides being boring old marrieds? Surely we can see all this in the light of a naughty, saucy adventure?

No chance, I’m afraid. Sam didn’t get home until half an hour ago (last-minute preparations for the PM tomorrow), and he’s insisting that he still has some calls to make. I’m writing this while he whinges and whines about comedy in his study. This was supposed to be our time, a time of erotic and sensual reflection. I’ve had my bath (by candlelight with rose petals floating on the water) and used all the soaps. I was really beginning to feel quite goddess-like and fertile and Sam is acting like it was just any other bloody night.

I bet Carl Phipps wouldn’t be in his study making calls about stupid comedy programmes while his lover lay damp and scented and naked upon their bed below.

No! I must not think that sort of thing. It’s wicked.

Sam has agreed to do it and that’s the main thing. I can’t expect him to suddenly turn into a romantic lead. All I need him to do is shag me at the appointed time and place.

T’will be dark in an hour. The moon is on the wax and the witching hour is nigh. Do you know, Penny? I’ve got this funny feeling that it might just work.

Dear Self

It’s four o’clock in the morning and we’ve just got back from the police station. They were quite nice about it in the end, once they let me put my trousers back on. I thought I handled the whole matter pretty well, actually.

Dear Penny

Sam was ridiculous tonight, quite bloody ridiculous. I mean you just do not give false names to the police, do you? Particularly “William Gladstone”. What chance is there of there being a man called William Gladstone having it off on the top of Primrose Hill in the middle of the night? I honestly think that if he hadn’t tried to give them a false name they would have let us go. I mean bonking isn’t illegal, is it? But of course when he claimed to be a nineteenth-century prime minister they asked for ID and immediately the game was up.

“Oh yes,” said Sam, “that’s it, I remember, my name’s Sam Bell just like it says on my credit card. Ha ha. Samuel Bell, William Gladstone; William Gladstone, Sam Bell. Easy mistake to make.”

When they asked him his occupation I said, “Prat,” which made them laugh and helped a bit, I think. He looked like one of those men who stand on the end of train platforms. Not much of a turn-on at all. I explained to him as patiently as I could that Drusilla had insisted that a steamy passionate atmosphere was essential. We must both be highly, throbbingly almost primevally sexually charged. Timeless animals of passion, caught up in the eternal spinning vortex of all creation. After all, I pointed out, if we can’t be bothered to put the effort in then we can hardly expect the ancient gods and goddesses of fertility to do so either.

“Hmm,” he said and nodded in a kind of stunned way.

Anyway, I made him go and put on his black tie and dinner suit, which he wears to the BAFTA awards every year. He’s always been disappointed when wearing that suit, having never won a single award. They always give them to someone fashionable with smaller ratings. I prayed that the ancient and timeless deities of the firmament would change all that tonight and give him the most important prize of all.

Lucy made me put on black tie, which quite frankly made us look like Gomez and Morticia, particularly since she’d really gone to town with the black eyeliner. I must admit, though, she did look fantastic. Like a beautiful model, I thought. I really did and I said so. “You look like a beautiful model,” I said and she said, “Oh yeah sure, I do not.” Odd, that, the way women react to compliments. They’ll expend any amount of energy telling you that you never say anything nice to them and that you don’t fancy them, but when you do pay them a compliment they say, “Oh yeah sure, I do not.” Nonetheless, I think she was pleased.

Sam suddenly started being rather sweet and I must say he looked very nice in his dinner suit. Most men do look good in black tie. Dinner jackets even make a paunch look sort of stately and dignified. Not that Sam has a paunch. Well, maybe a tiny one, but not really. Anyway, I thought he looked lovely, even though he still insisted on wearing his anorak “just till we got down to it”.

Actually I can scarcely credit it, but it was all beginning to get rather fun. Lucy had prepared some bits of artichoke on biscuits (fertile fruit, apparently) and oysters! We had them in front of the fire with a glass of red wine (just one) before getting in the car. Lucy had also bought a beautiful black crocheted shawl to keep her warm and it just looked fantastic with her white skin showing through the black, like a Russian princess or something. As I say, her make-up was all dark and Gothic around the eyes and her lipstick was like a gash of shiny crimson. And she’d put on some long droopy silver earrings I’d never seen before.

All in all, she’d really made an effort, which I loved her for. I myself had tried to enter into the spirit of things by putting on the silk boxer shorts I got last Christmas and had so far never worn.

I do wish Sam hadn’t put on those Donald Duck pants. I know he was trying to be nice but you don’t need Disney characters when you’re trying to be all pagan and ritualistic, even if they are silk.

Anyway, we got there and amazingly found a parking place almost immediately (were the Gods intervening on our behalf?). And having got over the usual car palaver (Sam set the alarm off, I don’t know how he manages to do that so often), we stood there together at the foot of the ancient hill. It was only eleven-thirty so we had a good half-hour to climb up it and get down to it, so to speak. I tried to hold Sam’s arm but his hands were full.

It probably was silly to take along a stepladder but I thought the gates would be locked and we’d have to climb over a fence. They lock Regent’s Park up, I know that. Lucy thought it made us look like burglars and told me to go back and put it on top of the car, which meant five more minutes wrestling with bendy bungies.

It was a very quiet night for London and I must say the hill looked fantastic against the moon. We seemed to have it to ourselves apart from the birds and squirrels and, of course, the spirits of the night. Drusilla had assured me that the spirits would definitely be about. Flitting hither and thither, bringing good fortune for some, a hex for others. I thought I saw one but it turned out to be an unconscious homeless alcoholic slumbering on a bench near the children’s playground.

If we succeeded, if the gods really did bring us luck, I was going to bring my children to play on those swings every day.

Funny, as we made our way up the path, to my surprise I really did begin to feel all ancient and beautiful. I tried to close my mind to the fact of dirty, noisy, modern London all around me and allow my body to respond to the timeless rhythms and vibrations of the eternal cycles of life on earth that were swirling about me.

Of course it would have been easier if Sam had not kept telling me to watch out for dogshit, but I suppose he meant well.

I trod in this huge turd the moment we entered the park. Huge. No mortal dog could have passed such a turd. Honestly, I went in almost up to my knee. Any deeper and I would have had to call for a rope. London Zoo is situated at the bottom of Primrose Hill and I was forced to conclude that an elephant must have escaped.

Oh, I do so hate treading in dogshit. I suppose that’s what you get for wandering around London’s parks in the dark, but why don’t people clear up after their dogs? In Australia the council supply plastic bags and special bins. You put your hand in the bag, pick up the turd then fold the bag back over it and drop it in the bin. Superb. And we call them uncivilized. Over here of course the bags would instantly be scattered to the four winds and the bins would be the target of every puerile little prat with a can of spraypaint in the neighbourhood. Graffiti artists? Like hell. God I loathe the way liberal-minded people feel the need to defend this endless depressing scribbling as if it was some kind of vital and vibrant expression of urban culture, rather than just the work of arrogant bored little vandals that it is. I mean, whenever they talk about graffiti on the telly they always show some fabulous mural in the New York style executed over several months and now hanging at the Tate. Of course, people’s actual experience of this loathsome vandalism is nothing like that. It’s the endless repetition of the same identical scribble, executed purely to flatter the ego of the arrogant dickhead with the spray-can.

Halfway up the hill Sam suddenly started ranting about graffiti, which is a particular hate of his. God knows what made him think of it at that time. I told him to shut up because I was trying to influence my ovulation and I didn’t want him spoiling my positive vibe.

At the top of Primrose Hill I was amazed to discover that I was starting to get quite motivated. I mean I had expected to be petrified with embarrassment, but in fact I felt quite sexy. It was such a fine night and Lucy looked so beautiful standing there in the silvery light of the full moon. There’s a sort of look-out area at the top of the hill, with benches and a map of the panoramic view of London. We had it all to ourselves and it was suddenly very beautiful, like we were on a flying saucer hovering over London or something. Lucy took off her shawl and put it on a bench, then we stood for a moment, staring at the city all laid out before us. She looked so stunning in just her sexy crimson dress and with a gentle night breeze playing in her hair. I’d been worrying that I might get stage fright under the pressure and be one dick short of an erection, but no way! I was a tiger! I think I fancied her at that moment as much as I’ve ever fancied her, and that’s quite a lot, as it happens.

London looked like a great starry carpet spread all about us. It felt as if we were in Peter Pan (except that’s Kensington Gardens, not Primrose Hill). I thought for a moment about all the thousands of centuries that had gone before, when we could have stood on that very same spot and seen nothing but darkness below us. Suddenly our time on earth and the fact of being human seemed very small indeed. Completely insignificant in the grander scheme of things. Except that what we were hoping to do, what this night was meant to achieve, was in fact as big as the whole universe! New life! A new life was what we had come to this place to make. A brand new beginning. Should we succeed, this very moment would be the dawn of time for that child.

My baby’s entry point into the great circle of eternity.

We chose a place on the grass behind the concrete summit (Sam having first thoroughly checked the area with his torch for dog-do and used hypodermic needles, which was sensible) and laid our blanket on the ground. Then I put out the circle of candles around the blanket (little nightlights in jamjars that would not be spotted from afar) and sprinkled primrose oil about the place.

Then I lay down with the moon on my face and, ahem, raised the hem of my garment. Sam lay down on top of me, and, rather incredibly, we had it off. I must say I was proud of him. I’d been half expecting him to fail to deliver, but apart from complaining a bit about it being painful on his knees and elbows he was quite romantic about it. We kissed a lot (for us) and all that stuff, bit of stroking, etc. I shan’t go into detail, but I’m all for that sort of thing, you know, foreplay. It’s so easy as the years go by to neglect the preamble and just get straight down to it, so to speak. I regret to say that Sam does tend rather to just roll on top and go for it. He doesn’t mean to be insensitive. It’s just there always seems to be work in the morning. Anyway, on this occasion we took a bit more time, not much more, but it makes all the difference.

I won’t say that I actually had an orgasm, the situation was rather too fraught for that, I’m afraid, but I nearly did and I definitely enjoyed it and when we’d finished I thought we’d done well. After all, it’s not every girl that has it off wearing a new satin frock surrounded by candles on the top of Primrose Hill at midnight under a full moon.

Afterwards we lay there for a little while on the rug (me with pillow under bottom), gathering our thoughts and listening to the breeze in the trees.

Anyway, that was when Sam screamed.

This, I’m afraid, brought an abrupt end to our idyll, as well it might. Unbeknownst to us there had appeared upon the hill a nocturnal dogwalker, a nervous old man who on seeing two prostrate figures surrounded by candles had thought that a satanic murder was in progress. He had no doubt been suspecting some such occurrence for years and Sam’s sudden yelping convinced the old sod that tonight was the night. Off he went to flag down a passing policecar and shortly thereafter we were caught bang to rights (with the emphasis on “bang”) by the officers of the watch.

What had happened was this. As Sam and I had lain there together in the warm and spiritual afterglow of our lovemaking, a squirrel had found its way into Sam’s trousers, which Sam had left nearby along with his silk jocks, having stepped out of the whole lot in one. I don’t know what had led the squirrel into this dark territory. Perhaps it was after Sam’s nuts. What I do know is that the squirrels of Primrose Hill and Regent’s Park are incredibly cheeky on account of the manner in which they are indulged by all and sundry. Anyway, there Sam’s trousers lay in a state of sort of concertina’d readiness waiting for Sam to step back into them. As Sam stood bent and hovering above his trousers, one foot in and the waistband firmly gripped, the squirrel popped out its head to see what was what. There was of course a confrontation.

They faced each other in the night, Sam staring down at the squirrel, the squirrel staring up at Sam, or in fact at Sam’s bollocks, which it was situated directly underneath.

Amazingly, it was Sam who screamed first.

Lucy says it was a squirrel but if it was a squirrel then someone’s been feeding them steroids. This looked more like a ferret or a weasel to me, possibly an urban fox. I’d just risen to my feet, idly thinking of this and that, contentedly contemplating the large and joyful whisky I’d be treating myself to when we got home. I reached down to pull up my trousers and instantly I felt this hot breath upon my bollocks! Looking down between my legs I saw it, eyes blazing, teeth bared, talons poised. Whatever it was, it appeared to me to be getting ready to rip my scrotum off! Of course I screamed. Who wouldn’t have screamed with an alien creature hovering beneath his bollocks! Of course I know that Lucy is convinced it was a squirrel and it’s true that Primrose Hill is amply supplied with squirrels. It’s also true that these appallingly over-indulged tree rats tend to treat all humans as nothing more than sources of free food. Nonetheless I contend that what I saw fossicking around in my trousers tonight on Primrose Hill was like no squirrel I have ever seen. It was big and tough and toothy and wicked-looking and it will haunt my slumbers for many a night to come.

The police were upon us almost before we knew it. We did not hear them coming because Sam was leaping about beating his hands between his legs and shouting, “Ahh! Ahh! Get a stick! Ahh! It’s going for my bollocks!” I think that the squirrel must have seen the coppers first, actually, because by the time they arrived Sam’s trousers appeared to be empty (apart from him, of course). They were nonetheless still very much unhitched, which was all rather embarrassing. I was all right because I had only to shake my dress back down, but Sam got into an awful mess trying to pull his trousers up. I think that somehow he managed to get his foot through his belt loop and as the officers breasted the hill Sam was still bent double wrestling to free the whole thing up. He had his back to them and I regret to say that the sight that he must have presented to them in the torchlight could not have been pleasant. I should mention here that Sam’s Donald Duck pants were also round his knees so that there was a second full moon shining on Primrose Hill tonight. I think we were very lucky that they didn’t do us for indecency.

Anyway, as I say, had Sam not insanely attempted to give the police a false name I think they would have let us off there and then, but instead they took us in. I certainly think that Sam’s following up his false name debacle by warning them that he was an intimate of Downing Street made matters worse. I mean, you do not try and pull rank on the rozzers, particularly if you haven’t got your trousers on. I didn’t really mind getting run in, it sort of made me feel even more pagan and dangerous, like a witch or an outlaw, as if the forces of order had tried to constrain our tryst but had arrived too late! And anyway, I knew they’d let us off in the end. After all, it isn’t a crime to assume a pseudonym, is it? I don’t think it is, or what would they do about stage names? In the acting profession if you have the same name as somebody else, Equity actually make you change it, so it can’t be illegal, can it?

Well, anyway, we sat about a bit at the police station and after a cup of tea and one or two off-colour innuendos from the young constables they let us go. Sam got quite shirty about the jokes the coppers made, which I thought was stupid since they were no worse than the sort of rubbish he commissions every day. They even dropped us off back at our car, which I thought was nice of them.

Anyway, it’s all over now, for better or worse, and here I am, lying in bed. Sam’s already snoring, sleeping the sleep of the great and powerful lover, but I’m wide awake, clutching my crystals, humming Celtic hymns and praying to Gaia to deliver new life into my body. Let Mother Nature make me a mother too!

In my heart and my soul I truly believe she will.

Well, it’s now the evening following our Primrose Hill tryst and today has not gone well.

In fact, today has gone worse than I could have dreamt possible.

On the plus side Lucy is very happy about our success last night. She seems to have convinced herself that the power of positive thinking has been the missing factor in us getting pregnant. She has therefore decided to believe absolutely and fundamentally that Primrose Hill will work its magic. When I got home this afternoon I found her sitting in front of the fire watching a Saturday afternoon film on Channel Four and looking wistful, sipping camomile tea and gently trying to will her eggs to envelop my sperm. It’s a strange thing, but you know she did sort of look pregnant, I can’t really say why, but sort of serene and womanly and, well, fertile. I know it’s silly to say that, and particularly silly to get our hopes up, but then perhaps it’s not. Perhaps Lucy is right. Perhaps positive thinking is what we need. Anyway, if there’s any balance of fair play in the world we’ll be pregnant; because the rest of my life is double buggered squared.

I have not mentioned my inner torment to Lucy, of course. When she asked me how things had gone today I said, “Fine.” I did not feel that in her present state of self-induced mystical empowerment she would want to be told that her husband was an utter joke. I did not feel it fair to tell that sweet, trusting, potential nestbuilder that the career of her champion and protector now hangs by less than a single thread. That we are shortly to be paupers. I simply could not bring myself to tell her that the Prime Minister’s visit to Livin’ Large was the most right royal cock-up since Henry the Eighth discovered girls.

Therefore, Book, unable to seek support from my preoccupied wife, I am turning for solace to you. It happened like this.

Despite my late-night run-in with the law on the previous evening, I was up bright and early this morning. Livin’ Large goes out live at nine a.m. and I had promised to take my niece Kylie along, which meant going to the studio via Hackney to pick her up. Kylie is the daughter of my sister Emily and has apparently, of late, taken an interest in politics. My sister, anxious to encourage this new maturity in a girl who up until now has liked only ponies and Barbie, asked me to take her along. To add to the excitement, Grrrl Gang, a kind of post-post-Spice Girls group, are also appearing on the show and Emily says that Kylie worships the ground they walk on. Or, in fact, more accurately, given their ridiculous shoes, she worships the ground they walk seven inches above.

