In real life, [Diane] Keaton believes in God. But she also believes that the radio works because there are tiny people inside it.
– Woody Allen
• †
The man had woken up early, his brain buzzing with strange and wonderful thoughts. He was definitely getting better.
The man went into the kitchen. He put the kettle on. He was God’s instrument. He would do what was required of him, he would be vigilant, wait for the signs and when the time came he would be ready. He sat down at the table, bit into his toast and turned on the radio.
“The time now is ten to eight. In a few minutes, I will be speaking to the Education Secretary Carey Espedair about the government’s plans to introduce compulsory IQ testing for all PE teachers. But first here is the morning thought with the Right Reverend Donaldson Cake, Bishop of Enfield and founder of the Families First campaign and pressure group.”
“Thank you Peter and God bless you, and good morning everyone and God bless you too. On my way into the studio this morning, I passed through Kings Cross station and I happened to stop at the newsagents to purchase my morning paper, and as I did so, I had cause to reflect on what an impermanent and transitional time we live in. A month ago, no-one had heard of John Smith. Now he is on the cover of every magazine and newspaper. Especially those of Eric Hayle.
“In the last few weeks, in this case, we have seen, like never before, the cynical power of the media to manipulate the public and the unalloyed lure of celebrity. A man with nothing complex to say is elevated to the level of a sage. And then by some strange circularity, because he appears in our newspapers, what they say about him must be true. (For why else would they print it?) To me, it seems that here is a man that is famous for being widely seen as wise. And who is seen as wise because Eric Hayle has seen to it that he is famous. He is offered to us as wise man, a prophet, and yet his message is empty and all we are presented with is packaging and personality.”
Having worked himself up to quite some pace, the Reverend Cake took a second’s break, after thirty years in the church, he knew how to deliver a sermon.
“I cannot help but think how different this is from the story of Our Lord,” he continued. “He did not have a public relations team. He did not grace the cover of lurid tabloids. He didn’t hang out in smoky nightclubs mocking everyone. He was not even very widely recognised in his own lifetime. But his message is not instant, it is timeless. A profound and lasting truth that has been preserved and handed down through the authority of the church.”
“It could not be otherwise for it is a message that is the Truth, the Light, the Way. But in these darkened times, that Truth is often obscured by the lies of the media, that Light is obscured by the dazzle of celebrity and that hard Way is shunned for the path of pleasure, of instant gratification. But these things will fade and die. Only Jesus Christ can offer eternal and lasting salvation. He is still the prophet for our generation.”
Again the Reverend paused,
“God be with you.”
“He is”, thought the man.
Ψ
Why did Phil Collins cross the road?
To get to the middle.
– Traditional
Jonny Lawson was a leathery old has-been. One might have thought his mid morning show on Radio Two would be a complete anachronism, the sort of middle of the road, middle brow dross that one could only have heard in the dark and hideously tasteless days of the nineteen seventies. That is exactly what it was. After thirty years of presenting his show, he was not about to change the formula now. Especially as it continued to be successful in a way that ought to give pause to those intellectual commentators who claim we have all become far more sophisticated over the years.
Given the choice Jonny would not have changed the music either, but fortunately (or not) Phil Collins, Mick Hucknall and Celine Dion had arrived to widen the middle of the road into a treacle tarmac-ed superhighway of schmaltz.
All the same Hazel was looking forward to appearing on his show. It made her feel nostalgic for the seventies and eighties, for her time as consultant psychologist on several secure special units and in-patient mental health wards. When she had made her morning rounds, Jonny’s show would almost always be on in the background of the communal area. Its bland chatter and anodyne music had just the right kind of soporific effect on the mentally unbalanced. Diplomatically, she did not mention this to Jonny. She was learning the ways of the media, though it did not please to see this happening to herself.
He had a great face for radio. His head was oddly angular, with a flat triangular nose and a wide line of a mouth. His eyes were stupidly far apart, almost round the corners of his head onto his temples. When he smiled he looked like a shark. His hair was not his own, nor anyone else’s. The last time the glossy black strands crowning his head had been anything resembling organic was sixty million years ago, when as primordial microbes they had begun their long journey towards the shiny magic of plastic.
