Dead Room Farce by Simon Brett

‘We met way back at the Beeb. I started in radio, before I went across to telly. Used to see you hanging round the Ariel Bar, didn’t I?’
    Mark Lear took the proffered hand and grinned slyly. ‘I used to see
you
hanging round the Ariel Bar.’
    â€˜Gone, you know, that bar. Gone with all its memories of post-production celebrations, failed seductions and drowned sorrows. That whole Langham block’s back to being a hotel now.’
    â€˜I know,’ said Mark. ‘I’ve only been out of the Beeb eighteen months or so.’
    â€˜Oh, right. You couldn’t stand the atmosphere under Chairman Birt either?’
    â€˜You could say that.’
    â€˜No, it’s all changed.’ David J. Girton shook his head mournfully. ‘Old days, they used to say BBC top management was like a game of musical chairs, except when the music stopped, they added a chair rather than taking one away. Now, when the music stops, they take away two chairs, or three. Haven’t seen blood-lettings on that scale since Stalin’s purges.’
    â€˜You’re still involved, though, I hear?’ Mark Lear swayed slightly as he spoke, picking out his words with great concentration.
    â€˜Yes, I go back on contract from time to time. When they want a new series of
Neighbourhood Watch
. I know all the cast and the writer so well.’
    â€˜All right for some.’
    â€˜You haven’t been asked back then?’ asked David J. Girton smugly.
    â€˜Oh no. No, they’re well and truly finished with me. Definite one-way ticket to the scrap-heap in my case.’
    â€˜Ah,’ said the director. There didn’t seem a lot else to say.
    â€˜Mind you . . .’ A nostalgic glaze stole over Mark Lear’s bloodshot eyes. ‘I remember those times back at the BBC. Particularly the early days . . . You were left to your own devices then, just allowed to get on with things in your own way. Now there’s a whole raft of middle management and accountants standing between the producer and any kind of real creativity.’
    â€˜Couldn’t agree more.’ David J. Girton grinned. ‘Sounds like you’re well out of it, Mark, old man.’
    â€˜Maybe.’ For a moment Mark Lear was immobile, eyes still filmed with recollection. Then he lurched forward suddenly, as he continued, ‘Sometimes think I should write a book about the Beeb as it was in those days. Yes, I think I should do it, tell a few home truths. Show the BBC . . . not like everyone presents it on all those bloody nostalgia programmes . . . like it really was . . . all the scams, all the fiddles, all the under-the-counter deals that went on. Shee, I remember some of the things I used to get involved in, moonlighting on other jobs . . . Of course, it all had to be terribly secret then, the BBC owned one’s soul, it wasn’t
nice
to work for commercial companies outside. Whereas now . . . your bonus is probably calculated according to how many other organisations you work for. Yes, I think I’ve got some interesting stories in me . . . You’d be surprised the unlikely things unlikely people got involved in. Some they certainly wouldn’t want to be reminded of, I’m sure. Actually, the whole thing’d make a bloody good book . . . I can see the cover now . . . “Mark Lear takes the lid off the BBC in a way that –”’
    He may have had further literary ambitions but he didn’t get the chance to expatiate on them because at that moment, finally, Tony Delaunay put the phone down, and waved the precious Parrott Fashion-approved text for the radio commercial.
    It was a simple enough forty-second spot, in which Bernard Walton expressed his view that
Not On Your Wife!
was the funniest play he’d ever been in, and the other cast members asked him questions about who else was in it, where it was on, and what the Vanbrugh Theatre’s box office phone number was. Even