Kylie was something of a shock. I had last seen her about six months before at a family do and she had been a very sweet and pretty little eleven-year-old who had a picture of a horse in a locket round her neck. I’m afraid to have to report that the butterfly has reverted to a caterpillar and that Kylie or “K Grrrl”, as she now wishes to be known, is a horrid little pre-teen brat. Her nice blonde hair has red streaks inexpertly dyed into it. She has a nose stud (Emily says she got it done on a school trip to Blackpool and that Kylie has threatened to run away if it is removed). She wears enormously baggy army combat trousers into which eight or nine of her could be fitted. Her tummy is bare save for a tattoo of a rat holding a hypodermic needle (mercifully a transfer). Her crop-top T-shirt has the words “DROP DEAD” printed on it and her once-pretty face is now contorted into a permanent sulky scowl.

I asked her if she was excited about going to the studio. The look of astonished contempt she gave me would have scrambled an egg.

“Oh yeah! Right, as if! Like I’m really going to get excited about going to a crap kids’ show. Yeah, right, that’s really likely.”

I could not have felt more withered if I had been a sultana. This girl made me feel like a piece of one-hundred-year-old shit. I was grateful that I’d done my duty by Lucy on the previous evening because this child was in danger of un-manning me entirely. I did my best to engage her interest, which was, of course, fatal.

“The Prime Minister will be there.”

“The Prime Minister is a meat-eating fascist.”

“Grrrl Gang will be playing live.”

“Grrrl Gang are crap and sad. They don’t even sing on their records because it’s all done by a computer, if you didn’t know.”

“I’ll introduce you to Tazz.”

“Tazz is a moronic duh brain who wouldn’t have got anywhere if all the sad old men at the BBC didn’t fancy her.”

I thought this was extremely unfair. Tazz is an excellent presenter and a lovely girl. Yes, it’s true that she’s fairly gorgeous and does indeed have the factor that in showbiz is traditionally called “something for the dads”, but there’s far more to her than that. Being consistently perky for three hours on a Saturday morning is more difficult than a lot of people think. It takes real talent.

“Don’t you like Livin’ Large, then?”

“Oh yeah! Sure, as if! Livin’ Large is crap.”

“Well don’t come, then.”

“No, I’ll come, I suppose.”

And so we went. Kylie, like most young people of my acquaintance, wanted it both ways.

We got in the car and Kylie sorted through my tapes, rejecting every one with pained groans of contempt before turning up the radio full to prevent further conversation. Actually I wished that Lucy had been with us to see her. Kylie has always been such a nice little girl. Lucy tends to see her as an example of the joys we are missing out on by being childless. Up until now I have agreed with her on this point. Kylie’s dolls, her love of stories, her obsession with all animals has always been just so cute (a word I hate), but that’s what Kylie was. We went on holiday with them the Easter before last and it rained all the time. Kylie spent the week lying on her tummy in front of the fire reading the entire Narnia saga. It was a lovely thing to see and Lucy and I had wished she was ours. Well all I can say is that if ever we do have one she can go to a boarding school for the grumpy pubescent bit, because it is not attractive.

Anyway, back to my disaster. Whatever Kylie might have felt, I personally was very much looking forward to the morning and meeting Tazz. She really is gorgeous and quite simply every bloke in the country fancies her. Heterosexual blokes, that is. I realize that these days it is not done to presume that people are necessarily heterosexual. Although, quite frankly, if I was gay I reckon Tazz would turn me around, but then I said that to Trevor and he said, “Well, does Leonardo di Caprio turn you around?” To which the answer is a very big “No.” Quite frankly, I think that Leonardo di Caprio looks like Norman Lamont. It’s just that Tazz is so perky, the most pathologically perky girl on television, perky beyond all reasonable human expectations, a living, breathing perky force. She is also, I’m told, very nice, and a real enthusiast about things like Comic Relief. Besides all this, she wears tiny little crop-tops and microscopic little skirts which for somebody like me who spends his time at TV Centre talking to plump, grumpy, unshaven comedians about whether they can say knob before nine o’clock is a very welcome change.

This morning, rather disappointingly, Tazz was wearing trousers. Probably a directive from Downing Street. I don’t think the PM is an ogler, but he’s only human, for God’s sake. Many a strong man’s eyes have twitched downwards to check out the knicker triangle when facing Tazz on the “Hot Seat” sofas. The word is that even Cliff Richard took a peek. The last thing Downing Street wants is the PM caught having a perv on a twenty-two-year-old’s gusset.

Having such a gorgeous girl presenter is an essential part of kids’ TV these days. I mean the kids themselves would probably be just as happy to watch an enthusiastic old granny, but the bleary, beery students who haven’t gone to bed yet want something sexier, as do the dads who say, “Let’s watch Tazz on the BBC. She’s much better than that computer-generated ferret they have on ITV.”

The show started off fine. I got Kylie sat down amongst the other kids whom at first she affected to despise but I soon noticed that she had hooked up with two eleven-year-old sisters whose mother seemed to have dressed them as prostitutes, in so much as their skirts were the merest pelmets and their tops barely covered the fact that there was as yet nothing to barely cover. Having seen Kylie settled in, I went up to the control box. It’s rather fun being an executive producer. People bring you coffee and things and I was surprised to discover that I was clearly the most senior figure present. I recall reflecting how generous it was of Nigel to stay away and let me take my rightful place centre stage as the BBC’s official Prime Minister host. Ha! And double ha!

Anyway, after the usual half-hour of cartoons (“We hate showing them but it’s what the kids want”), Tazz introduced Grrrl Gang. Despite my niece’s snooty contempt for them, having Grrrl Gang on was quite a coup (what’s more I spotted Kylie screaming with all the other little grrrls). Grrrl Gang are the newest girl group, tougher and more street than whatever the last one was. None of these groups is ever going to do what the Spice Girls did in ’96, but Grrrl Gang are pretty hip at present. They were “In the Dock”, which was another of these sections in which the star guest takes questions from the kids in the audience and on the phones. Which in reality means a series of tremulous voices from Milton Keynes and Dumfriesshire asking, “How do you get to be a pop star?”

To my surprise the answer to this turned out to be quite simple.

“You just got to be yourself, right? Livin’ it large. Kickin’ it big. That’s all it takes,” the grrrls of Grrrl Gang assured the kids of Britain.

“You gotta kick it, girl! Big yourself up!”

“Yeah, and don’t let no one disrespect you, right?”

“Cos it’s about babe control, right? Grrrl strength. Like if you tell a teacher you wanna be a pop star, right, or an astronaut? And she says like, no way, babe, you’ve got to work in a factory or go on the dole! You tell her you are going to be a pop star or an astronaut, right? Cos you can be whatever you want, grrrl. A pop star or an astronaut… or… anything.”

“Yeah, if you want it, grrrl, just grab it. It’s a babe revolution.”

That being sorted out to everyone’s satisfaction, a tiny voice from Solihull asked if the grrrls had heard that their manager was predicting that they would soon be bigger than the Beatles.

“We’re already bigger than the Beatles, aren’t we?” said one of Grrrl Gang. “I mean, there’s five of us and there were only four of them.”

The rest of the Grrrls nodded wisely at this.

Then Tazz announced that it was environment week on Livin’ Large and that the show was committed to biggin’ up the environment big time, right. The grrrls from Grrrl Gang all let it be known that they had big respec’ for this concept and it was at this point that I got my first intimation that the morning was not necessarily going to go entirely smoothly. Tazz had brought on the Livin’ Large “Green Professor”, a nice, wacky, bearded git called Simon. The idea was that Simon would discuss green issues with Tazz, Grrrl Gang and the kids.

Sometimes these things can be a little sticky, but one of the grrrls from Grrrl Gang had a question right off.

“Talking about the environment, right,” she said, “do you know about animals and stuff, then?”

Simon positively glowed. “Well, a little. I’m Chief Zoologist to the Royal Natural Academy.”

“All right, answer me this, then,” said the grrrl. “How come birds have rude names, then?”

Simon was clearly not following.

“You know,” the grrrl continued. “Cock, tit, thrush.”

Up in the control box we all froze.

“Warbler.”

The kids giggled and Simon stuttered.

“Well, I…”

In control the phone lines were lighting up already as irate parents all over the country began to call in to complain. The producer screamed into Tazz’s earpiece telling her to move on. I could see her wincing on camera six.

“My brother used to have a white mouse called Big Balls,” said a second member of Grrrl Gang.

“Yeah, but that’s just a personal name, innit?” replied the first. “Not a breed.”

At that point Tazz was able to throw to her male partner who was standing next to the Gunk Tank ready to Gunk Dunk the weatherman from Top of the Morning TV, a cable channel morning show.

Looking back, I suppose I should have taken it as a warning. The warm complacent glow I had been feeling (Lucy stonked up; me about to be the sole facilitator of a glorious TV moment with the PM) suddenly chilled a bit. This was live telly and things could go wrong. But the panic in the box subsided and I comforted myself that it was probably good luck to get the gremlins out of the way first. A glance at my watch informed me that the PM was due in twenty minutes so I decided to make my way to the front of TV Centre to be ready to receive him.

Oh, how naive I’d been.

To think that I had actually believed that I was to be allowed to glory in this moment alone. Ha! I cringe at my stupidity. When I got to the reception area I discovered that a welcome committee had already assembled. Nigel was there, of course, standing on the red carpet trying to look both relaxed and important in equal measure, but he was way way back, bobbing up and down to see, and you just can’t stand on your tiptoes in a dignified and commanding manner. In front of Nigel, all jostling for position, were the Corporation’s Chief of Accounting, also the Heads of Marketing, Networking, Global Outreaching and Corporate Affairsing. Besides these, I could see the BBC2 Channel Controller, who was officially junior to Nigel but was ahead on the carpet because he was more fashionable and tipped in the media to shaft Nigel by next Christmas. Also present were the Head of Television and the Head of Radio, also the Head of Television and Radio (Radio and Television Group) and the Chief Programming Coordinator and the Chief Coordinating Programmer and the Deputy Director General, of course the Director General himself, the Chairman of the Board of Governors and the Board of Governors. Basically, the entire senior executive management structure of the Corporation had turned out so that they could say they had met the PM and also no doubt to sneak an ogle at Tazz.

I took my place at the back of the crowd quietly determining to find a moment to proclaim loudly that despite being far and away the most junior senior executive present I was in charge on the ground. It was my gig.

There were five or six Downing Street minders buzzing about the place as well, phones and pagers going off like the martians were about to land. I saw Jo Winston and waved but I’m afraid she either didn’t see me or didn’t recognize me. A palpable buzz amongst the minders and the cops announced the imminent arrival of the great man. Livin’ Large was covering the main gate with news cameras and I heard a radio crackle that the PM’s car was just coming off the Westway and down into Wood Lane.

Then they were upon us. Outside the main gates heading south towards Shepherd’s Bush was the mini cavalcade, two motorcycle outriders at each end sandwiching three cars of which the PM’s Daimler with its darkened rear windows was the middle one. As the procession drew up opposite the main entrance the front motorbikes pulled across the road into the oncoming traffic to block the northbound traffic. Clever idea, I thought. Wish I could do that. A person can sit in the middle of that road for five minutes waiting for a chance to pull across. For the PM’s driver it was the work of an instant, however, and, leaving behind the two secret service cars, the Daimler pulled up to the famous IN barrier of BBC Television Centre.

And then came the first of the day’s truly momentous disasters.

Book, my hand shakes as I report that the barrier did not rise.

The entire top brass of the BBC (plus me) stood transfixed with horror as the prime ministerial Daimler drew to a reluctant halt whilst a little old man in a peaked cap emerged from the security hut that stands beside the barrier.

“My God,” I heard the Deputy Director General exclaim to the Director General, “that fellow is asking the Prime Minister if his name’s on the Gate List.”

The DDG’s voice was the only sound. None of us could speak. We just watched in dumbstruck silence as down at the gate a negotiation began to take place between the BBC guard and the Prime Minister’s driver.

I could feel my bowel start to loosen. The BBC gate men are notorious, positively Soviet in their trancelike commitment to the letter of BBC law. Their duty is to defend the gates of Television Centre against all but those who have passes or whose names are on the Gate List, and they discharge this duty with a lack of personal initiative that would have surprised a Stepford wife. In fact only last week a story went round that Tom Jones had been refused entry because his name was not on the Gate List, even though he had got out of his Roller and sung “It’s Not Unusual”, “Delilah” and “What’s New, Pussycat?” on the pavement.

Jo Winston’s radio crackled. It was the voice of the Prime Minister’s driver. We could see him talking into his mouthpiece from where we stood.

“They won’t lift the barrier, Jo. The guard says there’s no name on his Gate List.”

Oh, my fucking giddy bollocks!

“Tell him it’s the Prime Minister!” Jo snapped into her radio.

“I have. He says, oh yeah and he’s Bruce Forsyth.”

“But it is the Prime Minister.”

“I know it’s the Prime Minister, miss. I’m his driver, but this man says there’s no name on his Gate List.”

Everyone in the reception committee twitched in horror. The Chairman of the Board of Governors turned to the Director General.

“Why has the Prime Minister’s name not been forwarded to the gate?” he said.

The Director General turned to the Deputy Director General.

“Why has the Prime Minister’s name not been forwarded to the gate?”

The Deputy Director General repeated the question to the Head of Television and Radio who asked it of the Head of Television. He asked Nigel the Channel Controller and Nigel turned to the man who was in charge on the ground, the man whose gig it was.

“Sam!” he hissed.

Before Nigel could ask me why the Prime Minister’s name had not been forwarded to the gate, I pushed my way through to the front of the group and grabbed Jo’s radio.

“Tell the idiot at the gate that this is Sam Bell, BBC Controller, Broken Comedy and Variety!” I barked, and was rather disconcerted to notice that a number of minders, both BBC and Government, noted down my name. “The Prime Minister is appearing on Livin’ Large and he is to be allowed through immediately!”

After a tense moment during which we could all see the driver conveying my message to the guard, the driver radioed back.

“He says he’s going to need a programme number for Livin’ Large to check with the studio. He says nobody told him about any prime minister and he thinks it’s a wind-up.”

Of course!

Now I understood the problem in all its horror. Nobody trusts anybody in television any more. That is its curse. There has been such a plethora of shows based on practical jokes and nasty cons on TV over the past few years that everybody in the industry lives in a state of constant paranoia. They check their hotel rooms for hidden cameras, their bathrooms for tiny mikes. Nobody is safe. Impressionists ring up celebrities pretending to be other celebrities, tricking them into making appalling indiscretions which are then broadcast to the nation. Hoax current affairs programme researchers fool naive politicians into commenting on non-existent issues so as to make them look like complete idiots. False charities con publicity-desperate public figures into earnestly espousing ludicrous fictitious causes and campaigns. Candid cameras record people’s selfish reactions to prostrate figures in the street and ticking bags on buses. Only last week there was a huge scandal at TV Centre when a left-wing comic from Channel Four managed to blag his way onto Newsnight and get himself interviewed as the Secretary of State for Wales. It was only when he said he loved his job because of the ready supply of sheep that they rumbled him.

This hapless gate guard, seeing the Livin’ Large cameras looming behind him, clearly suspected that he was the subject of what is known in the business as a “gotcha”. He imagined that if he let the Daimler through, Noel Edmunds or Jeremy Beadle would leap out of the boot and lampoon him.

Nigel had joined me in the little cluster of people around Jo’s radio.

“Give the bastard the programme number,” he hissed in my ear.

It was the obvious thing to do and I would have done it, except that I did not have the programme number. Why would I? I am a senior executive. I have people to have that type of thing for me. So does Nigel, of course, and his person is me. He was nearly in tears.

“Sam! You’re in charge on the ground!” There was no pretence at hissing now. “Get the barrier lifted!”

I gave Jo back her radio and set off for the barrier, which was a distance of perhaps fifty metres. For a moment I tried to maintain my dignity but trying to walk at running pace looks even more panicky than running, so I ran. At the barrier I could see that the guard was shaken but determined. For all he knew this could be a test of his guarding abilities. We have all seen films where the guard nods the general through and then the general turns on the guard and bollocks him for not demanding to see a pass. The gate guard did not wish to make that mistake. All in all he had clearly decided that whether it was a hoax or not the safest policy for him was to cling to the rules like a paranoid limpet.

“He hasn’t got a pass. His name’s not on the list and you haven’t got a programme number. The rules are very clear.”

I wondered how the PM was taking all this. It was impossible to say since, as I have said, the rear windows of the Daimler were darkened. To see him I would have had to put my head through the driver’s window, which would probably have resulted in my being shot. The shadowy nature of the PM’s countenance was of course a contributory factor to the gate guard’s doubts. I thought about asking whether the Premier would mind stepping out for a moment and showing himself, but I did not have the nerve.

