Chapter (Catch) 22: four months later...
Postscript: The Night Caller

I think I need to push Luke harder. He has now had the carpet swept from under him by his own corporation after he was convinced that they would lap this up. Anybody with any brains would say this has got to be lapped up! It has not been and maybe never will.

I have told him, don't worry about us. Your big problem is that you will never be able to get any of us on telly again, all of the people you further wanted to make projects about that I know of... I mean, he came to me recently with a project.

'Can you find radical women to go on a blind date programme? The more radical the better, we will then find the richest, most right-wing capitalists we can and we put them all on a blind date together and again this will offer a platform for your beliefs Craig.'

I did not tell him immediately that he did not have a cat's chance in hell unless we saw what he had done with ours. I did not tell him that immediately. I came back to him after a week.

'I've got some girls willing to do it,' I said.

'Oh, oh, really?' he said. 'What have we got?'

'Well,' I said, 'we have got a radical, anarchist fetishist from Australia who has been based in Britain for some time now, who has fifty-two piercings, who is also a contortionist and a 'body-adapter'. There's all kinds of stuff she has done to her body to change it. Basically she hates white, supremacist men with money and she is extremely well read and intellectual and her sexual behaviour would be more than a little shocking for even the most corrupt High Court judges. Interested?'

'Oh, I'm very interested.'

'She's got a fantastic Mohican haircut and is about forty-odd, so we are not talking about a naive degenerate here, we are talking about someone who has got an agenda.'

'Oh, oh, really extreme stuff?'

'Beyond extreme,' I said. 'You would have trouble getting that one through the censors. I swear to God. She has got no problem with just undressing and showing off this quite extreme thing she has done with her body at the drop of a hat in public places or not and in any argument she is one of the most hardened feminists you will ever find. Men are so scared of her it is quite amazing and yet I am bloody sure that sexually she's a masochist, but I have not discussed this with her but I got close enough with her to pick certain things up, which I found quite odd. And then we have got a radical anarchist from the town of Balamory, who has the exact same voice as Miss Hooley, probably about the same age too, from the children's programme, but she is the anti-Hooley. She has got long, black, curly hair. She is extremely abrasive, very witty, very sharp and extremely hyper active, if not hyper manic. She's a single mum, I chose all women who did not have partners, as such, and she is another hardcore feminist but more on the environmental side. She would cane a captain of industry, verbally destroy him and knowing her, he would fall in love with her and she would leave him a sobbing wreck by the side of the road. You would get something better than Casablanca there.'

'Oh,' he said, 'that sounds great, Craig. Is that it?'

'Oh no,' I said.

'There's more?'

'There's much more,' I said. 'I'm only skimming the surface,' I said. 'Screaming Teresa, the maddest woman I have ever met. Touching sixty, a witch, a shaman, put her up against a sixty year old captain of industry and he would have to be pretty powerful if he was still one at sixty, and she would destroy him. But she would do it in a way that would enlighten him and change him and redistribute all his business empire towards the underprivileged of Lewisham. It would only take her hours. Her mind is sharper, far sharper than Lex Luthor's. You would see a woman on television who is not only sexually alluring and seductive but she is in her mid-fifties. Blowing all of the expectations of what is sexually attractive and what is erotic right out of the window but only ever wears skin-tight leather and has been responsible for protecting me from gangs of blokes who wanted to kill me, single handedly. I don't think many blokes want to mess with a woman whose opening line just before a fight is, "I'm going to tell you what's going to happen. See this stiletto heel? I am going to grind it into your eye socket you little fucker." Blokes ran off. I was almost more scared of her than them... If she were taken to say the Strand Palace Hotel for a bang up meal, that would be a show and a half.'

'Oh, Craig! Gimme, gimme, gimme!'

'No.'

'None of them?'

'None of them!'

'Wait... You can't tell me about them and then not give them me?'

'You can't have any of them!'

'Why not? You can't! Anyway, it's up to them.'

'Indeed,' I said. 'None of them are going to do it.'

'Why on earth not?'

'Because they want to see your edit of me and Kiran before they fucking trust you. You are missing out on something far bigger than this one show.' And I literally said that to him. 'Go tell your bosses, go back to them. This isn't just about this show. You have formed a dialogue with a group in society that is just waiting to be put on the fucking idiots' lantern. They are so known to the rest of the population, they will not be shocking, there will be a blessed sigh of relief that someone like Screaming Teresa is on telly. I wonder if the powers that be would notice ninety percent of the British population for the individualists they are. Go back to them, and really bloody think about this Luke, because, you know, one of the main reasons you wanted to do this, unless you were lying to me, was that it was opening doors to other things in the future, not necessarily involving me personally, but certainly I would always be good for a bit of advice.'

'This is a problem, isn't it?'

'A big one, mate. We've lost confidence in your corporation. How can we not? We had already lost confidence in it before you turned up, before you were born. But to be quite frank, we were close to being chummied up by your good self there and your bosses have fucked you up the arse, mate. Your best work, too and you can't argue that anything else you've done has even come close to this.'

'No, true, true,' he said.

'I've got a few ideas for TV programmes,' I said. 'D'you want 'em?'

'I'm all ears.'

'You don't have to tell everyone that I told you. You can take full credit for them yourself, but you will owe me, you do understand that?'

'All right, okay. What?'

'I've got loads,' I said, 'but I'll just give you one to be going to bed with tonight.'

'What's that?'

'Trinny and Susanna. I would like you to get them on a show where they are made up, and humiliated, by two or three of the most brutal dominatrix clothes designers we can find. Not only will they be made to look more sexual and more appropriate than they have ever looked in their lives, they will find a new dawning sexual awareness in themselves that they didn't even think was possible. Live, on telly, or as live as you can make it and they'll be treated like shit. The British public will lap it up, they will have their credibility restored and their business empire will flourish, so they will do it, Luke.'

'My God!' he said. 'I can't believe the coincidence of it. Only yesterday they signed to ITV and they don't know what to do with them! Did you know about this Craig?'

'No, mate. It hadn't even crossed my mind that they were BBC but of course if they hadn't signed to ITV, the company that employs Armada, it would be a far harder thing to achieve.'

'Just so.'

'Oh well,' I said, 'if you want any help, I know people in the House of Harlot, my co-author has a friend who designs fetish clothing, my mate Conrad's partner Clare designs fetish clothing, his ex-partner Angelita designs fetish clothing, and we know some pretty eccentric women who would do to them what they have been doing to the British public for years.'

Now I have heard nothing back about that. I mean, come on! My mate Brayf has rung me every day about this one.

'Are you going to get the plump one in PVC and rubber? Because I keep having dreams about her.'

'Her?! She looks like a horse, you sick monkey!'

'No, I keep getting these weird fetishistic dreams involving her.'

'Well, try and purge yourself, mate!'

'But everyone likes one or the other, don't they... Craig?'

'Well, not especially, but, unfortunately, the thin one... there is something about her. But they are a couple of monsters! They are evil to the core, you know the grossest form of public school, psychological warfare on an unwitting public, edited to a point where they look perfect. Do you know what I'm saying? I want this... this is political, Brayf. This is not for your titillation.'

'Well,' Brayf said, 'I don't see that the two things are mutually exclusive.'

'Brayf,' I said, 'How can you say that? Have you learnt nothing about TV and politics and the disease of celebrity and media manipulation from any of my experiences?'

'Not a goddamned thing, mate. It's great isn't it?'