However, you do not get to host your own show on Radio Two for twenty-seven years without something between the ears of your over-sized headphones. He was an intelligent man. He was warm and genuine. He was slightly witty. There was nothing to dislike about him but he was about as thrilling as Phil Collins’ latest album. Hazel did not like Phil Collins. Unfortunately, Jonny Lawson was also lecherous old fool who showed no shame in his pursuit of whatever woman had caught his eye. It was usually the nearest woman. Though some adjustment was made to his proximity criterion to account for age and availability.
Hazel was almost the same age as Jonny. With a well practised eye, he had clocked the absence of a wedding ring the moment he had first met her shortly before the show. Now she was sitting at a microphone four feet away from him and due to be there for the full two hours of the show. Jonny had acquired his latest target. In his mind, she did not stand a chance. The first song of the show was already coming to an end. Jonny Lawson double checked that he had his own handwritten notes on Hazel’s book and smiled his shark-like smile at his guest.
Hazel smiled back nervously, matching Jonny Lawson’s perfect teeth with her own. Perfectly fake, she thought ruefully. She wore dentures after winning one too many arguments with in-patients on the psychiatric wards. She occasionally forgot one of the many unwritten rules of the mental health world that the winner of a rational argument better watch out for a chair in the face. Hazel felt a lot more on guard at the moment. Her appearance on Shona’s TV show had not gone well and the publishers’ publicity manager had been lecturing her on the need to be more public friendly.
“That was the ever wonderful Barbara Streisand. Now I would like to welcome my guest for the morning. Dr Hazel Cole. Author of ‘Help Yourself ’, a new book described as a self help book that tells people that they don’t need one. Hello Doctor.”
“Hello, Jonny. And thank you for having me. I have been listening to your show since my first day working in the NHS 35 years ago.”
“Well thank you. Although you don’t strike me as old enough to have been with me in the early days. But then it doesn’t feel that long to me, time flies when we’re having fun. So Doctor Cole, what’s this all about? A self help book for people what don’t need it. Isn’t that like swimming lessons for fish? Or is it more like clarinet lessons for sheep?”
“Well, Jonny, it might be more like flying lessons for birds” Hazel said. “I am not saying that the contents of these types of book are irrelevant for people, something that can’t be helpful but more importantly than that I am trying to persuade people not to rely on experts. I believe that everyone can help themselves but not everyone knows that they can.”
“So you want to shove us out of the nest?”
“Not perhaps shove, but maybe I can provide some encouragement to find out for yourself just what you are capable of. And helping yourself is like learning flying in that it will not come straight away, it will take practice and hard work. But it is something we can all do.”
“Apart from the penguins and emu’s amongst us?”
“There will always be exceptions.” Despite the uncomfortable feeling of his eyes all over her, Hazel was beginning to enjoy this conversation.
“But the vast majority of us have the ability to get what we want?” Jonny asked. The tone of his voice was innocent enough, but the way he held her gaze told a different story.
“What we want and what is good for us are not often the same thing,” Hazel replied, trying to play the same game. “We all know that but have difficulty realising that we would be better off with what is good for us in the long term.”
Listening to what she said, Jonny Lawson realised that Hazel was onto him. But completely ignoring what she had just told him, he decided to pursue just like he did with every woman. He loved the chase and besides this had worked for him for the last 35 years. It was not like he needed anyone to help him.
“The phone lines are open, if anyone wants Doctor Cole to help push them out of a tall tree, give us a call and we will see if she can answer your questions? In the meantime, here are the Eagles.”
*
This is BBC Radio 1FM, and if there is any news of the death of Michael Heseltine in the next hour, we’ll let you know.
– Chris Morris
In a studio on the floor above, a hung-over John Smith sat opposite Radio One’s Kevv Clarke, waiting to be asked some questions. He had been waiting for some time.
If Kevv Clarke were to shut up even just briefly a person in his company might have some chance to think of some one thing they liked about Kevin. But he never did and perhaps as a consequence, he was widely disliked. He was into his early thirties but acted like a teenager who had just won the lottery. He had more energy than a caravan of Mexican welterweights on crack and talked faster than a cattle market auctioneer. The controller of Radio One, a competent accountant out of place and out of his depth, thought Kevv was the greatest thing on radio since Marconi. He had given Kevv the drive-time show and in the face of all that is decent and good Kevv’s show was uncommonly popular.