“Right,” I said, and grabbing the gate I attempted to lift it by brute force. This was pointless, of course. I heaved and I heaved and the guard threatened to call the police, of whom there were four in evidence. I think if I had bent the barrier backwards it might have snapped but supposing it had boinged back and killed someone? A flying splinter might blind the PM!

I had to think straight. Force was not the answer. I let go of the gate and strode back to the guard.

“Ring the switchboard,” I said. “Ask them to ring Livin’ Large and get them to give you a programme number.”

There was an agonizing wait for the switchboard to respond. It was a Saturday, after all, and TV Centre is always a bit dead on a Saturday. Eventually the guard got through, but only as far as the switchboard, who refused to put him through to Livin’ Large.

“They’re live on air at the moment,” the guard said, “and not taking calls in the control box.”

“I know they’re live on air, that’s the whole…”

What could I do? I know these people, people at gates, people on doors, people with lists. They are immovable. They cannot be reasoned with. Over the years they have stopped me going into clubs, pubs, departure lounges, the wrong entrance at cricket grounds and, most days, my own place of work. The mountain would have to go to Mohammed.

I set off to run back to the studio to get the programme number. As I sprinted up the carpark turning circle and back into the studio complex I could feel the eyes of every single superior I had upon me. They burned into my back as I ran past the famous Ariel Fountain and into the Centre. Amazingly, I did not instantly get lost and rush into a drama studio, ruining a take, like I normally do. I pushed my way straight into Livin’ Large, bursting in on the show while a boy band (called Boy Band) were singing a song about being in love (called “Bein’ In Love”). I grabbed a camera script from a floor manager, noted down the programme number and charged back out towards the gates.

As I emerged from the building clutching the precious number I could see that the Daimler had been allowed through. The police, it seems, had taken charge and threatened the gate guard with immediate arrest if he did not lift his barrier and now the Prime Minister was on the red carpet being profusely apologized to by the Chairman of the Board of Governors and the Director General.

The PM laughed, he smiled, he said that these things happened and that we were not to worry about it at all. Had it not been for the flashing eyes and gritted teeth I might almost have imagined that he meant it.

As they bustled the great man off for make-up I tried to make a face at Nigel as if to say, “Phew, got away with that, didn’t we?” He would not even look at me.

Back in the studio Tazz was telling the cameras that the most mega honour in television history was about to be visited upon the kidz of Livin’ Large, and that the Prim-o Minister-o, the Main Man UK, was already in the house!

There was cheering, there was shouting, the Livin’ Large goblin puppets jumped up and down in front of the camera, Tazz beamed, the male presenter (whose name I can never remember) grinned, the floor managers tried to look all serious and then the great moment was upon us, the PM was about to go on. Most of the bigwigs were watching the show in a hospitality suite on the sixth floor, but I was in the control box along with Nigel and the Head of Television.

“Terrible fucking cock-up at the gate, Nigel,” said the Head of Television.

“Heads will roll,” said Nigel.

“Yes, they certainly will, I’ll make sure of that,” I said quickly, but I knew that Nigel had meant my head.

Then the bank of TV monitors which faced us over the heads of the vision mixers, PAs, directors, etc, suddenly lit up with the beaming countenance of the Prime Minister. He looked great. The kids cheered. I felt that the worst of the day was behind us.

Tazz, bless her, lobbed him the first ball beautifully.

“Is it true, Prime Minister, that you play the electric guitar?”

“Perfect!” shouted Nigel in the box. “Well done, Tazz.”

Nigel was clearly attempting to assume credit for the planting of this question, which had actually been my work. I wasn’t having it.

“Yes, good girl, that’s exactly what I told her to ask,” I said pointedly.

The PM smiled broadly. He raised his eyebrows in a self-deprecating shrug as if to say that he couldn’t imagine how Tazz had heard about that.

“Look,” he said. “You know a lot of kids these days think that politicians are fuddy and they’re duddy but it’s just not true. Yes, I do play the electric guitar and I love to surf the Internet. I’m just a regular bloke who likes popmusic, comedy with proper rude bits in it and wearing fashionable trousers. Just like you, Jazz.”

We all gulped slightly at this but Tazz quite rightly let it go and threw the floor open to the assembled children. It went wonderfully. The Prime Minister was frank, open and honest. Yes, he had a pet as a child, a hamster called Pawpaw. His favourite meal was egg and chips, but there must be proper ketchup. He loved soccer with a passion and he thought that Britain could again be great at it. He mentioned again how much he liked popmusic and that he played the electric guitar.

We could see that the PM was enjoying himself. Jo Winston had joined us in the box and she was beaming. The incident at the gate seemed to be forgotten. It was beginning to look like we’d got away with it.

Then my niece Kylie asked a question.

“Mr Prime Minister. With more young people than ever living rough on the streets, with your government cutting benefits to young people more than ever before, with class sizes at record levels and with children’s hospitals being forced to close, don’t you think that it’s an act of disgusting cynicism to come on here and pretend that you care at all about what really matters to young people?”

Oh my raving giddily diddily fuck.

The PM was absolutely not ready for it. He was stopped dead. At any other time he could easily have fielded an attack like Kylie’s. He would have told her that they were putting in more money than the other lot. That they were tackling a culture of dependency. That they were targeting benefit where it was really needed. I’d heard him do it any number of times in interviews and he always convinced me. But on this occasion he just wasn’t ready.

He had thought himself safe. He should have been safe.

“Well… I… uhm… I do care… but I…”

Kylie pressed home her advantage.

“Do you care about the children of single mothers? Because most of them will go hungry tonight…”

“Shut that fucking kid up!” the Head of Television screamed. Jo Winston’s knuckles were white around the pen she clutched. The control box hotline rang. Nigel picked it up. “Shut that fucking kid up.” I could hear the voice of the DG himself crackling on the other end.

“Shut that fucking kid up!” Nigel shouted at me and I dutifully relayed the message into the studio link, nearly blowing poor Tazz’s ear off.

“No, for heaven’s sake, let him answer!” Jo Winston shouted at me, but it was too late.

“Well, we’re going to have to leave it there,” Tazz was saying, with a grin frozen on her face. “So here’s the new video from Sir Elton John.”

It could not have looked more terrible. Jo Winston was right. The PM needed to reply but instead Kylie was left with the last word and the Main Man UK looked like a piece of shit.

Jo Winston left the control box without a word. Her look, however, spoke volumes. She thought I’d stitched her up.

“Who supplies us with the fucking kids?!” the Head of Television shouted. I knew which kid he was referring to and I kept my mouth shut.

Even before Elton John had finished his song the Downing Street posse were out of the building, departing in fury, swearing revenge on the BBC and claiming loudly that the PM had been set up. The Director General had tried to tempt the great man to a glass of wine (a grand reception buffet was all waiting). He actually chased after the prime ministerial Daimler round the turning circle with a bottle of claret in his hand. But any hope of post-broadcast jollies, I’m afraid, had been dashed by the as yet unclaimed little girl in the studio.

In the control box an inquiry was underway. The Deputy Director General had arrived and also the Head of Radio and Television. They knew they were in trouble. Relations between the Beeb and Number Ten are always strained and the licence fee always seems to be up for renewal. Everybody was all too aware that publicly embarrassing the Prime Minister on live TV was not the best way to ensure the future of advert-free public service broadcasting in the UK. As my various superiors spoke, contemplating the wrath that they must face from their own superiors, I was painfully aware that below us the studio was emptying. Looking down through the great glass windows onto the floor, I could see that the bulk of the audience had been escorted out and the scene-shifters were beginning to strike the set. Standing alone in the middle of all the activity and looking rather lonely and scared was my niece Kylie. Obviously she had no idea where to go or what to do; I had said that I would collect her after the show. The problem was that I knew that if I went anywhere near her the game would be up.

Then the game was up anyway. Nigel spotted her.

“That appalling little anarchist is still there,” he said. “I don’t believe it! That means she must belong to one of the crew!”

They all stared down. Kylie was looking more isolated than ever. The deconstruction of a TV studio after a programme has been made is a noisy, frenzied business. Large things roll across the floor, even larger things descend from the ceiling. Many men and women bustle about shouting. To be a twelve-year-old child abandoned in the middle of it would be a pretty intimidating experience and I could see that Kylie was starting to think about having a cry. She wasn’t the only one.

“If Downing Street get to hear that she belongs to an employee they’ll never believe we didn’t set them up,” said the Deputy Director General. “Go and find out who the hell she’s with, Bell.”

Hope! A chance! I might just get away with it! All I had to do was rush down, get Kylie out and then blame it on the friend of a friend of a scene-shifter. I would promise a full investigation and then cover the whole thing up. I was about to bound out of the box when I saw Kylie tearfully hailing a passing floor assistant. I watched in horror as the floor assistant put her microphone to her lips. It all seemed to happen in slow motion. My whole life passed before my eyes.

“Hello, Control.” The floor manager’s voice floated out of the console loud and clear. “I’ve got a little girl here called Kylie, says she’s Sam Bell’s niece. Is he about at all because she wants to go home.”

Dear Pen Pal

Honestly, trust Sam. Just when I want to be at my absolute most relaxed and non-tense he has gone and made a complete ass of himself at work. He tried not to tell me about it which was nice of him seeing as I’m trying to be as one with my Karma, but he was writing at his book for so long that I had to ask him and it all came out. I feel awful for him, but I’m afraid I’ve had to tell him that I’m not going to think about it, I just can’t. Every fibre of my being is currently dedicated to being in tune with the ageless rhythm of life and, however you look at it, the politics of television are simply not a part of the ageless rhythm of life. Sam doesn’t mind. He never wants to talk about anything anyway. He’s a terrible bottler-upper, like most men, I think. They don’t want to touch, they don’t want to talk. They just want to drink, watch TV, drink and bonk.

Dear Book

The Livin’ Large story was in all the papers on Sunday (PM humbled by child) and they’re still carrying it today. I’ve been named in every single article, of course. Despite me issuing a very clear statement, nobody believes that I didn’t set it all up. It’s just too convenient what with the girl being my niece and all. The papers tried to go after Kylie as well, but I’d guessed they would and told Emily that if Kylie said even one word to the press Emily would no longer be my sister. Kylie is now house grounded with the curtains drawn until it blows over.

I did not go in to work today and took the phone off the hook. I really am in very deep shit and I don’t want to talk to Lucy about it because she has enough on her mind. Funny how writing this book has actually ended up as a sort of therapy for me, although it has nothing to do with having kids.

Dear Penny

I feel terribly sorry about Sam’s travails but despite that I also feel curiously centred and at one, almost elated. I know I must not get my hopes up, but I do definitely feel different. Anyway, there’s nothing wrong with being positive, is there? I don’t want to suppress or fight whatever may or may not be happening in my body with negative thinking. I’m sure that mental attitude has enormous power over the physical self. And I do feel differently this month. I don’t know why, but I do. Who knows…?

Sam seems to think he’s going to lose his job but if only I could be pregnant I wouldn’t mind about us being poor or anything. I’d live in one room. I wouldn’t care, not if I had a baby. Sam always says, “Ha!” when I say things like that and of course I know he’s right. Nobody wants to be poor and live in just one room, but if all we have would buy me a baby I’d spend it tomorrow.

Dear Book

Lucy keeps going on about not caring about being poor, only about getting pregnant. She says she’d happily see us with nothing as long as we have a child. The problem is that we’re probably going to have nothing whether we have a child or not. Penniless and infertile would be a lot to take, I think. On the other hand, Lucy seems very certain that it’s going to work this time. She really has started to believe in the power of positive thinking. She’s even said that if it’s a girl she’ll call it Primrose. I hope she’s right. She does look glowing.

Actually if it does work I’ll get her to do some positive thinking about me keeping my job.

Penny

My period started this morning.

I just want to die.

Why did I let myself hope? How could I have been so pathetic? I don’t know why, but I was. What with the crystals and the ley lines and the positive thinking and everything. I just thought for once I’d get some luck. Just for once it would be me who was lucky. But of course it wasn’t. Obviously. Shit, shit, shit, shit.

Why me?! Why bloody me?! Some women scarcely even want children and have them.

I want nothing else! All my life I’ve wanted to have children. Right from the first game I ever played, I’ve known I wanted to be a mum. It’s my life’s fucking ambition.

But I can’t do it.

Sixty-three periods! Sixty-three fucking months of trying and trying and trying and nothing! I feel wretched, just wretched (quite apart from these God-awful period pains). I keep thinking, why me? I mean, why should I be the one who can’t have a little baby to hold? Why? My sister’s got two. Melinda’s got one. Every bloody woman in Sainsbury’s seems to have about twelve. I know I shouldn’t resent them but sometimes I do. It just is so unfair! Of course I know that lots of other women are in the same boat as me and all that but I just don’t care about them. That’s all. I don’t.

Dear Self

Well, the Primrose Hill Bonk bore no fruit. Bugger.

I’m afraid to say that even I had begun to get my hopes up a bit. Poor Lucy was being so positive that she made me feel positive too. I was even having fantasies about what life would be like if we had one. Just tea-time and story-telling-type fantasies, that sort of thing. Loading up the car to go camping and I’m going to stop now.

Dear Penny

I was alone at work again today so I spent five hours on the phone trying to get through to Dr Cooper to see if I can get a referral to have a laparoscopy. Most of the 247 “getting pregnant” books that I own suggest that this will probably be the next step and Dr Cooper certainly said it would be. The alternative and homeopathic books of course do not approve of this kind of brutalism but what is one to do? I’ve tried so many things and honestly if I gave up eating and drinking all the things that some of these books tell you to give up I’d starve to death before I could conceive.

I couldn’t even get through to the surgery. There’s some sort of flu epidemic on and it’s obvious that they’re a bit pushed. I’m afraid that we’re going to have to consider having it done privately. I don’t like to because Sam and I have always felt very strongly about the NHS, but I don’t think I have any choice. I mean the waiting lists are so long now that even though you want to do the right thing you can’t. Funny, really, because these days I actually feel that because the lists are so long I should go private anyway if I can afford it, just in order to free up a bed. Extraordinary. I remember when Mrs Thatcher had that operation on her hand and said, “I didn’t add to the queue,” we all went potty at dinner parties all over London and now we’re saying exactly the same thing.

I am so depressed.

Dear Sam

Lucy wants to have a laparoscopy done privately because she can’t get through to Dr Cooper. I said absolutely not. I pretended that it was a matter of political principle and expressing our solidarity with the NHS. The truth is it’s the money pure and simple. What with my cock-up over Above The Line Films and the fiasco with the Prime Minister it’s now pretty much a certainty that Nigel is going to shaft me and until I know what the future holds I can’t countenance any additional expense.

I went to Oddbins today and downgraded from single malt to blended.

Dear Penny

I am really quite proud of Sam. He was absolutely immovable on the private operation bit. I had no idea he had retained such a firm grip on his political principles. Good for him.

I’ve booked the private operation for the end of next month.

I mentioned my political fears to Sheila at work because she’s a bit of an old lefty and she said something awful. She said, “Yes, but the reason that we all worried about Thatcher’s hand was because it was about essential surgery, which is what the Health Service is for. Fertility treatment is hardly essential, is it? It’s more of a personal indulgence.”

She actually said that, and she was trying to be nice. Well, I suppose it’s what a lot of people think. Perhaps I’d think it myself if fate had dealt me different cards.

Dear Sam

Well, I knew that it was only a matter of time before the axe fell and it fell today. I finally lost my job. I think the whole corridor knew before I did. Trevor avoided my eye and Daphne looked distinctly upset. I’m a pretty easygoing sort of boss and I think she’s scared they’re going to give her to some twenty-eight-year-old Armani clothes hanger who thinks only American sitcoms are funny.

Anyway, there was a warning sign in every face, so by the time I got to Nigel’s office to which I’d been summoned I was ready for anything. In a way it wasn’t so bad.

“Radio,” said Nigel.

“Radio,” I said.

“Radio,” said the Head of Radio and Television, who was also in attendance. “I’m extremely keen to up our light entertainment output in sound-only situations. Your massive experience in bringing on the best of the new comedians and writers makes you the perfect person to head up this major new entertainment initiative.”

Which of course means that it would be more trouble and expense to sack me than to shift me to a job where it doesn’t really matter what I do. On the other hand I had been expecting immediate redundancy, or, at the very best, the post of Programme Coordinator: Daytime South West, so this was, in a perverse, reverse kind of way, quite good news.

“What’s the job title?” I asked.

“Chief Light Entertainment Commissioning Editor, Radio,” said the Head of Radio and Television.

