Читать книгу Work! Consume! Die! - Frankie Boyle - Страница 13

Paul makes me a cup of tea – he’s one of those people who always makes half a cup of tea – and I get my panic list up on email. It’s the only group email list I’ve ever had, one I compiled to announce that my daughter had been born. It included anyone who might give me work. I’d just got home from the birth and knew I was so broke I didn’t have the money to get a taxi the next day to bring her home.

I’m flush nowadays – my company just landed a big advertising contract for an anti-speeding campaign. On dangerous stretches of road we are putting up family photos (the ones you get done in a photographers where the kids have been distracted by bubbles) of the actual people who have died there, over the words DEAD NOW. It’s a suggestion I made as a despairing joke after they hated our other ideas. Everybody loves it. It’s like the fucking ‘Glasgow Smiles Better’ of the post-Apocalypse.

I drag my suitcase out of a cab at Glasgow Central and take my glasses off. I’m trying to buy the papers for the train but I can see fuck all, accidentally picking up the Star, which has a front page about a mystery Old Firm player being blackmailed. I queue and wonder what Lovecraftian practice could set this young pervert apart from his peers.

The woman at the counter goes, ‘What’s with the beard, Frankie?’

I honestly can’t think of a single response. Eventually I say, ‘When I stop shaving, hair grows out of my face,’ and she laughs like I’ve made a joke.

I’m squinting up at the departures board looking for the London train. I’m normally OK without the glasses but some wee guys by the bank machine are nodding over at me. Eventually one of them walks over, stands about 18 inches away from me and blares, ‘Aye, it fucking is him an all,’ as dispassionately as if he’s noting that it’s raining.

On the train I’m trying to do some work on a pitch for tomorrow but every time I look at the screen I feel sick. There’s a slight smell of sewage but that’s normal on Virgin. My stomach pitches. The disabled-passenger alarm sounds continually. Someone thinks they are pressing the flush. I log onto the internet and check the BBC news. The top headline is ‘Prince William is a really good bloke’.

I look through the ideas I’m pitching. I was just going to be doing these for my company, but now I’m desperately trying to think how I can host or be involved.

Celebrity Land of the Giants. Eight of the UK‘s most recognisable celebrities have signed up for what they ‘think’ is a new game show. They are put up in a hotel and wake up the next day. What they don’t know is that overnight our clever set designers have built everything from cars to hedges to paving slabs outside at 10x scale, giving the celebs the impression they’ve shrunk overnight! How will they cope as each week the least practical star is eaten by what they think is a giant spider?

Unbelievably, that is idea number one. The other one is about a celebrity slave ship where young black rappers are made to live as slaves for a week. I can’t focus on the screen without feeling nauseous. Maybe it’s a psychosomatic reaction to this shit? Or the fucking roast-beef sandwich they gave me was so old it’s like a fast-acting poison. I sit watery mouthed in denial for a bit, then run to the toilet and puke loudly. The disabled-passenger alarm is painted red, illustrated with a ringing bell and the word alarm is written on it in large letters.

The young guy across from me recognises me and tries to start a conversation.

‘Feeling sick?’

‘Yes, I just puked.’

The sort of conversation dogs would have if they could talk.

‘Aren’t you Frankie Boyle?’

I put my earphones on and stupidly plug them into the side of my shut laptop. He’s reading a book called Confidence: There are No Coincidences. Confidence is only worth having if you’re not a fucking idiot. Try speaking German using just confidence. Start skiing with confidence and break your fucking neck, you cunt. I wonder why there are so many idiots now and whether in the past the big wars used to thin them out. I wonder if the free coffees are winding me up, or the rapist, or the work.

I look at the ‘War’ chapter of the book. That end bit is maybe everything that’s wrong with the world. Wanting to help but feeling it’s all to do with ‘you’, the ego that thinks it can make a difference is the same ego that wants a new car, praise, pussy, immortality. Still, maybe I’m just being honest, and what I honestly am is an idiot.

In London, I have to go straight across town and into a script meeting. It’s a voiceover thing I’m doing for a clip show, which is a pretty shit thing to be doing, but I get to write the jokes, so that’s something.

I sign the visitors’ book and walk wordlessly past the security guard. In the event of some terrorist atrocity they will have the guy’s signature. There are whole floors of talented people beavering away making shit. An infinite number of Shakespeares producing the work of a monkey.

I’m met by Gary, a tall, spindly production runner who looks like a freakish wind chime or insect king. He leads me to the meeting room, where there’s a pyramid of Diet Coke, and some fresh notepads and biros. During the awkward wait for the producer, Gary tells me at length about his new baby while I reflect that in the wild his mate would have eaten him now.

I sit down and start reading the stack of tabloids that’s in any writing room, whether the show is topical or not. Alex Ferguson is playing mind games. If only he would – telling the opposition that there is a sniper in the stadium, or staging a coach crash then sending out players everybody thought were dead in a macabre piece of gamesmanship.