“Hey that was the latest song from Y-chrome. Innit great? I love it, I’m gonna play it every day until you guys make it number one. Coming up soon I’ll be talking to John Smith, literally the ‘man of the moment’. But right now I neeeed more music. It’s Kylie. Yeah Kylie!”
“You’ve been saying that for the past hour, when am I going to be on?”
When the songs were playing Kevv would still be talking. He continued chattering away at the same helter-skelter pace. Talking mostly to himself but occasionally to his producer Jo who did not like him and to his mate Si, who probably did but was never observed to utter a word and gave no other indication that he might have an opinion about anything. He was Kevv’s best mate from way back and part of Kevv’s contract was that Si must have a job on the show. His job appeared to involve eating Mars Bars, drinking Diet Coke and giving Kevv the occasional thumbs up through the glass of the producers booth. He had additional ad hoc duties getting in Jo’s way. Making her hard life even harder by getting sticky thumbprints on CDs she was about to play, or simply being large, slow and in the wrong place as she rushed about the booth attempting to keep up with Kevv’s continual off-the-cuff revision to the running order. Jo liked Si even less than she liked Kevv.
“Next I’m playing Flow Hectic by Space Noise.. naah, I won’t.. I ‘eard it on Yozzer’s show this morning. It has gotta be the end of that. Jo love, let’s have Love Cloud Heart Attack, at least that’s still cool... In your own time love, we’ll just talk amongst ourselves shall we?”
John thought this might be his cue and leaned forward in his chair but Kevv was already off onto some anecdote about the last time he went drinking with Riboflavin aka B2 the singer from the semi-autonomous electrobeat collective B-Vitamins who were responsible for the cacophony that was Love Cloud Heart Attack.
John worried that he had never heard of any of this music. What did he have in common with this overgrown teen adrenalin gland? This blipvert avatar with the attention span of an electric goldfish in a Japanese arcade game.
Jo suffered the mayhem, kidding herself that she had the best job in radio.
“Any minute now, any minute mate. I’ve got another hour and ten minutes. Plenty of time. We’ve got a lot to fit in. It ain’t my fault that you come in on the same day as our first play of new Michelle single AND the exclusive new remix by the Warminster Posse is it?”
“And haven’t you played both of those?”
“Yeah, but they are so wicked that I am gonna play them again... Okay Jo, love?.. so as I say there’s a lot to get in. Don’t worry we’ll get to your stuff in the time we’ve got left.”
John got up and left.
Kevv did not notice. If he thought about it at all, he might possibly have guessed that his guest had gone to the lav. John had not said anything to Kevv as he left. There did not seem any point.
He did tell Jo as he was talking through the producer’s booth to the exit. Ordinarily she would have tried to convince him to stay, if she had not been under her desk, scrabbling round to pick up the next five CDs she was supposed to play that Si had knocked over seconds before. It was another typical bit of unpredictability of the sort that Kevv’s show was famous for. His audience loved the on air accidents and mishaps. Having retrieved Banal Love Frogs from the floor and cued them up she went in to tell Kevv his guest had left.
She hated leaving Si alone near the controls but it was the only way to talk to Kevv; if she tried to tell him things over the intercom he had a habit of fading her out. When she had inserted the necessary words edgewise into Kevv’s teletype of consciousness he could not care less. In fact, he was quite pleased. It gave him something to talk about in the next hour. He motored into the final hour of drive-time telling his five million listeners how this boring person called somebody Smith had walked out on him. He found it immensely hilarious that anyone could be so stupid as to think they had anything more interesting to do than to talk to him. To be on his show.
He warmed to his theme and started doing impressions of ‘the Missing Smith’, having both halves of a conversation with Smith about what could be more interesting than Kevv. Since England were not playing football and the Robbie Williams Wembley Concert was not until next week, he concluded that there could not be anything and had ‘Smith’ admit that he was mad.
He continued down this track all the way through to his six o’clock sign off. He got so carried away he even forgot to replay the Warminster Posse. By the end of the show ‘Madman Smith, the Missing Smith’ had made more of an impression on the frenetic consciousness of Kevv than he would have ever have managed if he had not vanished. His name would raise curiosity in the minds of Kevv’s millions of listeners.
Smith himself should have been curious whether this was a good or a bad thing. But he didn’t feel curious about anything. He also didn’t feel like going back to his grotty little flat. So he took a taxi back to the hotel, paid for another night out of this own pocket and asked not to be disturbed until breakfast.