I let it hang in the air a moment, waiting for the words “deputy” or “sub” or “Midlands” to follow. They didn’t, but you can’t be too careful. I heard a story of a bloke who went to see the DG and thought he’d been offered “Controller, BBC1” but actually after the DG said the word “one” he coughed and in that cough managed to add “Planet Green Initiative, Bristol Environment Unit.” The poor man was on the train pulling out of Paddington before he’d worked out what had happened.

So there I was, the new “Chief Light Entertainment Commissioning Editor, Radio”.

“What about the money?” I said.

“The same,” Nigel replied, to my delight, “if you go quietly and don’t write any bitter whistle-blowing articles in the Independent media section or Broadcast magazine.”

And so the deal was done, effective immediately. I was to clear my desk that very day. One slightly dispiriting thing. I’d asked Nigel if I could take Daphne with me over to Broadcasting House (where my new office is to be). He said fine but then she refused! I could tell that she thought that radio was a definite step down and could see no reason why she should have to share in my reduction of status.

“No, thank you, Sam,” she said. “It’s very kind of you but I’m the personal secretary to the ‘BBC Controller, Broken Comedy and Variety’, which is a television post. I am not personal secretary to the ‘Chief Light Entertainment Commissioning Editor, Radio’.”

So there you go. Was it Kipling who said they were more deadly than the male? (Women, that is, not personal secretaries.)

I must say it was lucky that Lucy did not require one of her servicings on demand tonight because I don’t feel much of a man at the moment. I can still support us in the style to which we are accustomed, but at what cost to my pride? If I thought I had a nothing job before, I don’t know what I’ve got now. A timeserving sideways shunt of a dead-end grace-and-favour pile of shite, that’s what. I mean, radio entertainment’s fine up at the posh end, the Radio 4 clever quizzes, witty, ’varsity stuff and edgy alternatives, but all that’s already spoken for. I’ve been dumped down at the Radio One yoof end and they don’t want comedy. They want attitude and I’m a deal too old to give them that.

Anyway, to my surprise Lucy was quite positive about the situation. She seemed to think that it was a good thing. She pointed out that I’d never liked my job anyway, and now I’d have the time to do what I really want to do, which is write.

Well that of course brought on the same old row.

“Oh yes, that’s a good idea,” I said. “I’ll just bash off an award-winning script now, shall I? Except hang on, that’s right, I remember, I haven’t written a bloody word in years.”

A bit bitter, I know, but it had been a pretty rotten day. Lucy always hates it when I get negative on her.

“And do you know why?” she snapped. “Because you’ve given up on your emotions, that’s why. If you live your life entirely superficially how do you expect to write anything?”

Well, this sort of thing carried on back and forth until we went to bed, both pretty depressed. Lucy was out like a light, emotionally exhausted, poor thing, what with all that infertility about the place and having a completely useless husband. I, on the other hand, couldn’t sleep. What Lucy had said kept ringing in my ears. Maybe I do avoid my writing so that I don’t have to explore my emotions? Or is it the other way round? Do I ignore my feelings so that I’ll be sure that I’ll have nothing to write about? Either way it’s a pretty sad effort. Then I began to wonder what my emotions would be if I had any. What was happening inside me? Did I care much about losing my job? No, I didn’t really care much about my job because I was no good at it. In fact I didn’t deserve it in the first place. I was no good as a commissioning editor because I was too bloody jealous of the people I was commissioning, which was pathetic. So what did I feel? When I wasn’t avoiding my feelings? That I want to write? Who cares? That I love Lucy? Well that’s not a bad subject. Love always goes down well. That I want Lucy and me to have children? I certainly feel that. I may never say it, but I want more than anything else in the world for Lucy and me to have children.

And then it struck me! It was such a shock that I went cold. It was so obvious! How could I have missed it! That’s what I would write about! I sat bolt upright in bed. The whole thing seemed to leap into my mind fully formed. It made me dizzy there was so much of it coming to me at once.

“I’ve got it, Lucy!” I shouted and she nearly fell out of bed in shock.

“Got what?”

I could hardly form a coherent sentence I had so much to say. The words tumbled out in a stream.

“My theme. The inspiration I need! It’s so obvious, darling, I can’t think how I’ve missed it. I’ll write about an infertile couple! It’s a real modern drama, about life and the absence of life… There’s jokes, too. But proper jokes. Sad jokes, which are the best kind. Sperm tests, postcoital examinations, guided fantasy sessions… Imagine it! The disintegration of this couple’s sex life, the woman beginning to think about nothing but fertility, going all tearful over baby clothes… Adopting a gorilla…”

Writing it down now I admit it looks a little insensitive but I swear I didn’t mean it to be. After all, I was talking about writing a story, a fiction, about two fictitious people, not us at all. Perhaps I could have put it better, but I was so excited. This was the first decent idea I’d had in years.

“The thing will write itself,” I said and the ideas just kept tumbling into my head and straight out of my mouth…

“How about a scene where the woman can’t decide which herbal teabag would be most aromatherapeutically conducive to her biorhythms? Or some sort of open-air ritual… It’ll be bloody hilarious…”

I would have gone further. I could have gone on for hours. I was really on a roll, as they say, but at that moment Lucy stopped me. Well, when I say stopped me, she threw half a cup of cold herbal tea in my face.

“How about a scene where the woman throws her herbal tea all over the callous bastard who wants to rape her soul for a few cheap laughs,” she said.

It took me a moment to cut through the bitter irony to realize the point she was making. I was astonished. I’m not astonished now, of course, having had time to reflect on what she was getting at, but at the time I couldn’t work out her attitude at all.

“What!” I exclaimed. “But you said! You said! You told me to look within!”

“I didn’t tell you to try to turn our private misery into a public joke!” I’ve hardly ever seen her so angry. “Maybe it’s a good thing if we are infertile. If we did have kids you’d probably expect them to pay their way by becoming child prostitutes!”

This was pretty strong stuff. I mean, I understood that she was upset and everything, but child prostitutes? Come on.

“You don’t understand anything!” she said. “I’m thirty-four. I’ve been trying for a child for over five years! I may well be barren, Sam!”

Well now I admit that I lost it a bit too. I mean it seems to me that Lucy has developed a habit of seeing the fertility thing as being pretty much exclusively her problem, just because I deal with it in a different way to her. I mean I’m in this marriage too, aren’t I? I have feelings and I had thought that I was under orders to get in touch with them. I mean, maybe we are infertile. I don’t know, perhaps we can’t have children. But if we can’t, what does she want me to do about it? Go into mourning? Weep and wail over the absence of a life that never even existed in the first place?

I’m afraid I put this point to Lucy and she took it as confirmation of her long-nurtured suspicion that I don’t care whether we have a baby or not. In fact I probably don’t even want one. After this I probably said too much. It’s just that I don’t think she was even trying to see it from my point of view.

“And what if I don’t?” I said. “Does that make me a criminal? Have I betrayed our love because I happen to place some value on my own existence? On my career and my work? Because I have not committed my entire emotional wellbeing to the possibility of some abstract, non-existent life which we may or may not be able to produce?”

Lucy was near to tears but like the bastard that I am I pressed my advantage.

“I mean isn’t this near deification of the next generation all a bit bloody primitive? A baby is born. Its parents devote their lives to it, sacrificing everything they might have hoped to have done themselves. Then, when that baby is finally in a position to fulfil its own destiny and also the dreams its parents had for it, that baby has its own baby and the whole thing starts again. It’s positively primeval.”

Lucy got up and went and made herself a cup of herbal, which I hoped she wasn’t planning to throw at me. When she came back she said, “It’s life, Sam! It’s what we’re here for, not… not to make bloody films.”

But that’s the point, isn’t it? As far as I’m concerned I am here to make films! Or at least to fulfil and express myself in one way or another. I mean I only have one life, don’t I? And it’s the one I’m living, not the one I may have a hand in creating. I know that sounds selfish but is it actually any more selfish than seeking to replace yourself on the planet? I don’t know. Anyway, I tried to calm things down a bit, so that we could get some sleep if nothing else.

“Look, Lucy, I’m sorry… I don’t want to upset you. Of course I want us to have a baby, it’s just… it’s just…”

Lucy was not in the mood to be calmed.

“It’s just you want to write a comedy about it,” Lucy said. “Well, if you ever even so much as mention the idea of exploiting our personal misery for your profit again I’ll leave you. I will, Sam. I mean that, I’ll leave you.”

With that she turned her back on me and we lay there together in grim, wakeful silence.

Dear Penny

I had a pretty rotten night last night. Sam and I had a row. He thinks I’m a mawkish self-indulgent obsessive and I think he’s an arrogant self-obsessed emotional retard. However, I’ll write no more of that at the moment because there was dreadful news this morning which certainly puts my little worries into perspective.

Melinda rang at about nine to say that Cuthbert had been taken into hospital with suspected meningitis. He’s at the Royal Free in Hampstead and Melinda is in with him. We won’t know the full picture for a day or two, but it might be very serious indeed. Poor Melinda must be going mad. If it is meningitis then even if Cuthbert survives it’s going to mean brain damage and all sorts of complications. Of course it might not be. All we can do is wait. I can hardly bear to think about it. Sam, of course, seems completely unmoved by the news. I know that he isn’t, but that’s how he seems.

Dear Book

I don’t know what Lucy wants from me. We heard horrible, horrible news from George and Melinda today. Cuthbert has suspected meningitis. Lucy’s got herself very upset about it indeed, which I think is unhelpful. There’s no point presuming the worst, after all, and so far it’s only suspected. Of course I understand that Lucy is feeling particularly emotionally raw at the moment where babies are concerned, but I don’t see what she thinks I can do about it. When we heard I said, “Oh dear, that’s absolutely terrible. Poor George and Melinda.” I could see immediately that she did not feel that this was a sufficiently emotionally charged reaction, so I said, “Oh dear” again, but it just sounded worse. It’s frustrating. Of course I’m worried about it and terribly sorry for George and Melinda but I don’t know what else I can say. I rang George and asked if there was anything I could do but of course there isn’t. I felt an idiot even asking. What possible thing would I be able to do?

Dear Penny

No news on Cuthbert. Tests still being carried out.

I went for my interview with the private doctor today. Dr James. He seems quite nice but he won’t actually be doing the operation. All he’ll do is refer me to some clinic in Essex or somewhere else miles away. One ten-minute appointment, one letter, one hundred pounds, that will do nicely, thank you.

I was nearly late for the appointment, in fact, because the address was in Harley Street. 298AA Harley Street. Well I couldn’t believe it, this poxy little flat must have been half a mile from Harley Street! All the way along Weymouth Street. It’s absolutely ridiculous that these doctors can attach a snob value to an entirely false address. I mean, honestly, we might as well all say we live in Harley Street. Anyway, Dr James saw me promptly, which was a new experience for me, and they also offered coffee and biscuits which I did not have as I imagine that in the private sector the going rate for a custard cream is about ten quid. I told Dr James how far I’d got with investigating infertility and as expected he booked me in for a bellybutton broadcast. It makes me feel quite ill even to think about it.

Afterwards I went up to the Royal Free in Hampstead to see Melinda and Cuthbert. It was heartbreaking. All these tiny babies and little toddlers so sick and scared. It just isn’t fair. Melinda is bearing up but has had very little sleep and looks pretty grim. Cuthbert was in an isolation ward and I didn’t see him, but Melinda says he looks so vulnerable and fragile that she could hardly bear it. She says every fibre of her being wants to do something to protect him but there’s nothing she can do. So she just sits and waits, consumed with weird feelings of guilt plus fear and also terrible visions of Cuthbert in pain or dying or becoming damaged. Then she started crying and I cried too, which was absolutely ridiculous as I was supposed to be comforting her. So I told her about Sam and me shagging on top of Primrose Hill which made her laugh, but of course the story doesn’t have a funny ending because it didn’t work. Then she asked me about Lord Byron Phipps and I told her not to be silly and that that was all forgotten about. Little did I know.

Anyway, when I left the hospital I had to go and sit on a bench on the Heath for a while because I was too upset and emotional about poor little Cuthbert. I mean obviously he’s not mine but I know him pretty well and quite frankly any baby in torment has always broken my heart. I suppose it would do anyone. I rang Sam on his mobile just for a chat, but he’s in the process of tying up the loose ends of his old job and I could tell he was busy. “So no news, then?” he said, which really meant, “Why the hell are you calling me?” Sam is very practical in that respect.

Anyway, I wasn’t feeling much better when I got back to work, which I’m afraid was not necessarily a very good thing. You see, when I got to the office, in, as I must point out again, a highly vulnerable and emotional state, the place was empty save for Carl Phipps! He was standing over my desk reading a contract.

There is no point denying that he looked handsome. Very handsome. He’d hung up his big coat and was standing there in a baggy white shirt open to the chest. What with his tight black Levi 501s and his Cuban-heeled boots all he needed was a rapier and he could have fought a duel.

“Sheila and Joanna are down at the Apollo press call,” he began to explain, but then he said, “You’ve been crying.”

“No, I haven’t,” I lied pathetically.

“Tell me what’s wrong, Lucy. I hate to see you cry.”

Well, that was it. Suddenly I was in floods and before I knew it he had his arm around me and was comforting me. I honestly do not think that at this point he was making a move on me. At least if he was it was a very subtle one. No, I genuinely think that he was just trying to be nice. Although I’m not sure if men are ever entirely non-sexual in their actions. Anyway, first I told him all about little Cuthbert and how worried I was for George and Melinda. He was quite wonderful about that actually, genuinely concerned and in fact he knew rather a surprising amount about the symptoms.

“The majority of suspected cases turn out to be just that, suspected.”

“How do you know?” I asked into his chest.

“I’m an actor,” he replied. “It’s my job to know.”

Well, even in my highly charged state this was a bit close to luvviedom for me and I think Carl felt the same because he quickly went on to explain.

“I played a junior doctor in three episodes of Angels a few years back. Tiny part but that’s never an excuse for not doing the research.”

He was stroking my hair now, just in a comforting way.

“The symptoms in these cases are quite generalized and sometimes the real cause of the problem is never known, the baby just gets over it. Babies are very tough, you know, and very brave, even though they don’t look it.”

I must say, he made me feel a lot better about things, although I still scarcely dared hope, but it was just so nice talking to him, such a change from Sam, which I know is a horrible thing to say but it’s how I felt. Anyway, I ended up telling him all about myself, even all my infertility fears. He was a really good listener, which is quite rare in an actor and really seemed concerned. Of course he came up with all the same old stories that everyone comes up with about friends and cousins who tried for years and then had ten, but somehow coming from him they seemed genuinely comforting.

All right. Here we go.

Long story short. I can’t put off writing it any longer. I admit it. I kissed him. Yes, I kissed him and it was fantastic. We were talking and talking and talking and then he brushed a tear from my eyelash and then he took my hand and suddenly we were kissing. And proper kissing, too, a genuinely fully charged tongue-twanging passionate clinch.

Oh my God, I go weak to think of it.

I suppose it went on for a minute or two (maybe three, no more). Just big kissing. He didn’t try to push his luck, which was damn lucky really. He did slowly clasp me more closely to him but not in a gropey way, although my (ahem) breast did end up pressing rather hard against his. I was braless today and in a soft cashmere poloneck and what with him just being in a cotton shirt I could really feel myself against him and him against me. Christ, my heart was pounding. He must have felt it like a bloody sledgehammer.

Anyway, in the end I pulled away. Well, it really was either that or progress further, which would have been terrible! My God, what am I even thinking of? He was ever so good and nice about me wanting to stop (not that I did want to!). He just got up, kissed my forehead gently and said, “If ever you need someone to talk to, I’m one call away. One call” Then he was gone.

Well, work was out of the question after that, so I just staggered home and here I am, reflecting on it all. I haven’t been kissed like that in a long time. Of course I feel guilty but also I can’t deny I feel very exhilarated. But then I think of Cuthbert and my own infertility and feel completely wretched about being excited by a kiss. I do wish life was easier.

It’s a little bit later now and I feel worse. I got to thinking about Sam, you see, and obviously started feeling guilty. Not just about the kiss but also about last night. He suggested writing a screenplay about an infertile couple and I absolutely exploded, which I’m not sure was quite fair. I mean I still hate the idea and if he ever did it I’d kill him, but I think I should have been more sympathetic to his point of view. After all, it’s been me that’s been pressing him to explore his emotions further and use his feelings in his work. I mean obviously I did not mean quite such specific emotions. Him exploiting our most private agonies for easy laughs and cheap emotional stings is out of the question, but I still think I should have been a bit more gentle in rejecting the idea.

By the time he came home I was feeling very loyal to him, in need of his love and in need of showing him mine. I had resolved to demonstrate to him how much I care and to be much closer than I have been of late. Well, it didn’t work, of course. I tried to hold him and to hug him and to bond in both a physical and emotional sense but, surprise, surprise, he just gave me a peck on the cheek and went to his bloody study to brood about his career. If he wants to drive me into the arms of Heathcliff-style Byronic actors then he’s doing a good job.

He didn’t even ask if I’d heard how Cuthbert was.

