Simon Brett - Dead Giveaway

The audience duly applauded.

There were a few more delays, but finally the recording was ready to commence. Members of the audience were advised to watch the monitors rather than the set, because the opening credits were on film. The audience duly gawped up at their monitors. They saw the clock which was used to identify the programme. It was started and ticked away for sixty seconds. For the last three of these the screen went blank.

Animated credits of cartoon figures changing hats appeared. High-pitched jingle voices sang out the words as the title, If The Cap Fits, appeared in silver letters on the screen. A deep, unseen voice intoned portentously, ‘And tonight, on If The Cap Fits, our star prizes include. . a portable video-recorder and lightweight camera. .’

A shot of this hardware, carried by a grinning, bikini-clad Nikki, was shown on the screen. ‘Ooh,’ went the audience, and applauded.

‘. . a champagne weekend for two in Amsterdam. .’

An inappropriate clip of a Dutch windmill appeared. ‘Ooh,’ went the audience, and applauded.

‘. . and tonight’s super-duper star prize — a brand-new Austin Metro with all the extras, plus a full year’s tax, insurance and petrol!’

The Austin Metro appeared on screen. Through its open window a grinning, bikini-clad Linzi waved awkwardly. ‘Aaaaah,’ went the audience, and applauded frantically.

More cartoon figures changed hats. ‘All these could be won tonight by some lucky contestant,’ the voice continued, ‘if the cap fits! And here’s the man who wears a variety of hats with equal success. . Barrett Doran!’

The show’s host bounced, smiling, up to his lectern. The audience gave him an ovation which might have been warranted if he had just invented an antidote to radiation sickness.

‘Hello, hello, and thank you very much. Welcome to If The Cap Fits. And if it doesn’t, well. . keep it under your hat! Thank you, thank you. And without more ado — nice girl, Moira Do, pity she couldn’t be with us tonight. . thank you — without Moira Do, let’s meet our panel of celebrities who are going to find out for themselves tonight. . if the cap fits!

‘First, it’s a great pleasure to welcome that lovely actress, who you all know as Lizzie Parsons from that very funny series, Who’s Your Friend? — Fiona Wakeford!’

The actress simpered prettily in response to the applause.

‘Tell me, Fiona,’ asked Barrett, ‘are you really as dumb as you appear?’

‘Well, no,’ she replied, bewildered. ‘I can talk.’

The audience screamed at this Wildean riposte.

‘Next we have a gentleman who really packs a punch — Nick Jeffries!’

The audience saluted their faded Great White Hope.

‘’Ere!’ The boxer made a fist. ‘I don’t like your attitude.’

The audience hailed another shaft of wit.

‘Actually, Barrett,’ Nick went on as the noise subsided, ‘that reminds me of a joke about a man with a dog. This bloke — ’

‘I make the jokes around here,’ said the host with a smile on his lips and a deterrent steeliness in his eyes. ‘Next, we have a lady who’s brought happiness to millions — and without taking her clothes off, which has to be a novelty — the country’s favourite Agony Aunt — Joanie Bruton!’

The audience roared as she smiled in a brisk, no-nonsense manner.

‘Tell me, Joanie — or may I call you Auntie? — could you help me with a little personal problem that I have?’

‘Perhaps, Barrett.’

‘Well, my trouble is that I keep thinking I’m a pair of curtains. What do you think I should do about it?’

‘Pull yourself together, love.’ Joanie completed the old joke with commendable promptness and the audience howled their appreciation for this devastating sally.

‘Finally, we have a gentleman who never seems to be off your television screen these days, investigating frauds, righting wrongs, standing up for the little man. . you may know him as Joe Soap — Bob Garston!’

The last panellist gave his gritty, proletarian smile as the audience clapped.

‘Tell me, Bob, have you ever come across a major fraud that involved hats?’

‘No, you’re the first one, Barrett.’

The audience bayed with delight, honoured to be participants in this rare feast of wit. ‘Eat your heart out, Congreve,’ they seemed to say.

Barrett Doran’s smile stayed in place, but the reaction of his eyes to Bob Garston’s crack was less genial. ‘And now, as well as this splendid line-up of celebrities, we also have four brave — or should I say foolish? — members of the public who have agreed to be with us tonight to play If The Cap Fits !’

On this cue, one of the high-pitched jingles was played and, under cover of the music, the four contestants, propelled by the invisible Chita, moved awkwardly on to the set. Barrett Doran, scooping up a little pile of printed cards from his lectern, moved across to greet them effusively.

‘Now first we have a very charming lady who’s come all the way from Billericay. Patricia Osborne is her name, but she’s known to her friends as Trish.’ He beamed the full force of his charm straight at her, and putting on a babyish voice, asked, ‘Can I be one of your friends and call you Trish?’

‘Of course, Barrett.’

‘Terrific. Now I gather, Trish, that you’re not the world’s greatest decorator. .’

‘Not really, Barrett, no.’

‘In fact. .’ He consulted the card, on which the researchers had summarised the answers to the ‘any amusing incidents that may have happened in your life’ part of their questionnaire. ‘. . I gather you once papered your bedroom with vinyl wallpaper and woke up next morning to find it had all fallen off the walls on top of your bed!’

‘That’s right, Barrett,’ Trish agreed over the audience’s hoots of delight.

‘And I bet your husband said, ‘Trish, that’s the vinyl straw!’

‘No, he didn’t actually.’ But Trish Osborne’s response was lost in the audience’s acclamation of their favourite epigrammatist.

The other three contestants were introduced with comparable wit, and then the rules for the First Round were explained. The four contestants were paired with their celebrity helpers. (A last ditch attempt by Tim Dyer not to be landed with Fiona Wakeford was brutally thwarted.) Then, to the sound of another jingle, the hamburger chef, the surgeon, the stockbroker and the actor moved into their pre-arranged positions. The hamburger chef was wearing the Tudor bonnet, the surgeon the bowler, the stockbroker the chef’s hat, and the actor the green hygienic cap. The camera moved slowly from one to the other, while the participants and audience tried to estimate which face went with which profession.

In turn, each contestant and celebrity team rearranged the hats to their satisfaction. Graphics superimposed over the picture recorded their guesses. It was all very riotous. Two out of the four contestants unhesitatingly identified Charles Paris as the hamburger chef.

To much oohing and aahing, Barrett Doran then gave the correct solutions. Contestants and celebrities responded with extravagant hand-over-face reactions to their errors. The four ‘professions’ smiled fixedly as their true identities were revealed. The stockbroker was asked if she really was a stockbroker, the hamburger chef was asked to go easy on the onions, and the surgeon was asked if the first cut really was the deepest. The actor wasn’t asked anything. The four were then fulsomely thanked for their participation and, as soon as the camera was off them, hustled unceremoniously off the set by a Floor Manager. At least one of them went straight to the bar and spent the rest of the evening there, risking topping up the earlier gins with Bell’s whisky.