‘That’s very tolerant of you.’
‘… but what’s interesting from our point of view is that you’ve chosen to go and bat for the opposition, as it were.’
‘Who are the opposition?’
‘Light Entertainment.’
‘You think of Light Entertainment as “the opposition”?’
‘I don’t personally. But I suppose the guests we usually have on the programme might. And quite a few of our viewers too.’
It was true, then, Dennis thought. He’d always suspected it, but nobody had ever come out and said it. Some of the cross-looking men he saw beetling around in the dingier corridors of the BBC believed that comedy was the enemy. They actually wanted people not to laugh, ever.
‘So what would someone like Vernon Whitfield want, then?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, if we’re the opposition … How does he win? Does he get us taken off the air?’
‘Oh, I don’t think he’d want that. He’d just prefer it if you were on the commercial channel. I can’t speak for him, but I suppose he’d argue that the taxpayer shouldn’t be paying Sophie Straw’s salary.’
Dennis hated Vernon Whitfield for personal reasons, and he hated people like Vernon Whitfield for philosophical, political and cultural reasons. More and more frequently, Dennis found himself in the middle of a fantasy in which he turned someone like Vernon Whitfield, but usually Vernon Whitfield himself, into a big sobbing red-faced baby, and here was Barry Bannister giving him the chance to make his dreams come true. Was he clever enough, though?
‘Oh, I’ll give it a go,’ he said.
Dennis didn’t know whether it was possible to train for a debate with an intellectual on television in the way that boxers would train for a fight with Cassius Clay, but he tried. The night before the recording, he lay in bed imagining every punch Vernon Whitfield might throw at him, while trying to prepare a convincing attack of his own. What could Whitfield say? What was there to object to, in Barbara (and Jim) or any decent popular comedy programme? Did Whitfield think it was lowbrow? What was lowbrow about cleverly observed comedy? Could Dennis think of any examples of clever observation? No, he could not. Or rather, he could, but Vernon Whitfield could simply say that they weren’t clever at all, and Dennis would then have to say, Yes they are, and Whitfield would say, No they’re not.
What if Whitfield argued that taxpayers’ money should only be used for things that ordinary people didn’t enjoy? What would Dennis say then? He would ask who Whitfield was to tell ordinary people that they should only eat intellectual roughage, that’s what he would do. Ah, but what if Whitfield asked him why he thought that ordinary people didn’t like intellectual roughage? Who was patronizing whom? Well, then he, Dennis, would tell Whitfield that he shouldn’t sleep with other men’s wives, and then they would have a wrestling match, and Dennis would sit on his head, and Whitfield would beg for mercy. Dennis realized at that point that lying awake worrying was leading him to some unhelpful places, but he couldn’t sleep. As a consequence, he awoke the next morning exhausted and fearful.
Barry Bannister introduced them in the green room, and they shook hands and pretended that it was a perfectly run-of-the-mill meeting between bearded late-night BBC intellectuals. But once Barry had left, there was a long, embarrassed silence. I’m buggered if I’m going to say anything, thought Dennis.
‘Thanks for not making this awkward,’ said Whitfield eventually. ‘Very decent of you.’
‘How do you mean?’ said Dennis pleasantly, suddenly seeing a way of making things more awkward than anything Whitfield could have imagined, and as awkward as anything in Dennis’s numerous vengeful fantasies.
Whitfield stared at him, clearly trying to decide whether it was possible that Dennis didn’t know.
‘Oh,’ said Dennis. ‘Sorry. It’s fine, really.’
‘Well. You’re a gentleman, I’ll say that much for you,’ said Whitfield with the air of a man who wouldn’t say any more than that much.
‘We can’t all like the same things, can we?’
‘That’s very true,’ said Whitfield uncertainly. ‘So … we don’t?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Like the same things?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Dennis. ‘We can’t, is my point.’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m sorry, though.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Whitfield.
‘Oh, bless you for apologizing,’ said Dennis.
He felt sick, and he had to force himself to make eye contact, and he was closer to angry tears than he had been since his twelfth birthday. But he had the advantage, and he wanted to keep it, and that meant not vomiting and not weeping.
‘I don’t suppose we did any better this week?’ said Dennis.
‘This week?’
‘Barbara (and Jim)?’
‘The programme?’
‘Yes. What did you think I was talking about?’