Dear Sam

I got home and found Lucy all clingy and wanting to talk about the strengths in our relationship. Well I’m sorry but I just can’t do that stuff at the moment. I don’t think she realizes how much my life has been screwed up recently, or if she does realize she doesn’t care. As far as she’s concerned I’m there to offer either affection or sperm as and when she feels she needs it. My worries, my complete humiliation at work, the ignoble end to a career I’ve worked on since leaving university, she sees these things as selfish and unworthy obsessions. Stuff I ought immediately to thrust aside as unimportant when real stuff like our relationship or not having a child comes up.

I mean, for God’s sake! The world doesn’t need any more babies! Millions and millions starve every year, millions more live in a misery of deprivation and abuse. Why don’t a few people start not having babies? Why don’t a few people start living their own lives, fulfilling their own destinies? That’s what I say. Being childless Lucy and I have a unique opportunity. We’re young(ish); we’re fit; we have a dual income (for now); we could be doing anything! Learn to fly a plane, walk to the source of the Andes, save the rainforests, get completely arseholed in the pub every night, anything. Yet all we do, all Lucy cares about is trying to have a baby.

I suppose the truth is that I’m lying to myself because I want us to have one too. It may not be all I care about, but it’s what I care about most.

Poor Lucy. She only wanted me to show her that I love her and my God I do love her. I love her and fancy her so much. That night on Primrose Hill was just magical, even though it didn’t work.

It’s just that I’m not very expressive, I suppose.

Bugger everything.

Dear Penny

Melinda rang at seven o’clock this morning. It’s not meningitis. They don’t know what it is but it’s definitely not meningitis. I’m so happy for her because it would have been almost unbearable. Cuthbert’s going to have to stay in for a while under observation but he’s really rallied and Melinda sounds like the entire universe has been removed from her shoulders.

I told Sam and he said, “Oh great, that’s absolutely brilliant, I mean really wonderful news, fantastic,” but after a minute he went back to looking at the media appointments section of the Guardian.

Anyway, when I got to the office today Sheila said, “What’s happened to Sam? Have you been injecting him with monkey glands or something?”

I had no idea what she was talking about but I soon found out. On my desk there were a dozen red roses and the card attached said, “You’re beautiful and I must have you.”

That is honestly what it said. “You’re beautiful and I must have you.”

I mean, it was there for all to see. No wonder Sheila presumed it must be Sam. I mean, for someone to leave a message like that, open, for all to see, he’s got to be pretty confident of his ground, hasn’t he? I must have gone a red so deep it would have been visible in Australia. Sheila spotted my confusion, of course.

“Unless it isn’t from Sam,” she said wickedly.

“Oh no!” I said, far too loudly. “They’re from Sam. We’ve had a row. I expect he’s trying to make up. How embarrassing.”

I’m so angry I could… Well, I don’t know what I could do, but honestly! I mean all right, yes, I kissed Carl Phipps. In fact it could even possibly be suggested that I snogged him, which was very very wrong of me, but that does not give him the right to start making public requests for intercourse, does it? Surely not? I mean I’m a married woman! What’s more, it’s the appalling arrogance. I mean the swine is so damn sure of himself. He’s so used to the amorous fantasies of stupid little fans that he just presumes he can get his leg over whoever he likes. It’s horrible.

I mean yes, I admit it, I fancy him, he’s gorgeous. But this is too much. The moment Sheila went out for her cigarettes (she had four with her first cup of coffee, four, it’s quite incredible), I phoned him at home.

“Yo,” said his answerphone (yes, “Yo”, gruesome), “the Phipps man here. I’m either out, busy or too shagged out to pick up the phone. If it’s about work then you can call my people” (my people! That’s us!), “on 0171, etc… Or if it’s about stuff in LA you could talk to Annie on 213, etc… If it’s about New York you could call William Morris on 212, etc… Otherwise, hey, do that message stuff after the beep thing.”

Well, having sat through that, I’d had plenty of time to prepare myself.

“Carl, it’s Lucy from the office. Just who the hell do you think you are? I think you’re horrible! Do you imagine I’m a slut? Do you think I’m some old slapper who you can just… just… knock off when you choose? Well, let me tell you that just because you’re quite good looking doesn’t mean I’m going to sleep with you, all right? I’m a married woman so you can just bloody well forget it! Oh, by the way we need an answer on that soap powder ad script we sent you. Goodbye!”

I felt a lot better after that. Great news about Cuthbert.

Dear Self

Now I really am hurt. I felt so mean this morning about everything that I sent some roses to Lucy at her office. I sent rather a saucy message too. I said she was beautiful and that I must have her. I thought she’d be pleased. I thought when I got home tonight she’d leap on me. But no, nothing. She didn’t mention it! She just carried on writing her book and when she’d finished that all she did was go on and on about how much she hates their new actor, Carl Phipps.

I think she fancies him.

Anyway, then I thought perhaps the flowers didn’t arrive, so I asked her if she’d had any surprises on her desk that morning.

I swear she went white.

“What?” she said. “What do you know about it? Who told you? Have you been talking to Sheila?”

“I haven’t been talking to anyone,” I said. “I just wanted to know if you got my red roses this morning.”

Did I say that she went white before? Well, it must have only been pale because now she went white, she actually shook and clutched about herself for support. It’s this bloody baby business, she needs a rest.

“The roses… you sent me?” she said.

“Yes, with the saucy note. Did you get them?”

“Oh, yes,” and her voice sounded like that of a dying hamster, a hamster dying of a sore throat. “I got them.”

Then she became almost hysterical.

“Why?!” she shouted. “Why did you send them?! My God, and that note! It was stupid! Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

Well, that was it. I walked out. I’m actually writing this in the pub. I mean, all the times she’s gone on about me not showing her any affection (“Show me some affection,” that’s all she ever seems to say, particularly when I’m trying to watch the telly) and now, now I try to do something sexy and romantic and she screams at me.

I’m sorry. I know I’m not supposed to say this. I know I’m not supposed even to think it, but bloody women!

Dear Penny I want to DIE. I JUST want to DIE.

Dear Sam

My first day in the new job today, which meant a ridiculously early 5 a.m. start. Lucy brought me a cup of tea which was very nice of her although frankly I’m not sure she’d been to sleep. She kissed me and thanked me properly for the flowers. She said she was sorry about last night and it was just the tension of everything what with the looming laparoscopy and all. I told her not to worry and I think that we put the atmosphere behind us, although I can’t say that things feel particularly close at the moment.

My new office is located at Broadcasting House, which I like. It’s so old and truly BBC. It’s also in town rather than miles out west and very easy for me on the tube.

My new job is awful. My principal responsibility seems to be the Radio 1 breakfast show. This is because what used to be primarily a pop show is now much more a light entertainment programme with a bit of music thrown in. They have a sensational new signing at the moment, a bloke called Charlie Stone, who is supposed to be the absolute last word in post-modern youth broadcasting, which means he cracks knob gags in places where knob gags were previously considered taboo, i.e. at seven-thirty in the morning on the nation’s number one radio show. He’s actually very good in a completely indefinable way, which is what star quality is, I suppose. He’s both hip and mainstream at the same time, which is a very tough trick to pull off. Of course he gets an enormous amount of complaints. Which I believe the Channel Controller finds very encouraging.

The Controller’s name is Matt Crowley and I had been emailed to meet him at the studio to “check out” Charlie’s show live.

“He’s at the very cutting edge of post-modern zoo radio,” my new controller assured me. “Satirical, confrontational, anti-establishment and subversive.”

Which of course as always means knob gags.

When I arrived Crowley was already there (bad start) and we stood together behind the glass wall watching Charlie and his posse entertain the waking nation. I joined him at the end of a song called “Sex My Sex” from a singer called Brenda, who is incredibly pretty and is always appearing in her bra on the cover of Loaded.

“All right,” said Charlie, “that was another very sexy waxing from the very sexy Brenda. It made me want to reach for the knob… To turn up the volume, I mean! Teh, what are you lot like? And what a very sexy lady Brenda is, what a very very sexy and of course talented lady. She makes my tackle taut. How could she not? She makes my luggage leap, my stonker stand, my hand pump hard and she bucks up my old boy. Sorry if that sounds sexist, but I’m sworn to speak only the truth.”

I was pretty astonished actually. It’s so long since I listened to Radio 1 I hadn’t realized how blokey it had got.

“And speaking of sex,” Charlie went on, “tell me, lovely listeners, when did you first feel sexy? I want to hear about your first bonk. Yes, I do, and we know you’re dying to tell. Did the earth move? Who ended up on the wet patch? Did you smoke afterwards or just gently steam? Think about it and give us a bell.”

Matt turned to me with a pleased proprietorial look.

“Brilliant, right?”

“Oh, right,” I assured him.

“So, here’s how it is, mate,” Crowley continued. “I may be your controller, but he’s your boss, OK? The Breakfast Show is the station flagship. It’s his show and you work for him. He’s a radio genius and your job, your number-one occupation, is to stop him getting poached by Virgin or Capital.”

Later on, alone in my new office, I made a decision.

A big and terrible decision, a decision I never imagined myself making, a decision I hate myself for even thinking about. But I’ve done it now and deep down even though I know I’m wrong, I know I’m right.

Dear Penny

I’ve taken the week off work. After the way I’ve shamed myself with Carl Phipps I may never leave the house again. I mean, what must he think of me? How must he feel? He kisses a girl, she kisses him back and the next thing he knows he’s being foully abused on his answerphone and told that the girl will not give him one when he hasn’t even asked her to in the first place! My God! Every time I think about it I want to kill myself.

What am I to do? I’m bound to see him sooner or later. Perhaps I’ll give up my job. After all, now that Sam has been transferred to radio (Sam keeps saying “the shame of it” but I don’t see what’s so wrong with radio), the threat of our immediate financial ruin seems to have lifted somewhat. If I left the office I’d never have to see Carl again. I must say it’s tempting.

Cuthbert is out of danger and home, by the way. Melinda brought him round and he projectile vomited all over me and an antique cushion cover. Melinda said that the doctors had warned that this might happen and I wasn’t to worry because Cuthbert was fine. A slightly insensitive thing to say, I thought, as I mopped up the bile. I mean us non-mothers do have lives too and we do care about our cushion covers. Still, I mustn’t be mean. Any mum who’s been through what Melinda has recently been through with Cuthbert is entitled to place him at the centre of the universe and exclude the needs and feelings of all other beings.

Dear Traitor

Well, I’ve done it. If Lucy ever finds out, which in the end she must, I cannot bear to think what her reaction will be. But whatever the harvest, I’ve done it. I’ve pitched my idea about an infertility film to George and Trevor at the BBC. I know it’s terrible and madness and I’m putting at risk everything I hold dear but I am a writer. Writers write about themselves, all artists draw upon their own experiences and emotions. It’s part of the job.

Reading this back, it all looks a bit like special pleading, but I think it’s fair. Lucy has no right to ban me from the source of my inspiration. It may be her story but it’s my story too. Anyway, I’ll change the names, for God’s sake.

I spent all last night writing a synopsis. Lucy thought I was doing this book, which I felt pretty guilty about… except in a way I think I’m sort of doing what we originally intended, just in a different form. Anyway, I did it and I must say I thought it looked fantastic. If I was a commissioning editor I’d commission it. The maddening thing of course is that until a few days ago I was a commissioning editor.

I managed to get my treatment down to just under a thousand words which in my experience is about right. You don’t want to offer too much at first, just a few crisp ideas succinctly put. That’s what I used to long for when I was reading people’s treatments. God, the depression when something the size of a telephone directory lands on your desk and you’re supposed to respond to it overnight. Besides, Trevor and George had agreed to meet me right away, being such good mates, and I didn’t want them to have an excuse for not having read it. I biked it over to the BBC first thing this morning and we all met up at noon at Quark, meeting for the first time as suppliant and God-like commissioners, rather than as honoured partners in lunch. I can’t deny I was nervous.

When I arrived Trevor was alone. I didn’t bother with any of the smalltalk that’s normally the rule on these occasions. Dammit, I’ve known Trevor for years.

“What do you think?” I asked.

The news was good. He loved it. I cannot describe the relief.

“I think it’s a fantastic idea, Sam,” he said with real enthusiasm. “Dark, dramatic. Even the Controller’s excited.”

I was amazed. “You’ve shown it to Nigel?”

“We didn’t tell him it came from you, of course.”

This was extraordinary news. Bringing in a network Controller at such an early stage was scarcely common. In fact it was unheard of.

“It’s the Zeitgeist, Sam, the issue du jour,” Trevor explained to me, as if I didn’t know. “For Christ’s sake, everybody knows somebody who’s doing it. The whole country’s obsessed. That IVF documentary we ran got eight million viewers even on the repeats and there wasn’t a laugh in it.”

Just then George came up. He was late because he’d been up at the Royal Free taking Cuthbert for a check-up. Cuthbert appears to be getting back to his old self, insomuch as George was still trying to get sick out of his breast pocket.

The gorgeous waitress who had so humiliated me on my previous visit to Quark was hovering about waiting to take our order. I longed for George to say something loud and forceful about my treatment, which would let her know that I was not a sad git at all but a hot new screenwriter with a project hurtling towards a green light. He didn’t, though. George doesn’t let anything get in the way of his ordering food. He made up for it, though, once we’d ordered and even without a sexy young audience it was still pretty heady stuff.

“Now look here, Sam,” he said. “We’ve all had a gander at your idea and everyone thinks it’s marvellous…”

“Yes, I’ve been telling him,” said Trevor.

And suddenly they were both talking at once.

“The scene in the restaurant where she rings up and demands her Restricted Bonking Month bonk.”

“And then the bloke can’t get an erection.”

“Brilliant. Did that really happen?”

I admitted that it did.

“I love it when she spills the tea because she’s propped herself up on the pillows,” said George. “How’s Lucy taking it, by the way? I mean, it’s pretty intimate.”

This was, of course, a pretty tricky point. After all, Trevor and George are both friends of Lucy’s and here I was, hoping to convince them to enable me to betray her.

Just then the waitress arrived with our starters and of course everything had to stop while George went into his “Modern restaurants are crap” routine. He has a particular hatred of what in the 1980s was called nouvelle cuisine i.e. small portions pretentiously presented.

“Hate these poncy joints,” he said, loudly, so that the waitress would hear. “Plates the size of dustbin lids, portions so small you think you’ve got dirty crockery and it turns out to be your main course.”

If the gorgeous, icy young waitress cared what George thought about the food or its presentation she certainly did not let it show on her sullen, impossibly perfect countenance. She simply smiled her “You’re not so special, I meet two thousand wankers like you a day” smile, turned and left, leaving George and me to gape at her wonderful bottom as she returned to the kitchen. George observed that she could probably crack walnuts between those splendidly athletic-looking buttocks, which he knew would annoy Trevor, who asked him to keep his witless, sexist, juvenile heterosexual banter to himself.

After this we returned to the difficult subject of what Lucy would say about my treatment.

“I’m amazed she’s letting you do it,” said Trevor. “I really am. I mean, I know it’s a story and not about her but all the same, you’ve had to get your research from somewhere.”

It was time to come clean and admit that I hadn’t actually told her about my plans yet. After all, I reasoned, there was no sense in getting her all excited if it came to nothing. Movies are a notoriously dodgy business.

“Even if you do give me a commission, I’m going to keep my new job in radio and work incognito.”

I could see that George and Trevor were not entirely convinced that I was embarking on a sensible course of action, but it is not really their problem and one thing I’m sure about is that they love the treatment, as, it seems, does Nigel. Astonishingly, for the first time in as long as I can remember, I seem to be getting somewhere.

Dear Penny

I went back to work today and there was a note in an envelope on my desk. It was from Carl. I knew it was from him because the envelope was made out of pressed rag paper and it was sealed with wax! I simply do not know anyone else rich enough or theatrical enough to deliver a note in such a manner. This is what it said.

“You are obviously hurting in some way. Perhaps I have hurt you. I know that I never meant to. The truth is, Lucy, that I have felt drawn to you from the very first day we met. It is not just that I find you beautiful, although I do, but there is also a kind of sadness about you, a longing from within that fascinates me and makes me want to know you more. Of course I have no right to feel this way. You are a married woman and the thoughts that I have about you are entirely wrong and inappropriate. Therefore I shall not come into the office again if I can help it and I promise that I will do my best to keep out of your way from now on. Always know, though, that I am your friend and am there for you if you need me. Yours respectfully, Carl Phipps.”

Well, I mean to say!

That has to be the loveliest note that anyone has ever sent me. How does he know so much about me? A longing within? I mean it’s absolutely spot on, isn’t it? I don’t think I’ve ever met such an intuitive man in my entire life! I mean I’ve never told him about my wanting a baby… Well, I suppose I might have mentioned it, but only in passing, so it’s still amazingly sensitive of him. And so generous not to be furious about my answerphone message. I mean, for heaven’s sake! I called him up and told him to forget about sleeping with me when he hadn’t even asked to (well, not in words anyway).