The producer, Gerry, drifts in. He has the jovial air of a corrupt small-town cop. I’ve not seen him for years and, in the meantime, his face looks like it’s had kids. I go through the intros for the show

Welcome to The Frankie Boyle Clip Show. There’s nothing like being on television. And let me tell you, reading out this shit, to you pricks, for this money, is nothing like being on television.

Hello and welcome to the show that made the Crossbow Cannibal refuse to pay his licence fee. Feels good, doesn’t it, knowing that cock is currently watching video tapes of Minder wishing I had tits and he had a lifespan of 300 years.

‘I prefer the first one!’ says Gerry, and I agree, having included the second one so I had something to give up. I launch into the rest at a pace calculated to delay discussion.

The show that masturbates to the Oscars’ Obituary Montage.

The show that’s laughing with you, not at you. Ahahahahaa! Oh no, wait a minute, it’s at you.

The show of clips you could find for yourself on YouTube. If porn didn’t exist.

The show that three of your personalities only agree to watch because they’re scared of your dominant personality, a murderous lesbian midget.

30 minutes that will leave you sweating like Peter Andre on Countdown.

The show that eats your pussy with neither skill nor enthusiasm.

The show that knows you felt a hand running up your leg on a crowded bus. You grabbed the hand and held it up, saying, ‘Whose hand is this?’ Only to find out that it was your own.

Hey! Mongo! It’s evening. The bright ball of wonder has yet again left the sky, so take your hoof from out your pants and once more suckle at my TV teats.

Hey, friendless! Yes, you! Wipe the dribble from your fleece and once more feast on my distractions. Together we can get you half an hour closer to the dawn of another worthless day.

‘Ehhh …,’ starts Gerry.

‘We only need six or something,’ I interrupt. ‘It’s just intros, we can come back to it …’

We nod, both agreeing to different things.

The first clip we’re doing is of some hugely misguided children’s show from the 80s, teaching yoga to little kids. It’s set on a farm and hosted by a real sandpit haunter calling himself Yogie Okie Dokie. We see him bending the kids into various positions.

It’s amazing how flexible kids are when they’re drunk. Yogi Okie Dokie is only his first name. His surname is Pokey Chokey.

‘Now the lawyers are worried about that … we can’t actually imply that he’s a paedophile …’ Gerry havers.

‘The lawyers?’ I ask. ‘It’s a joke. I don’t think anyone would really think his surname was Pokey Chokey. Or that his first names are Yogie Okie Dokie …’

‘You can’t imply that he’s a paedophile.’

‘Fuck, look at the show. I mean … fuck!’

There’s a clip of that wee toddler that smokes in fucking Papua New Guinea or somewhere.

Of course, he doesn’t smoke any more. He’s dead now. His little brother uses his skull as an ashtray.

‘We can’t say that,’ murmurs Gerry.

‘Why not?’ I ask and open another Diet Coke because maybe this would be easier if my brain were dead.

‘He’s not dead.’ Gerry is getting exasperated. ‘So the lawyers say that we can’t say that he is.’

‘It’s a joke. They’re saying we can’t say anything that isn’t the literal truth? He’s going to sue? He’s out in the fucking jungle. He’s hardly … getting driven on a moped to a clearing where they all sit round and watch fucking clip shows.’

We keep hitting bits the lawyers have vetoed. They have suggested replacements, the lawyers have written jokes. I have met lawyers and these are the sort of jokes you would expect them to write. It’s not immediately obvious that they are jokes.

The final clip is a terrible video about how to use the techniques of a magician to pull women. We type the last joke up in a way that it can be altered if there’s a legal problem.

These are the techniques that Debbie McGee [an older magician’s assistant] warns [a] young magician’s assistant about, before heading home to another night of being sawn in half so Paul Daniels [a magician] can watch her [them] eat her [their] own arsehole.

I suggest that we start the show with me in an armchair, cradling a huge horn. I will explain that not all of the jokes are literally true and that when I say something not meant to be taken literally I will blow a note on my mighty horn. Perhaps we should change the title of the show to The Horn of Balathor.

‘Where is Balathor?’ says Gerry

‘I thought of it as more of a what – Balathor the Green. Balathor the Mighty.’

Another producer comes in and this idea sort of catches fire. Yes, we could call it The Horn of Balathor. It’s only a fucking clip show. Perhaps I could appear at the bottom of the screen when I blow the horn, like the guy on sign-language programmes. Maybe there could be different sizes of horn, depending on how offensive the joke is. There is a clip from the 70s that suggests black people can’t swim. I suggest we do the line:

Of course it’s a ridiculous racial stereotype to say black people can’t swim. How do you think AIDS got to Europe?

And then I come on with one of those huge Alpine horns that rest on the ground and give a blast so loud it would actually blow the speakers on people’s TVs. I’m thinking that will keep me in the papers long enough that my arse will remain un-raped. I maintain to the guys that it could work as a show. Fuck it, it could work as a show, or has my judgement just gone? Yes, my judgement has gone but perhaps I could be right by accident.

I look them both in the eye and beam, ‘Comedy is tragedy plus laughter!’

But I know the fucking thing is not going to happen.