Tony laughed, and remembered his mother’s savage digs at his father’s expense.
‘But you’re ironing all the kinks out,’ said Bill. ‘You want to be respectable.’
‘It just happened. I haven’t tried to do any of it. And it suits me.’
‘Yeah, well. I suppose it’s good one of us is like that.’
‘Why?’
‘That’s what we’re trying to do, isn’t it? Write about Mr and Mrs Average?’
‘Yeah, she looks like Sabrina and he works for Harold Wilson.’
‘Well, we’re writing for Mr and Mrs Average anyway.’
‘First of all, I don’t believe anyone’s average. And second … what if we were? What’s wrong with that? We wrote about whatever we wanted, and we ended up with eighteen million people watching us. That’s the thing about television comedy, isn’t it? It makes us all a part of something. That’s what I love about it. You laugh at the same thing as your boss and your mum and your next-door neighbour and the television critic of The Times and the Queen for all I know. It’s brilliant.’
Bill sighed. ‘Anyway,’ he said. ‘Congratulations.’
It was just bad luck that Dennis was called to Tom Sloan’s office the following day, and Sloan told him about ITV’s plans to launch a new quiz show on the same evening as the last episode of the second series.
‘The same time?’
‘No, they’re not that mad. But they think Up Your Alley is weak.’
Unfortunately Up Your Alley, a drama series about life in the workhouse of a Yorkshire mill town during the Depression, was weak, in the sense that nobody wanted to watch it.
‘How can I help?’ said Dennis, although he didn’t know whether he meant that. The offer would almost certainly lead to trouble.
‘What have you got planned for the last episode? We need something that everyone will want to see. And then we’re hoping they can’t be bothered to get up and switch over afterwards.’
‘Oh, it’s rather good,’ said Dennis. ‘You remember that in the first episode Barbara mentioned that she’d come down to London to be a singer? Well, she goes for an audition at …’
‘No singing.’
‘You wouldn’t hear her sing, even though Sophie’s actually got a very good voice. It’s about Barbara wanting to do something and be someone in her own right, rather than …’
‘Let me stop you there. We don’t want politics in the last show of the series.’
‘Is it politics, really? To find an ambition for a bored young woman?’
‘Sounds political to me.’
‘We could look at that, certainly,’ said Dennis.
Dennis had encouraged Tony and Bill to find something for Barbara to do, and they had responded imaginatively, and now he feared that he was going to have to tell them to find something else.
‘Why isn’t she pregnant yet? Is there a reason? Can’t they have children?’
Dennis didn’t want to have to explain that Clive and Sophie were reluctant to commit themselves to a fictional family.
‘They haven’t been married for that long, and Jim …’
‘So no reason. Right. Get her in the familly way. That’ll bring them in.’
‘Right-o,’ said Dennis.
‘Oh, fucking hell,’ said Bill when Dennis told him.
Tony laughed.
‘What’s so funny?’ said Bill.
‘You say that every time you hear someone’s going to have a baby,’ said Tony.
‘Why does he do that?’ said Dennis.
‘I don’t know. You’d have to ask him.’
‘It’s the logic of bloody couples,’ said Bill. ‘Doesn’t matter who they are: a man and a woman meet, get married, set up house, have kids. It’s like … food. It might all look different on the plate, but there’s only one way it can go down and it all comes out the other end looking and smelling the same. And who wants to write about that?’
Dennis looked at Tony, perplexed, and Tony shrugged.
‘I don’t know what to do with him,’ said Tony.
‘Can she have a miscarriage before the next series?’ said Bill. ‘Or an abortion? Are abortions funny?’
‘Ask a woman who’s died of septicaemia after having knitting needles stuck into her,’ said Dennis.
‘She wouldn’t hear me,’ said Bill.
‘You are a bastard sometimes, though,’ said Dennis. ‘Why can’t the poor woman get pregnant?’
‘She can,’ said Bill. ‘But am I right in thinking that she would then have a baby to look after? And if so, what the bloody hell are we supposed to do with it for sixteen episodes?’
‘Babies can be funny,’ said Dennis.
‘Tell us your best baby joke.’
It was a rhetorical question, of course, but Dennis made the mistake of taking it seriously, in an attempt to allay Bill’s fears.
‘All right. When my niece was three months old …’
‘Oh, Lord, spare us,’ said Bill.
‘You don’t even want to listen,’ said Dennis.
‘A baby,’ said Bill, ‘will scupper everything.’
‘Thanks,’ said Tony. ‘I’m going to be a father, Dennis.’
‘That’s wonderful news,’ said Dennis.
‘Try telling him that.’