Oh well, it’s all over now, isn’t it? All over before it even began, which is the best way, and I’m really pleased. Of course in a different world, on another planet, it might have been nice to… No! I mustn’t think that way, it’s pointless and shameful. Carl has shown me the way with his dignified restraint.

But how amazing. I do believe he’s actually got a crush on me.

Dear Sam

Lucy had her laparoscopy today. Superb material. I feel awful writing this because obviously it wasn’t much fun for her but really, this script is going to write itself. I’ve never felt so motivated. I do wish I could share this sense of purpose with Lucy because it’s just what she’s always been wanting for me, but for obvious reasons I must keep my own counsel.

We got up at five-thirty. Lucy was not allowed to even have a cup of tea because of the operation. The drive was a nightmare, of course. Rush-hour starts at about three in the morning these days. I’ll definitely be voting Green next time. The frustrating thing is that transport is the only area where we all collectively agree to ignore the evidence of our eyes and believe instead in the myth. I’m worse than anyone. I mean, let’s face it, the propaganda that the car industry puts out would give Goebbels and Stalin a run for their money in terms of pure Utopian disinformation. They always advertise cars by showing some smug smoothie driving at speed along a gorgeous empty road, with not another car in sight. When in the real world did anyone ever drive along an empty road? I don’t think that I’ve once been in that position in twenty years of driving. They always tell you what the make of the car is. I don’t give a toss what the car is. Why don’t they tell me where the road is? Just once in my life I’d like to drive on a road like that.

It really was a near-surreal experience, sitting there in fifteen thousand pounds’ worth of machinery, machinery that was supposed to liberate mankind, crawling along at a walking pace, hating every other car owner on earth. That’s what we were all doing. Every single person for miles and miles and miles sitting in a steaming metal box hating every single other person. Every morning in every town in Britain virtually every adult gets into his or her tin box and starts hating. Then, having taken all day to calm down, we get back into our boxes and start hating all over again. Yet when asked the question “Why not get on a bus?” I’m the first person to say, “No way, they’re horrible.”

Dear Penny

I’m writing this while sitting alone in a depressing, plain little hospital room waiting to be done over like a kipper.

Sam drove me to the clinic this morning, which was nice except for the fact that he insisted on doing his “This traffic is insane,” rant as if somehow we weren’t as guilty as everyone else. Not easy to stomach without so much as a cup of tea inside me. On the other hand he was solicitous about my forthcoming ordeal, asking lots of questions which I thought was good of him since I know he hates the whole ghastly business. As indeed do I, but as I say, I appreciate him showing an interest.

I took the opportunity of the traffic jams to get some background detail out of Lucy regarding the laparoscopy. I must say it sounds absolutely dreadful, but not without its comic possibilities.

I know what happens backwards from the eight million books about fertility I’ve read in the last year or two. Sam was fascinated; he even jotted one or two things down when the car was stopped in traffic. First they feed a tube into your tummy and pump you full of gas so that they can see your insides better, then they make another hole just above your pubic triangle, or map of Tasmania as Sir Les Patterson would say (I can’t believe I’m writing this), and they shove a probe in to move things about a bit so that they can take their pictures. They also pump in a lot of dye which apparently will bring out the finer features. Sam actually laughed at this, but I think it was just because he was nervous.

It’s amazing what women have to go through, so weird. I wonder if it would be funny to have a scene where the doctor (possibly gay) offers the woman a choice of colour dyes to see which one would go nicest with the shade of her intestines. Maybe a bit over the top. I’ll have to think quite carefully about the tone of this script. I mean, is it mainly funny with a bit of emotion, or mainly emotion with a bit of funny? Somewhere in between, I think.

Anyway, once they’ve got everything pumped up and dyed and prodded into position they make a hole just under your belly-button and put a long fibre optic telescope through with a camera on the end. God, what a thought. As I was telling Sam, I was actually beginning to feel sicker and sicker. It was lucky that I didn’t have anything in my stomach to throw up as we’ve just had the car valeted. One strange thing was that as I was telling Sam the gory details I suddenly remembered that I’d meant to have my bikini line done and I was really annoyed that I hadn’t. I mean why would I worry about that? It’s absurd. I never worry about a bit of escaper normally, not for smear tests and all that, sometimes don’t even bother for the beach. But for some reason today I just felt like looking my best. I can’t imagine why. Perhaps this whole business makes me feel less like a woman and I wanted to reassert my softness and my femininity.

One brilliant thing Lucy told me was that she had wanted to have her bikini line waxed! Superb stuff! I improvised a line there and then… I said, “Blimey, Lucy, it’s a laparoscopy, not lap dancing,” which I think cheered her up and I’ll certainly keep it for the script.

Sam just made stupid jokes, which was a bit irritating, although I know he meant well. The thing is that I don’t think he really understands how demeaning and dehumanizing the whole process is. You’re not a woman any more, you’re just a thing under a microscope, like in biology at school. I shan’t write any more now because I can hear a trolley clanking in the corridor and I fear my hour has come.

Lucy was pretty zonked out when I picked her up this afternoon, so I couldn’t get much out of her on the journey home. The doctor said it had all gone fine, anyway, and that they would give us the results in a few days, “When we’ve got the photos back from the chemist,” he said. I hate doctors who crack glib little jokes like that. I mean, that’s my wife’s internal organs he’s talking about! I think I’ll use him in the movie, though. Stephen Fry would play him brilliantly.

The trip home was even worse than in the morning. What are we doing to the world? Actually, more to the point, what are we doing to ourselves? At one stage I spent twenty-five minutes in a virtually stationary battle to prevent a bloke getting in front of me from out of a side street. Every inch of road that became available I filled, in order to prevent him from edging in, never once allowing myself to catch his eye. Why? Why did I do that? It’s something about cars. They shrink our souls. If I met the same man on foot I’d say, “Oh, excuse me,” and make way. Instead I spent twenty minutes of my life, when I could have been relaxing, obsessed with stopping a bloke getting two feet in front of me in a stationary queue. I really am pathetic.

When we got home Lucy went straight to bed. I’d intended to spend the evening doing some more work on my script but somehow I don’t feel like it. What with Lucy in a drugged sleep upstairs, I’m feeling a bit cheap. Guilty conscience, I’m afraid. I do hope I’m not weakening. I must see this through. It’s the first thing I’ve felt genuinely excited about in years.

Dear Penny

Well, yesterday I had the laparoscopy and today I’ve got a very sore throat. Sam was particularly interested in that, wondering how you could end up with a sore throat when the business was so very much down the other end. He seemed quite excited for a minute as if there might be some extraordinarily exotic reason for this phenomenon. When I explained it was just where the anaesthetist had stuck a breathing tube down my throat he actually seemed quite disappointed. Very strange.

I think this new job at Radio is getting him down. I must say, it doesn’t sound very stimulating.

Dear Book

There really is no job for me at Broadcasting House. They just made one up to avoid a run-in with the union. Ostensibly my responsibility is to commission youth-orientated comedy, but I have absolutely no money whatsoever to do this with. The entire youth entertainment budget, and I mean all of it, has been spent on Charlie Stone’s wages. I couldn’t believe it when I found out. The breakfast show is considered such a flagship for the station that every resource has been sacrificed to its success, which basically is Charlie. I dropped in on his show again this morning to have another look at what we’re paying for, and because, frankly, I had absolutely nothing else to do. It was rather traumatic for me actually, as he was interviewing a couple of the grrrls from Grrrl Gang. I’m afraid it brought back very painful memories of my Livin’ Large disaster.

“All right,” said Charlie, and those words alone cost the licence payer about five pounds. “Coming up now we’ve got Strawberry and Muffy from the all-conquering Grrrl Gang, and my trousers are swollen to bursting point. No doubt about it, these girls give me a third leg! You should see them! Grrrl Gang? More like Phwoar Blimey Gang from where I’m sitting! Anyway, grrrls, I know that it’s very important to you that you write a lot of your own lyrics. Tell us a bit about where the band is coming from.”

“It’s about everything, right!” replied Strawberry or Muffy, I don’t know which. “It’s a whole philosophy! It’s whatever you want it to be. It’s about having a totally positive attitude and kickin’ it big for your babe mates and all your sistas! So get on the case! Get a grip! Get with the plot! You gotta go out and grab whatever you want! Like a degree in physics or a cute bloke’s buns! Just grab it, grrrl!”

I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything quite so fatuous in all my life. Certainly not since I last attended a BBC targeting and strategy meeting (entitled “Meeting the Future: Policing the Gateway”).

I was glad I popped in, though, because it strengthened my resolve about my film. I mean I can’t spend the rest of my career pretending to laugh at Charlie Stone’s knob gags, I just can’t. My script development is my way out. Lucy would understand, I know she would.

Not that I’m going to tell her.

Dear Penny

Sam and I went to see Dr James, my consultant, today. Actually I think he’s called Mr James. I’ve always found that confusing about consultants. It seems that the higher a person rises in the medical profession the less grand the title they get. Probably quite healthy really. Stop them getting too pompous.

Anyway, the good news is that they’ve found nothing wrong with my innards. I do not have endometriosis, which is an enormous relief. Also there are no adhesions on the abdominal cavity and I have recently ovulated.

“Tremendous news, that,” said Mr James, who is a brutally cheerful type. “Can’t make an omelette without eggs, and by omelette, of course, I mean baby.”

There are no fibroids on the outside of the uterus and to the best of Mr James’s knowledge no congenital problems in the womb (“can never be one hundred per cent sure, though”). There are also no cysts, thank God, as the very thought makes me feel sick, and no apparent abdominal diseases. It was quite shocking really to hear the catalogue of things that could have spelled disaster.

We were also shown some photographs of my insides, which Mr James described as “beautiful” but which Sam and I agreed were absolutely obscene. All yellow and red and purple. They were like stills from a horror movie. Strange to be looking at one’s own innards. Stranger still to have someone admiring them.

“Lovely” said Mr James. “Absolutely lovely. You’ve got tip-top guts. Good big healthy bowel, too. That’s the orange splodge. Beautiful bowel, facilitates a superb movement, I imagine. Well done. Don’t worry about it being orange. It isn’t orange, it just comes out orange on the slide for some reason.”

After we had all admired my digestive system, Mr James got back to the subject at hand.

“So, as I say, most encouraging, most encouraging indeed. We didn’t find a thing wrong.”

So that’s all right, then. Lovely. Couldn’t be better. Except for one tiny little thing, of course. I am still not fucking preg! To this I’m afraid Mr James had no answer. Sam and I remain cursed with what is described medically as “non-specific infertility”, or, to give it its full scientific description, “We do not have a fucking clue.”

“Very common condition,” said Mr James. “Very common indeed… amongst people who can’t have babies, that is.”

So what now?

Well, what else? IVF, of course. Mr James said we could easily wait, we’re relatively young, we might just have been unlucky. It might work out conventionally. Mr James says that actually quite a few previously infertile women do conceive after having a laparoscopy. Something to do with it flushing out the tubes, but nonetheless he felt it was probably time to begin some form of treatment.

Bugger. I never thought it would come to this. It would actually have been easier if he’d said, Look, the photos are the worst I’ve ever seen. No eggs. No tubes. No chance. Forget it for ever. Except that would have been unbearable. I just don’t know what I would have done if he’d said that, I really don’t.

Dear Sam

Today we went to see our consultant and got Lucy’s lapa results. Good news and bad news. They found nothing wrong, which is good; on the other hand, they found nothing that they could “cure”, so to speak, so that’s bad. Poor Lucy now faces the prospect of IVF treatment and she is pretty down about it. Well, I can’t say I like the idea much myself. Of course it does mean that I’ll get first-hand knowledge of the whole horrible process for my film, which will be extremely useful, but that is absolutely and completely beside the point. In fact I want to make this quite clear, right now, lest in future years, when I’m a big Hollywood player, I ever look back and doubt the motives and feelings I had at this juncture. I’m aware that I’m secretly exploiting Lucy’s misery (and my own) for our future gain, but I’d happily give it away right now. Film or no film, if there was anything on earth I could do to make Lucy pregnant, I’d do it. Anything. I mean that. But it just doesn’t seem that there is anything I can do, beyond shagging her when required and playing my part in the IVF business if it comes to that.

Honestly. It’s important that I set this down on record. The film means nothing. If tomorrow Lucy fell pregnant naturally I’d be the happiest man in the world.

I can research IVF stuff without her anyway.

Dear Penny

Despite the fact that we are now definitely on the road to IVF, I’ve decided to make love to Sam every day this month in the hope that the laparoscopy “tube clearing” theory will bear fruit. We started last night and I have a dreadful confession to make. About halfway through I found myself thinking about Carl Phipps. I forced him from my mind, of course, but I’m afraid to say that my subconscious was being more honest than my conscience because I often find myself thinking about him.

I love Sam, of course, absolutely. But it’s different.

Dear Sam

Lucy has decided to begin a cycle of IVF after her next period (presuming we don’t score in the meantime with her newly flushed-out tubes). Dr Cooper, our GP, is writing to the people at Spannerfield Hospital, which is one of the top places for fertility treatment, to get us an appointment to see them.

I had a big meeting at Broadcasting House today. Infuriating, really, because I’m getting along splendidly with the script and the last thing I want to be bothered with is my actual job. The Beeb have now officially commissioned my film, by the way, which is absolutely wonderful. For the first time since I used to write sketches for radio when I was young and wild, I am a professional writer. It’s not a bad deal at all for a first film. Forty thousand, but in stages. Final payment to be made on completion of principal photography, so I’m only actually guaranteed ten thousand at the moment for the first draft. I’ve asked Aiden Fumet to look after my business. I must say, now he’s on my side I like him much better. I didn’t go in with him myself when the deal was made. George and Trevor didn’t feel that Nigel was quite ready yet for the news that the brilliant new writer they’d found is, in fact, the despised and sacked Sam Bell. Nigel probably imagines me as some spiky-haired punk, since Aiden Fumet normally only represents fashionable people.

Anyway, as I say, I’m now a professional writer with a script fully in development at the BBC, which is an absolutely thrilling thing to be. The only fly in my professional ointment is that I still have my job at Radio which I must keep up in order to avoid making Lucy suspicious, and of course for the cash. We can’t survive for the next six months on ten grand plus the minute sum Lucy makes at the agency.

So, bright and early this morning, after Lucy and I had had a three-minute quickie (“Don’t worry about me, just get on with it,” were her bleary, sleepy words), I left her lying in bed trying to eat toast with three pillows under her bum and her legs propped up against the wall and rushed off for my meeting. They like to start early in Radio because it’s very much a daytime medium, unlike TV, of course.

The meeting was fascinating in its banality. It was a seminar pertaining to the Director General’s Regional Diversity Directive (the DGRDD), which is called “The Glory of the Quilt”. I don’t know why it’s called “The Glory of the Quilt”. Somebody in the lift said they thought it related to Britain being a patchwork, but for all I know QUILT may be an acronym for Quasi Utilitarianism Initiative Long Term. Or something else altogether. Nobody ever knows these things. I don’t think we’re supposed to.

The seminar was being chaired by the Head of Youth, BBC Radio, whose name is Tom. Tom and I had already met. He called me in to impress upon me that he did not mind jokes about drugs or even anal sex. In fact he positively encouraged “cutting edge” material, as long as it was on after nine in the evening and was in no way exploitative or offensive to minority groups.

Anyway, Tom kicked off in pretty general terms.

“Hi, yo. Welcome to this session of the ongoing series of seminars under the Director General’s Regional Diversity Directive. The Glory of the Quilt. As you all know, today’s ongoing subtopic is Regional Diversity and Youth.”

I hadn’t known, actually, but I let it go. Up until now all the seminars of the Director General’s Regional Diversity Directive had been bogged down in debating why all the regional diversity debates were taking place in London, but they had obviously bitten the bullet on this one and moved on.

“So, BBC youth radio and the regions,” said Tom. “As you all know, the Director General is one hundred per cent committed to the BBC diversifying into the regions and I fully support him in his view… Bill, I asked you to formulate a comprehensive decentralization strategy.”

I have not yet discovered what Bill’s post is. Nobody I asked knew either (including Tom). My theory is that Bill wandered into BH one day, possibly to be interviewed on Radio 4 about bird-watching or to deliver an envelope of money to the playlist compilers at Radio 1 and he never found his way out again. Broadcasting House really is something of a warren.

“The key to regional diversification,” said Bill, “is accents. We need more accents about the place. Northern accents, Scottish accents, at least one Welsh accent.”

Tom leapt on this like a thirsty man hearing the bell at closing time.

“I agree,” he said. “Accents are the key and I think we need to stress right from the word go that wherever possible those accents should be genuine.”

Everybody nodded wisely at this, although Tom himself could see problems.

