Iain Banks: Dead Air

‘I’m on it, babe.’

‘… Ah yes, so you are. Gently, now.’

Somewhere beyond and beneath the layers of thick, dark curtains, London growled quietly to itself.

‘What’s that?’

‘Ah.’ I sighed happily, staring at the framed note. ‘Yes; my very first complaint letter. I was sort of locum DJ at StrathClyde Sound, sitting in on the nightly Rock Show while our resident Tommy Vance wannabe was attending to his customary mid-January drying-out regime.’

‘I can’t read it.’

‘Yeah; I used to think the smudges were the result of tears, but then I realised it was probably just drool. Least it’s not written in green ink.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Suggested Lynyrd Skynyrd and Mountain should appear on a double bill.’

Nikki looked at me blankly.

‘Well, you had to be there,’ I sighed. ‘Before your time anyway, child.’

‘Lynyrd Skynyrd were a band from the States whose plane flew into a hillside,’ Phil supplied, looking up briefly from his Guardian. ‘They wrote a song called “ Sweet Home Alabama ”, seen as a Confederate reply to Neil Young’s “Southern Man”, which was an indictment of Southern racism.’

‘Ah-hah,’ Nikki said. I had the strong impression we might as well have been talking about ancient Greece.

‘Phil has all the annoying attributes of Encarta without the ease-of-turning-off facility,’ I told her.

‘Start talking about your sex life, Ken; that usually does the trick,’ Phil said, reaching for another piece of chewing gum.

‘Oh yeah, and he smokes,’ I said. ‘Phil, isn’t it time for your next nicotine patch?’

He glanced at his watch. ‘Nope. Eighteen minutes, forty seconds to go. Not that I’m counting.’

We were in the show’s office in the Soho Square Headquarters of Capital Live!, part of The Fabulous Mouth Corporation complex in what used to be the United Film Producers building. Afternoon; Phil – who trawls the press assiduously for material before the show – then goes on to read the broadsheets afterwards. Unforgivable.

Assistant Kayla – a droopy-eyed über-fem-geek forever in graded shades and camo baggies – was on standard afternoon perpetual phone duty, hitting and hitted, scribbling notes and talking in a quietly intense monotone.

Nikki shook her head and hobbled towards the next frame on the office wall. She was down to one crutch now, but still lame. Her plaster had been covered in a variety of multi-coloured messages. She was here because I knew she was a Radiohead fan and Thom Yorke had been coming in to talk on our lunchtime show. Only now, we’d just heard, he wasn’t, so the best I could offer the girl was a tour round the place, culminating here in the narrow, much partitioned and generally broken-up space where Phil, myself, our two assistants and the occasional back-up researcher put the show together each day. From here we had a fine view of the rain-stained, white-glazed bricks of the light-well, though if you squatted down by the windows and looked up, you could see the sky.

The office walls were mostly covered in posters for Indie bands I had never heard of – I suspected Phil only hired assistants who heartily despised all the music we played; it was one of his little rebellions against the system – however, we did have (as well as the office-equipment mandatory portrait of our Dear Owner, Sir Jamie) a few Sony awards, donated gold and platinum discs from artists and bands who’d been cruelly deceived by their record companies into thinking we’d helped them with their careers, and – what I was genuinely by far the most proud of – a modest but high-quality collection of framed landmark hate mail.

‘This one’s a lawyer’s letter,’ Nikki said, frowning.

‘Just a sample,’ muttered Phil.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’d suggested that if you speeded up “You Are The Sunshine of My Life” by Stevie Wonder, you got the main riff from “Layla” by your man Clapton. There was talk of legal action, but it passed.’

‘Duane Allman,’ Phil said.

‘What?’ I asked him.

‘Came up with the riff; not Clapton. Allegedly.’

‘You know, the lips are particularly rich in blood vessels, Philip; you could usefully stick that nicotine patch there.’

Nikki nudged me hard with one elbow and nodded at the next Frame of Shame. ‘That one?’

‘Ah, my first death threat,’ I said with what I hoped sounded like undue modesty. ‘A particularly proud moment.’

‘Death threat?’ Nikki asked, wide eyes twinkling.

‘Yes, my dear, from funny, sleepy old Northern Ireland, where time stands still. I’d said let the Orangemen walk through Catholic areas, but for every march they got to take part in, a similar-size one had to be allowed through Loyalist areas, with tricolours, posters of Bobby Sands-’

‘Seventies hunger-striker and Republican martyr,’ Phil squeezed in.

‘-lots of hearty singing of Republican songs; that sort of thing,’ I continued. ‘Which sort of developed into my patent three-word solution for the Troubles: “United, federal, secular. Now get on with it.”’

‘That’s eight words,’ Phil mumbled.

‘I was allowing for subsequent editing,’ I said, looking brightly at Nikki. ‘Anyway, exception was duly taken; they’re awfully touchy over there.’

Phil cleared his throat. ‘I think your humorous observation about the Red Hand of Ulster being a symbol of a land won by a loser prepared to mutilate himself to claim a scraggy patch of rain-lashed bog may have contributed to your healthy fan-base in the Shankhill, too.’

‘See? You try to bring out the local colour in some quaint little part of the Provinces and these silly people insist on taking it all the wrong way.’

‘I’m sure your Nobel Peace Prize is in the post, Uncle Ken,’ Nikki said. ‘This one?’

‘First international death threat,’ I said. ‘All due to our then spanking-new web-feed. Back to the old gun control debate again. I was arguing for, if memory serves. But I was making the point that in the US it was all too late; they’d made their bed and they damn well had to lie in it. In the States I was for no gun control laws at all. In fact in the States I reckoned guns should be made compulsory for all teenagers. Might produce a grand kill-off, of course, but who’s to say that was such a bad thing in the end? That way there’d be less of the little bastards to bother the rest of the world. And why stop at just hand-guns and automatic weapons? Let’s get with grenade launchers, pull down some mortar and mines action, get jiggy with some surface to air ordnance and serious-calibre heavy weaponry. Chemical and biological weapons, too; they’re kind of the green option, in a wacky sort of way. Long-range missiles. Nukes too. And if some dickhead with a grudge decides to waste Manhattan or Washington with one of these, well, too bad. That’s the price you pay for freedom.’

Nikki looked at me. ‘And they pay you for this, Ken?’

‘Young lady, for this they don’t just pay me, they compete for me.’

‘He’s a hot DJ,’ Phil said.

‘There you are,’ I told her.

‘Yup, hot like a potato,’ Phil said.

I smiled at Nikki. ‘He’s going to say, “Always getting dropped…”’

‘Always getting dropped.’

‘… Told you.’

‘Now, Nikki. Are you sure I can’t take you for lunch?’

‘Yeah, I’m fine, thanks.’

‘But you must be hungry.’

‘No, I’d better get back. Books to order, stuff to read, you know.’

‘Flying start at the Chinese course.’

‘That’s the idea.’

We were sitting in my ancient Land Rover in the office’s underground car park, waiting for the engine’s plugs to warm up.