‘I can try,’ said Bert. ‘But it won’t do any good. Not with that racket.’
‘So it’s the music you particularly object to?’
‘And the pictures.’
‘Right. You and your missus would turn off because you don’t like the photographs in the opening titles.’
‘No,’ Bert said patiently. ‘We’d turn off because of the music.’
‘So if the opening titles were to play silently …’
‘We’d think the sound had gone.’
‘Bert,’ said Dennis. ‘What I’m trying to do here is locate the objection to the images. I understand you don’t like the music …’
‘It’s horrible.’
‘… But what is the problem with the pictures?’
Bert shuffled through them again.
‘I like it when a comedy starts with a little cartoon,’ he said.
‘I thought we’d try something a bit more daring,’ said Dennis. ‘Something a bit different.’
‘Well,’ said Bert, ‘different has never worked before.’
Later that day, after a conversation with Tom Sloan, Dennis became the producer and the director of Barbara (and Jim). He went straight to see the set designer: he wanted the marital home to contain the youngest, most fashionable living room in television. And with every suggestion that the set designer made – white walls! Op art posters on the walls! Danish furniture! – Dennis felt that the ghost of Bert, and the ghosts of stale British light entertainment, were being banished to the Shepherd’s Bush streets.
At the end of the read-through, Dennis made the Big Ben noises intended to indicate that the marriage between Jim and Barbara had been consummated, but nobody laughed or cheered. Bill and Tony were too busy trying to gauge the expressions on the faces of Sophie and Clive; Sophie and Clive, expressionless, were too busy flicking back through the pages of the script, trying to work out precisely what had been intimated about their characters’ sex lives.
‘When I say …’ Sophie began.
‘Yes?’ Bill said.
‘Oh. I see. Right.’
‘Which page?’
‘Fifteen.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well. Does that mean what I think it means?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are we allowed to say that?’
‘We’re not saying it.’
‘Bill,’ Dennis said patiently. ‘I don’t mind making that argument to the Powers That Be. But let’s be fair to our cast. Yes, Sophie. We are saying –’
‘Implying,’ said Bill.
‘We are saying that Barbara is sexually experienced.’
‘Oh, bloody hell.’
‘We don’t have to,’ said Dennis. ‘If you’re not comfortable with it.’
‘Oh, don’t we?’ said Tony. ‘What else have you got, then, Dennis?’
‘What don’t you like about it, Sophie?’ said Dennis.
‘Oh, just stupid things, you know. My dad, and my Auntie Marie, and …’
‘But they know it’s made up.’
‘Sort of. I’m never quite sure whether they’ve got the hang of it yet. You know, Barbara’s from Blackpool and I’m from Blackpool. She’s called Barbara and I’m called Barbara. It’s confusing.’
Suddenly she was aware of everybody looking at her.
‘You’re called Barbara?’ said Clive.
‘Oh,’ said Barbara. ‘Well, yes. I used to be.’
‘When?’
‘Until the week before you met me.’
‘Why didn’t you say anything when we decided to call her Barbara?’
‘I didn’t know what was allowed then. Please don’t call me Barbara all the time now.’
‘You’re seriously used to being called Sophie already?’
She thought about it and realized she was. A part of her felt she’d only really begun her life when she moved to London, which meant that she’d been called Sophie for most of her life.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Barbara is a fictional character in the series we’re making.’ And she left it at that.
‘Can we talk about me now?’ said Clive. ‘You’re saying in this that I’m a … a virgin?’
‘Oh, you’re like my Auntie Marie,’ said Sophie. ‘It’s Jim who’s the virgin. And he’s not real.’
‘Yes, but … Will people believe it?’
‘Why wouldn’t they believe it, Clive?’ Sophie could see that they were all trying to suppress mirth, but Bill’s poker face was so expert that he had been charged with the job of mickey-taking.
‘I know Jim’s fictional, but I’m …’
‘Yes?’
Clive stopped and tried a different tack.
‘Isn’t it the other way around? Conventionally? The man has had sexual experience and the woman hasn’t?’
Bill groaned and then stared at him pityingly.
‘What?’
‘It is, yes,’ said Tony. ‘That’s sort of the point of the script. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re trying not to do the conventional thing.’
‘In which case,’ said Clive, ‘I will just have to not give a damn about appearing immodest and voice my other objection, which is this: nobody will believe it.’
‘Which part?’ said Tony.
‘I don’t mean Barbara’s experience … They’ll be fine with that. No offence meant.’
‘A lot taken,’ said Sophie.