“The BBC is, however,” he continued, “an affirmative action employer. We have quotas and we’re not ashamed of it.”

The problem was that a vast percentage of BBC senior staff are of course from either Oxford or Cambridge, people unlikely to possess overly strong regional accents. The choice, the meeting felt, was pretty stark. Either BBC executives stop giving jobs to their old university friends, or some of those friends will have to pretend that they come from Llandudno.

“I’m not entirely unhappy with that,” said Tom. “If we’re going to teach the kids to speak badly let’s at least have people doing it who know the rules that are being broken.”

Dear Penny

I got my period today. One more infertile month to add to the long long line of them that stretch back into my distant past. Sam and I will go and see the people at Spannerfield tomorrow. He’s dreading it, I know, although strangely he seems to have suddenly become a lot more interested in the process. During the last day or two he’s asked me really quite a lot of questions about ovulation and LH surges and things like that. It’s good that he asks, but I’m sure he’s only trying to be nice. Still, that’s better than nothing, I suppose.

Dear Sam

We’re going to Spannerfield tomorrow. I’m pretty nervous and a bit depressed about it. I’ve been using some of these feelings in my script (just as Lucy always wanted me to, I might add), and it’s working out rather well. Interestingly, the film is going to be less of an absolutely full-on comedy than I originally thought. Not that it won’t be funny. You couldn’t avoid it with that many knob gags at your disposal, but it’s also going to have its serious side.

I tried a bit out on Trevor and George today. I was really nervous because I’ve never attempted anything but jokes with them before but I wanted to give Colin (that’s the name of my lead bloke) something of what I’m feeling. I’m going to paste the speech straight across from my Film Document because I think it’s relevant to this book too.

COLIN (Reflective. Depressed): “So it seems that we’ve reached the end of the fertility road and we’re going to have to try IVF. I know it’s a positive thing and all that, but it just feels so sad and… well… grown up… Funny how the penny finally drops that you’re not young any more. That moment when all the cliches that affected your parents and their friends start happening to people you know. All those dreadful, embarrassing, failure-type things that were for older people. Alcoholism [Trevor nodded wisely at this], divorce, loneliness, money-troubles… or childlessness like Rachel [that’s the girl’s name] and me, childless and trying for a test-tube baby…”

I must say when I read it out to them I thought it sounded far too mawkish and indulgent, but George and Trevor were very supportive. They think that a bit of emotion will really add depth to the piece and that it will play well against the comedy, which I agree with absolutely.

They still love the comedy. George nearly fell off his chair when he read the bit about me taking in my sperm sample and having to dig it out from down the back of my trousers in front of the nurse. He thinks I made it up and simply will not accept that it really happened.

Dear Penny

Well, we’ve had our meeting at Spannerfield. Our new consultant’s name is Mr Agnew and he seems very nice. He explained that there are two more tests he’d like to carry out before we commit to an IVF cycle. A hysterosalpingogram (HSG) for me and another sperm test for Sam. His old test is no good because apparently the Spannerfield IVF people always test the sperm themselves. The hysterosalpingogram is an X-ray of the uterus and Fallopian tubes. This involves injecting dye into my cervix (again), which I am so looking forward to. Sam’s test involves him having another wank. But, yet again, he is the one who’s kicking up a fuss! I can’t believe we’re back to all that again. I said to him, I said, “My God, Sam, it’s not the end of the world! I’m asking you to have a quick one off the wrist, not fuck a hedgehog!” He laughed a lot at that and jotted it down on a piece of paper. I don’t know why he did that but somehow I thought it was quite touching.

Dear Sam

Lucy says it’s just a quick one off the wrist like the last time. Oh yes, just like the last time, except this time they won’t let me do it at home! I have to go and masturbate at the hospital! Christ, I can’t imagine a more horrible prospect. Unfortunately I made the mistake of saying this to Lucy and she said that she could imagine a more horrible prospect as a matter of fact… having long telescopes pushed through your bellybutton, having dye injected into you, having your gut pumped full of air and photographed internally, and above all having every doctor in Britain staring up your fanny on a day-to-day basis.

Well, if she’s going to play the woman’s card then there’s nothing I can say, is there?

She said a great line about a hedgehog which I’ll definitely use.

Dear Penny

Carl came into work today. He had to sign some contracts. We hardly spoke. He smiled a nice smile but then went straight into Sheila’s office. It’s what he said he’d do in his note and absolutely the right and proper thing, but I can’t deny it gave me a jolt. A very large part of me desperately wished he’d stopped and had a chat, you know, just about inconsequential things. Of course, I must never forget that the last time we saw each other we kissed, long and hard, in fact. And Carl is right: that’s a fire which must definitely not be fed. All the same, I did wish he’d felt able to say more than a perfunctory “hello”. Except he is right, I know that. I mean basically I’ve already been a bit unfaithful to Sam. I mean not really, of course, but a bit, and that’s terrible. Let’s face it, if I discovered that he’d been pashing on with someone at work, even if it was only once, and totally out of character, I’d still be pretty bloody angry, to say the least. I don’t know what I’d do but I do know I’d be terribly upset.

Dear Book

Well, I must say that this morning has to rank as one of the more gruesome mornings of my life.

Communal masturbation in West London.

Actually that makes it sound better than it was. It makes it sound friendly and inclusive, like a dance or a musical. Dale Winton and Bonnie Langford in Communal Masturbation in West London.

It wasn’t friendly or inclusive at all.

My God, it was grim. They say they’ll see you any time between nine and twelve but Trevor told me to get there at least fifteen minutes before the place opened, as a queue develops. Trevor is an old hand at the sperm test game (ha ha ha), because when he donated to those lesbians they insisted that he have his sperm checked out first. Actually Trevor felt slightly offended about that and accused them of social engineering and trying to create a lesbian master race. The lesbians said that before they wasted a perfectly good turkey baster they wanted to check that his sperm weren’t all immotile, two-headed or dead. Charming, I must say, but I believe people can be very frank in the lesbian community. It comes from years of having to be politically and socially assertive.

Anyway, there must be a lot more wankers around than in Trevor’s day, because although I slunk in at eight-forty there were already four blokes ahead of me. All sitting about in this depressing waiting room with posters about the dangers of smoking all over the place. I can’t imagine why they have such an obsession with smoking in a masturbating facility. Perhaps some blokes have been having a cigarette after they ejaculated?

Anyway, as I say, I slunk in and sat down as far away from any of the others as I could and almost immediately another man arrived. Luckily for me he must have done it before because the first thing he did was go to the empty desk and sign something before sitting down. Instantly I was on the alert! Was there some queueing system of which I was unaware? Did one clock in for a toss? On sneaking over and inspecting the desk I realized that there was indeed a system. “Please sign list on arrival and wait for your name to come up,” it said on the form. On the form, that is, not on a big poster on the wall, but on a poxy little form on a clipboard on a desk. Couldn’t they have put “Smoking may harm your unborn child” on the little form and “Sign up!” on a great big poster?

So now, instead of being fifth man in, I was sixth. I thought for a moment about appealing to the man who came in after me, explaining that I had in fact been there before him but did not know about signing the form. I didn’t, of course. Let me tell you now that one thing I learned today is that nobody talks to anybody in the wanking queue. The hospital could be burning down and we’d all rather burn to death than shout “Fire!” You sit, and you wait.

Anyway, the long minutes ticked by and at nine o’clock a couple of nurses emerged from various corridors and began to take an interest in things. By this time three more men had turned up and we were being forced to sit right next to each other on the little square of chairs, which nobody liked at all. One of the nurses went to the desk and called out the first name. Up gets the bloke, goes to the desk, gets his pot and is directed down the corridor to the wanking room.

So now we all know the score. One room. One fucking room. We’re going in one at a time in a slow, agonizing tosser chain. Each of us realizes that the amount of time that we’re going to have to spend in that hellhole is entirely dependent on those in front of us in the queue. The chain moves at the speed of the slowest wanker.

After about ten minutes the door at the end of the corridor opened and the first man hurried out. He dropped his pot off at a little hatch in the wall, handed some kind of plastic-coated form back to the nurse and he was out, lucky swine. After what I considered an unnecessary minute or two of faffing about, the nurse called out the next name and up got another man, picked up his pot and the plastic-coated form and trundled down the corridor to the masturbation chamber. I must say I found this plastic-coated form a bit disconcerting. What was it? Wanking instructions? Surely most men were up to speed on that one? And plastic-coated. That was a bit of a gross touch, I must say.

It’s always struck me as a strange thing about instructions in general, the way people feel the need to give them out whatever the circumstances. Perhaps it makes us feel more in control, like the way we still give all the details on an outgoing answerphone message: “If you’d like to leave a message please speak clearly after the tone.” I mean, we all know that, don’t we? Perhaps we should add, “Oh, and don’t forget to put the receiver back afterwards or your phone will be rendered useless.” Lucy and I had a frozen pie last night and on the box it said “Remove cardboard box before putting in the oven.” I mean I suppose some people might make a mistake with that, but surely it’s better to let them learn by experience or else one day they’ll be near a fire with some cardboard and no instructions and hurt themselves.

The ballpoint pens they give us at work have a warning embossed on the plastic tops advising us not to put them in our mouths as choking might ensue. That is a fact. I’m not making it up. Surely the same thing could be said for eggcups or toilet roll tubes or carpets? The world is definitely going mad.

Anyway, back to the tosser queue. The next bloke in took nearly fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes to have a wank! I mean I’ve pulled them off in fifteen seconds in my time! I could see I was not the only one who thought this. Everybody was shuffling their feet a bit and looking at their watches. Eventually, of course, he emerged, and nearly ran past us to get out of the place, and so the long day wore on. There was a coffee machine available. I say coffee but what I mean is hot water with little brown islands floating in it. Worse than useless, really. Strange, I mean we all knew the machine served liquid shit but because it said it served coffee we drank the stuff. If it had said “Liquid Shit” machine I suppose we would have left it alone. Instructions, you see, we’re all caught in the headlights.

Finally at gone quarter to ten, my number came up. “Mr Bell,” the lady said. It had to be a woman, of course. Like when you’re a kid buying condoms at Boots, you could wait for hours for a lad to take over the till but he never did and you had to buy them off a teenage girl your own age. Anyway, the nurse gave me my pot and the plastic-coated instructions, and when I say plastic-coated, I don’t mean neatly laminated, no, I mean a twenty-year-old form in an old plastic bag. That form has seen some sights, I bet.

“Last room on the left,” said the nurse. “When you’ve finished leave your pot at the lab hatch and return the form to me.”

Well, I must say I’ve masturbated in more pleasant environments. Don’t misunderstand me: I don’t think that the NHS should be consuming its precious resources providing sensually lit boudoirs draped in red velvet and reeking of sultry scents for sad acts like me to wank in. I’m just saying it was all a bit depressing.

There was a chair, a magazine rack, a handbasin and a waste-paper basket in the room. That was it. Apart from that it was completely bare. The plastic-coated instructions informed me that I should carefully wash my hands and knob before getting down to the business of the morning. Already in the wastebasket were the crumpled paper handtowels of the previous tossers on which they had no doubt dried not only their hands but also their knobs. Strange to think that only moments before I had entered the room another man had been… I decided not to think about it.

So I scrubbed up and viewed the chair. It was a municipal easy-chair consisting of an upright and a horizontal cushion. The sort of chair you would have found in the teachers’ common room of a secondary modern school in about 1970. I regret to have to report that it was stained, not in a truly horrid way, but just with age. There was a dark triangle on the front of the seat, left where a million men’s legs had worn the material around it. In the magazine rack were some old dirty mags. It’s a long time since I’ve seen the inside of a dirty mag and for a moment I thought, “Hello, bonus,” but really, you just couldn’t get into them at all, they were so old. I don’t mean interestingly old, like 1960 or something. Just old; about three years or so. On the wall there was a sign saying, and I kid you not, that any donations of spare “reading material” would be welcomed. Reading! We live in a world where five-year-olds can dial up snuff movies on the Internet and yet a hospital calls wank mags “reading material”.

I don’t know why they don’t just write to Penthouse. I’m sure the publishers would be delighted to make a donation to assist all those men in making their donations.

Then suddenly I became aware of the time!

Oh my God, I must have been in that room for two or three minutes already! Instantly I had a vision of all the men outside, shuffling their feet, looking at their watches, thinking to themselves, “How long does it take to toss yourself off, for fuck’s sake!” Just as I had been cruelly thinking myself only moments before. Suddenly I was convinced that they were all out there gnashing their teeth and muttering, “He’s reading the articles in the magazines, I’m sure of it.”

Must get down to it! Must get down to it! Don’t want to hold up the queue. But how do you get down to it under that kind of pressure? It’s impossible. I sat on the chair, I stood up, I glanced at a magazine. Panic rose within me and panic was the only thing that was rising!

In the end, by a supreme effort I managed to calm myself down a little. I did it by telling myself that the door was locked, that I would never have to see any of those men outside again and that I would take as long as I damn well liked.

So I sat down on the horrible, worn-out old chair and resolutely concentrated on the job. With, I might add, the added pressure of knowing that I must get the first bit in! They make this clear in all the literature, and the plastic-coated instructions were also very very firm on the subject. The first bit is the best bit, of that there seems to be no doubt. All the rest is rubbish, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Well, I did it. Sort of. I think there was enough. I hope so, anyway. Only time will tell. Looking at my watch I realized that I had been in there for over twenty minutes. I could feel the wave of resentment greet me as I emerged and walked past them all to hand in my pot. I was so embarrassed and flustered that I tried to walk out of the building still holding the plastic-coated form and had to be called back, which was humiliating.

Like I say, I’ve had better mornings.

Personally, I think it’s possible that I’d rather have dye inserted into my cervix, but I’m not going to say that to Lucy, of course.

Dear Penny

Hysterosalpingogram today. It’s not supposed to hurt much, but they say you should take along someone to drive you home just in case you’re upset or in discomfort. Sam, of course, had a very important meeting, which he did offer to cancel but I said, “No, don’t bother, I’m fine.” Drusilla came along, which was nice of her, except she seems to view all hospitals, especially the women’s-only parts, as places of unnatural torture and intrusion where nature is excluded and man insults the gods. This is slightly embarrassing when she talks about it loudly in the waiting room.

“You know half the problems they deal with here can be treated herbally,” she said so that everyone could hear. “There’s very little in life that a rose and lilac enema won’t go some way towards curing.”

The hysterosalpingogram itself was all right. Legs up as per. Quick prod about, as per. Bunch of spotty students staring up me in an intense manner, as per. Then in goes the dye, they tilt it back so that the dye can flow through the tubes. Actually, it was very interesting, because you can watch the progress of the dye on a little television screen. I thought I’d be too squeamish to look, but it was fine, as it turned out. Then they took a few X-rays and that was that. The doctor was in and out in ten minutes and I was in and out in twenty. It was all right, although I did feel a bit sick and faint afterwards. Apparently some women find it more painful. Perhaps my insides are getting desensitized.

Drusilla and I went for a coffee afterwards and I told her about Carl. Amazingly she’s of the same opinion as Melinda was when I talked to her about it. She thinks I should “put the poor boy out of his misery and shag him”! I had no idea all my friends were so cavalier about the concept of fidelity. I think with Drusilla it’s actually because she’s sex obsessed and believes that anything and everything should be shagged whenever the opportunity arises. Preferably in groups and at Stonehenge.

I said to Drusilla, Hang on, perhaps we’re jumping the gun here, perhaps poor old Carl doesn’t particularly want to shag me anyway. I mean I know we kissed, but I was upset and he was comforting me. Perhaps he really is just a very nice guy who just wants to be my friend.

“Ha!” said Drusilla and she said it so loudly that other ladies spilt their coffee. Drusilla never minds about being noticed. I do.

I must say that whatever Carl’s intentions may or may not be towards me, I’m a bit sad about the way all my pals seem to view Sam. I mean obviously as far as they’re concerned I’m married to a sort of sexless, emotion-free geek whom one can betray with impunity. I put this to Drusilla and she replied, “Well, you said it, babes,” which I thought was bloody mean.

Dear Sam

Lucy had her pingowhatsit today. She wanted me to go with her but for heaven’s sake I have a job. The BBC pays me to sit twiddling my fingers at Broadcasting House, not at Spannerfield Hospital. Besides which, today I actually had something to do, believe it or not.

The Prince’s Trust are putting on a big concert in Manchester. Radio 1 is going to broadcast it live and the whole concert has been designated a Light Entertainment Brief, i.e. my responsibility. There are two reasons for this. Firstly there will be comedians on the bill (comedy of course being the new rock ’n’ roll. Like hell). Secondly, the bill will mainly be made up of ageing old rockers, and nobody at Radio 1 who’s into music wants to touch it with a bargepole. They all think that because some of the artists who are to perform have committed the cardinal sin of being over forty (and doing music that has tunes) the whole thing is terminally uncool and should be on Radio 2 anyway.

So there we are. It turns out that it is to be me who’s heading up the BBC Radio side of the operation, which is why today I found myself back in Quark in Soho having lunch with Joe London. Yes, the Joe London, as in lead singer of The Muvvers, a man who bestrode the late sixties and early seventies rock scene like a colossus. They might sneer, back at the office, all those shaven-headed boys wearing yellow sunglasses indoors and girls with little tattoos of dragons on their midriffs, but I was bloody excited to meet Joe London. This was my history. Joe was big when I was at school. I can remember him when he didn’t have a courgette to put in his trousers. Bloody hell, that man couldn’t half rock in the old days.

“We’re all absolutely delighted at Radio 1 that you can do this show for us, Joe,” I said.

“Oh yeah, tasty, nice one, as it ’appens, no problem, geezer.”

“And of course the Prince’s Trust are very grateful too.”

“Diamond geezer, the Prince of fahkin’ Wales. Lahvly bloke, know what I fahkin’ mean? Likes ’is rock does Charlie, big Supremes fan, and so good with the boys.”

Joe quaffed an alcohol-free lager.

“What’s it in aid of, ven, vis concert?” he said.

“Well, Joe, principally helping young kids with drug abuse.”

Suddenly Joe’s amiable manner changed.

“Well, I fink vat is fahkin’ disgahstin’, vat is,” he sneered. “Lazy little sods! When we was young we ’ad to go aht and get our fahkin’ drugs ourselves.”

I was just clearing up this misunderstanding and explaining that the point of the show was to help underprivileged youth when we were joined by Joe’s manager, a huge, spherical man with a cropped head and a cropped beard and no neck. His head just seemed to develop out of his shoulders like the top of an egg. He wore a black silk Nehru suit and silver slippers and he was bedecked in what must have been two or three kilos’ worth of gold jewellery. His name was Woody Monk and he greeted me with a nod before turning to whistle with approval at our waitress whose skirt was even shorter than on the last occasion I’d seen it. I imagine it had shrunk before the gaze of a thousand middle-aged media leerers who stare at it each lunchtime.

“I remember this place in the sixties when it was a knocking shop,” said Woody Monk. “The birds working ’ere didn’t look much different actcherly.”

I really was dining with the old school. Joe and Woody were rock ’n’ roll as it used to be, and it made me feel like a kid again. These days most pop managers look like Tintin with sunglasses.

I asked Woody Monk if it might be too much to hope that Joe would do some interviews to promote the show.

“He’ll do as many as you like, we need the profile,” Monk replied, and then, as if to quell any protests that Joe might have, he showed Joe a copy of the Sun featuring an article about the current Rolling Stones tour.

“Look at that, Joe!” Monk said. “Just look at it. I mean, it’s obscene, disgusting. That is just a totally ridiculous figure, out of all proportion.”

Joe took off his sunglasses and had a look. “I don’t know, Woody, I like a bit of silicone myself.”

Monk tried to be patient. “I am not talking about the bird, you divvy! I’m talking about this new Stones tour, one hundred million, they reckon! And the Eagles got the same. It’s the arenas and the stadiums,” Monk explained to me, “megabucks, these places gross in humungous proportions. In the old days when people talked about gross on tour they meant waking up with a mouthful of sick and a strange rash on your naughties. But nobody tours for the shagging any more. They do it for the gelt. Every gig is worth millions of dollars. Can’t stop for a bit of the other, accountant won’t let you.”

Basically, Monk’s point was that Joe needed to tour again in the near future. His latest greatest hits album would be out for Christmas and it needed supporting.

“Are we releasing another greatest ’its album, then?” said Joe.

“Yeah, but a prestige one. Nice classy cover, all in gold, the Gold Collection…”

“We done the Gold Collection.”

“Orlright. The Ultimate Collection.”

“Done vat too, and the Definitive Collection and the Classic, and the Unforgettable…”

“Look, Joe!” Monk snapped. I could see that he was a volatile chap. “We’ll call it The Same Old Crap in a Different Cover Collection if you like, it don’t matter. What we have got here is the Prince of Wales flogging your comeback.”

There, it was out, and Woody Monk did not care who knew it. As far as he was concerned this concert was a marketing exercise for Joe London and that was it. I didn’t mind. It meant Joe would promote it for us which was more than any of the modern stars would do these days (“I’m not doing any fooking press, all right?!”). Joe, however, seemed a little embarrassed, though not, as it turned out, about the charity angle.

“Vis ain’t a fahkin’ comeback! To ’ave a comeback you ’ave to ’ave bin away and I ’ave not bin. So vis is not a fahkin’ comeback.”

“Orlright,” said Monk. “It’s a fahkin ‘still here’ tour, then.”

“Vat’s right.”

“You can go on stage and everyone can shout… Fahk me! Are you still here, then?”

I honestly cannot remember when I have had a funnier lunch, and to think I wasted all those years lunching with comedians.

“Anyway, I gotta go,” said Monk, turning to me. “We’re all sorted, aren’t we?”

I said that as far as I knew we were extremely sorted.

“Good, ’cos we don’t want no fahk-ups. Vis gig is very important.”

“That’s right,” said Joe. “What with the underprivileged kiddies and all vat.”

“Bollocks to the underprivileged kids,” said Monk, hauling his massive bulk to his feet. “They should get a bloody job, bleeding scroungers. Fahk ’em.”

So that was that.

Anyway, enough of my day job, time to get down to my script. Lucy is sitting opposite on the bed, looking lovely as she always does. She’s very pleased with me at the moment because I seem to be doing so much writing. She thinks it’s all for my book. I’ll have to tell her soon because things are really progressing with the film. I’ve called it Inconceivable and I’ve been in to see Nigel to admit that the writer is none other than my despised self. He was a bit taken aback at first but then he laughed and was actually very nice about it. He congratulated me and said that sacking me was the best thing he ever did and that when I picked up my Oscar I was to remember to thank him. It’s interesting. Ever since he commissioned my movie script I’ve been warming to Nigel and now consider him to be a thoroughly good bloke. Is that desperately shallow of me or evidence of my generous and forgiving nature?

Anyway, the very exciting news is that the BBC really want to get on with it. Nigel feels that the idea is very current and that everybody will be doing it soon. Besides which, the film will be extremely cheap to make, which means that the Beeb can pay for it all by themselves. The reason films usually take years to get together is because that’s how long it takes to raise the money, but we’re already past that hurdle and Nigel is impatient to become a film producer.

“Movies work in a yearly cycle,” he explained. “The festival circuit is essential for a small picture. Venice, Sundance, Cannes. You need critical heat under you before the Golden Globes in February.”

He actually said “critical heat under you”. Strange. Whereas before I would have thought he sounded like a pretentious wanker, now I think he sounds knowledgeable and cool.

The reason Nigel is in such a hurry is that the whole thing about being a Controller at the BBC is that you have to make your mark. When you start looking for a fat job in the independent sector you have to be able to say, “It was in my time that we did The Generation Game,” or, “Oh yes, I commissioned Edge of Darkness and Noel’s House Party.” These days the scramble to be seen to be successful is becoming ever more urgent. People move on so quickly that you have to make your mark quickly too and it seems that, thank you, God, I am to be the beneficiary of Nigel’s haste.

Dear Penny

We went in to see Mr Agnew today at Spannerfield. He gave us our test results and everything remains clear. Sam’s sperm is fine (about ninety million of them, which is enough, surely?) and a sufficient number of them heading in the right direction to pass muster. Also my pingy thingy seems to have come up normal. Mr Agnew assured me that my tubes aren’t scarred, also there are no adhesions, fibroids, adenomyosis, or polyps in the womb, and that the area where the tubes join the uterus is similarly polyp-free. These polyps, it seems, are things to be avoided. I don’t really know what a polyp is. I suppose I think of them as sort of small cysts. Actually, I try very hard not to think about them at all. Quite frankly, just hearing about the eight million things that can go wrong inside a woman’s reproductive system is enough to make me ill. All Sam has to worry about is whether his sperm can swim.

Anyway, Mr Agnew was very nice and agreed with me that since we have uncovered nothing operable or treatable and yet we remain stubbornly infertile, the time may now be right to commence a course of IVF. Mr Agnew said that not only would this give us a chance of becoming pregnant (obviously) but it might also prove useful in a diagnostic sense, i.e. we might discover what, if anything, beyond the most incredible bad luck, is the problem.

“Fine,” I said. “When can we start?”

Seven months, said Mr Agnew.

“Bollocks to that,” I replied (in so many words), and Mr Agnew explained that if we go private we can start next month, so that is what we’ll do and I don’t care what Sam says. If I’m going to have to do this I’ll do it as soon as I possibly can and start the long horrible process of getting it over with. Quite apart from anything else, as far as I can see, the NHS is under such a strain that if we can afford to pay we ought to do so and not take the place of someone who can’t. Sam says that that attitude simply reinforces the two-tier system. Well, what if it does? I have a home while other people are homeless, isn’t that a two-tier system? Should I go and sit in a doorway to avoid reinforcing it? I eat ready-prepared meals from Marks amp; Spencer while people in the Third World struggle to grow a few grains of wheat. How many tiers are there in that system, I wonder.

Anyway, it’s not posh at all. We all get lumped in together and all the profits that Spannerfield makes out of the private patients go straight back into the unit to fund the research programme. Personally I thought that us making a contribution to funding research sounded like a pretty good thing but Sam says that NHS hospitals using private patients to fund their activities is the thin end of the privatization wedge. He says that the people who manage the NHS budget will say to the hospitals, “Well, if you’re partially self-funding already, we’ll cut back on your allocation of public money and force you further into the marketplace.” Hence the financial necessity of having a private system will become entrenched within the funding bureaucracy.

At that point I couldn’t be bothered to argue any further and told him to give all his food and clothes to Oxfam if he felt that strongly about it, which he doesn’t.

Sam has just asked me whether Hysterosalpingogram begins with “HY” or “HI”. He seems to have suddenly got very enthusiastic about doing his book and getting all the details right. I know I should be glad, and I am in a way. After all, it was me that made him start it in the first place. It’s just that I wish he’d share some of those thoughts and feelings with me. The way we talk to each other and react to each other has become just a little bit mechanical and predictable. Is that what happens in a marriage? Is it inevitable? I’d love to talk to Sam about that sort of thing but I know he’d just try and change the subject.

Oh well, at least now he’s writing down his feelings, which I’m sure is the first step towards him being able to share them.

I’m trying not to think too much about wanting a baby at the moment. I find it drains me. I wake up feeling all fine and then I remember that according to my life plan I ought to have a couple of five-year-olds rushing in to jump into bed with me. That’s when a great wave of depression sort of descends, which I then have to fight my way out of by reminding myself how incredibly lucky I am in so many ways. Sometimes it works.

Dear Self

Long meeting with George and Trevor at Television Centre today. Nigel was there for the first hour but then he had to rush off to Heathrow (two-day seminar in Toronto: “Children’s TV: Did Bugs Bunny Win? Cartoons and our children’s mental health”). Inconceivable is moving at a hell of a speed now. They’re already talking about casting and a director, which is quite unprecedented. They do have some problems with the script, though. Nothing major, but it’s something I’m going to have to think about very hard. It came up after we’d all been laughing at the “communal masturbation in West London” scene. We’d been improvising some gags about Colin sneaking a funnel in because those pots are far too small and of course ejaculation is scarcely an exact science. Then George brought up what was worrying them.

“It’s too blokey, mate. Colin’s stuff is really good, hilarious, in fact…”

“And touching in a strange sort of way,” Trevor added.

“But Rachel is a worry,” George went on. “Frankly she’s a bit two-dimensional.”

I couldn’t deny that I’d been worrying about her myself and was pleased to have the chance to discuss it. We all agreed that she has some good lines, but George and Trevor (and the ninety other BBC bods who seem to have read the thing) felt that she was clearly being drawn from a male point of view.

“There’s no real heart there,” said Trevor, “and let’s face it, essentially this has to be a woman’s story. You can’t base a movie about infertility simply on a load of knob and wank gags.”

“Excellent though they may be,” George added.

“You have to get inside the character of the female lead. Maybe you should take on a woman co-writer.”

I can’t even bear to write down the terrible thought that leapt immediately into my mind when Trevor said that.

This will need careful consideration.

Dear Penny

The die is cast. I’m booked in to start after my next period, presuming, that is (and I must at all times remain positive), a miracle hasn’t happened naturally.

Oh God, I do so want a child. Sometimes I think about praying. Not like going-to-church praying, but just at home in the quiet. In fact, if I’m honest I do occasionally offer up a silent one, just in my head when no one’s about. But then I think that that’s wrong and presumptuous of me because I don’t believe in God in any conventional sense so I have no right to pray to him (her? it?), do I? On the other hand, if he doesn’t exist I’ve lost nothing and if he does exist then I imagine he’d prefer even a sceptical prayer to no prayer at all so I can’t really lose, can I?

I’m certainly not an atheist anyway because there must be something bigger than us. There are so many questions that scientists can’t answer. Who are we? Who made us? Is there a reason? The easy answer to all that of course is God. The universe is a mystery and we shall call the author of that mystery God. That’s how I see it, anyway. I suppose I’m an agnostic, which I know is the easy way out. And also very self-indulgent because basically it means not believing in something except when it suits you.

Actually I think it’s amazing how arrogant we’ve become about God. He used to be a figure of fear and majesty, the ultimate authority before whom humanity was supposed to prostrate itself in humble repentance for our sins. Now you hear people talk about God as if he was some kind of rather eager stress counsellor or therapist. I was watching a bit of daytime American chat show the other day and someone said, “I hadn’t talked to God in a long time but when I needed him he was there for me.” The presenter nodded wisely and added, “You have to make time to let God into your life.” This unbelievable banality actually got a round of applause! I couldn’t believe the arrogance of it! Like this person and God were equals, pals! It’s amazing, this ready appropriation of the supreme being as some sort of spineless yes man who is on ready call to tell you that you’re beautiful and that everything is fine whenever you feel a bit low. I can just imagine God sitting in his heaven amongst his mighty host thinking to himself, “Oh no, some self-indulgent, self-obsessed sad sack of de-caf and doughnuts hasn’t called… If only these people would make room in their lives to let me in.”

I really don’t know what I feel about religion but I do know that if I’m going to have a God I want a great and terrible God, a God of splendour, mystery and majesty, not one that spends his time chatting to whingers about how stressed they are.

Perhaps I’m just being mean. If people find comfort that way why should it worry me? I wish I could find comfort, just a little, because I do want a baby so very much and sometimes the feelings are so strong I don’t know what to do with them.

Dear Sam

Lucy got her period today. We’ve drained the dregs at the last-chance saloon and now it’s time to put our trust in the medical profession. Lucy asked me if I’d thought about praying and I said I hadn’t but I was happy to give it a go if she wanted me to. We must leave no avenue of opportunity unexplored. Who knows, it might work. It seems to me that the idea of an old man with a white beard sitting on a cloud dispensing goodwill doesn’t sound any more absurd than the bollocks most physicists talk. I mean really, every single bloke I know bought A Brief History of Time and not one of them, including me, understood a single word of it.

Why do we have such faith in scientists? When I was at school they told us that in days gone by simple folk believed the world was balanced on the back of a tortoise. How we laughed! “What a bunch of prats,” we said. Ho ho ho! Because we know better, don’t we? Apparently, according to Stephen Hawking and his pals there was this tiny lump of infinitely dense stuff the size of a cricketball, contained within which was the entire universe. Where this cricketball was and where it had come from are questions which apparently only stupid people ask. Anyway, one day the rock exploded and all the energy and stuff blasted out from the epicentre and formed into stars and galaxies which are still hurtling outwards to this very day.

Now why is that any more convincing than the tortoise?

They keep saying that if we spend another trillion or two on a new telescope they’ll be able to tell us exactly how the universe began. They keep telling us how close they are, saying things like, “When the universe was three seconds old, protons began to form…” Well maybe, but I think that a hundred years from now they’ll discover that the universe got farted out of the arse of a giant space elephant and school kids will all be laughing to think that anybody ever believed in the big bang theory.

Sometimes the self-righteousness of the scientific profession really gets on my nerves. They always seem to assume that science is sort of outside society, that what scientists do is pure and that it is other people who corrupt it. I saw a documentary about Einstein and Oppenheimer on the Discovery Channel the other day and it was going on about what simple, peaceful men they were and that during the war they sent a letter to President Truman pleading with him not to drop the bomb. They said that it was too big, too terrible and man had no right to unleash such a force. All I could think was what a couple of hypocrites! For years they’d struggled. For years they’d devoted their colossal brains to developing a bomb which the rest of us would have to spend our lives living in the shadow of, and then they reckon they can get out of their responsibilities by saying, “Please don’t drop it,” and go down in history as sad-eyed, white-haired old peacemakers.