“Whoa there, buddy,” she said, when The Leader of the Free World made a grab for her backside, “Touch this gal and you’re toast,” she added, clicking a hidden switch which replayed his lubricious language back to him and caused him to flinch. “Now d’you want me to fix your goddam hair or dontcha? Elsewise I’m outta here right now.”
This left the prez in a no-man’s land between lust, rage and narcissism. To demand one more freebie fuck with an ornery babe even if it meant yet another infuriating sex slur, or to get his rug fixed, that was the question. After a fleeting hiatus during which he scowled threateningly and stumped about promising to “stiff” Kolmover if she ever released a single word he’d said, he backed down and went for getting his rug fixed. A case of looks über alles .
~ * ~
Back in Downing Street, PM Clarissa was already on the phone to the head of the armed forces, Sir Stanley “Six Gun” Michaelson, requesting a full military march-past (and flyover) up Whitehall while she saluted from the steps of The Cenotaph.
“And make bloody sure all the papers, and the telly people, and the Internet, and the whole nation, know about it,” barked Clarissa.
“Noted, ma’am,” said Sir Stanley. “Only it’s going to cost you.”
“ Cost me?”
Which was when Sir Stanley reminded the PM of how much government expenditure on the armed forces had been slashed in recent years on the repeated excuses of austerity and the costs of Brexit.
“We have only half the manpower we need to rule the world as we used to, nuclear submarine building is in tatters, the RAF has no nice new planes, chaps and chapesses on the ground are eating from food banks to survive. Need I go on? And now you want a godforsaken march-and-fly past?” said Sir Stanley, slamming down the phone and posing yet another challenge to Clarissa’s supreme authority.
“Oh, for God’s sake , where’s the blasted megalomaniac bonkers banker when I need him most ?” she wailed into the echoing silence.
~ * ~
In the Kremlin, Igor Ripurpantzov chuckled as he listened in to the latest results from his Sputnik bugs in both the White House and Downing Street. Okay, he was a little pissed at the allusion to his near baldness, but didn’t the knobhead US prez know that bald guys had bigger dicks than guys with hair, even fake hair? Sometimes he wondered why he’d gotten the guy elected in the first place. And as for the shlyukha (whore) in London, she could have all the military parades she wanted— if she could rustle up the kopeks to pay for it—but none would ever match the ones he saluted. Still it was always good to know his enemies in the new cold/chilly war were such priduroks (morons). Made his job a whole lot easier. Which, now he remembered, was exactly why he’d had the madman elected to the White House in the first place.
Happy with himself, Igor wandered off for an ice bath followed by a hundred one-arm press-ups—fifty for each arm—all the while singing to himself, “I am the iron man, I am the iron man, I am the iron man, goo goo g’joob,” blissfully unaware of the origins of the tune and Lennon’s goo goo g’joob lyric. Such is the nature of hubris.
As coincidence would have it, at roughly the same time Igor was fêting himself with goo goo g’joobs, Jeremy/John and the other Reconstructed Beatles were singing “I Am The Walrus” too. Not with guitars or drum kits—Maurice had said those, along with face recognition treatment, could be superimposed with CGI at a later stage—but at least they were wearing the Beatle wigs Barry had dug out from his ex-thespian store in his cellar. And it was not only “I Am The Walrus” they were practising. Before he left the Shepherd’s Hut, Maurice had downloaded from Barry’s ancient computer the whole Beatles’ playlist as well as clips from their Cavern days, scenes from their movies, interviews on US TV (notably the Ed Sullivan Show), and the iconic events at Shea Stadium and the Hollywood Bowl.
“Look, listen and learn, guys,” Maurice told them before he left at Dame Muriel’s behest. “All the little gestures, winks, leg positions and mop top shakes, especially on ‘Twist and Shout.’ And never forget Paul’s a leftie, guitar always the wrong way around. To make this work, you guys have got to be spot on. Think Stanislavski. You are not just going to be play ing The Beatles you are going to be The Beatles. Especially you as John, Jeremy. He’s going to be a hard act to follow, but it must be believable. Every little gesture, every little nuance, particularly on ‘Revolution.’ The lip-syncing I can handle, but the gestures, the knees, the sidelong glances at Paul, the head-bobbing, those you must get down to a T.”
“I’m up for it,” Jeremy said. “Best moment of my life so far.”
A sentiment echoed by Julie/Paul, Maggie/George, and Dennis/Ringo. Every day since Maurice’s departure for the city, with Barry’s enthusiastic encouragement, they’d watched the tapes, listened to the songs, and rehearsed. Julie/Paul in particular was over the moon.
“My dad would sooo love this,” she told Jeremy every night as they snuggled down together on their sofa bed.
“Only don’t tell him,” Jeremy would say. “Not yet. Not till it’s over. If it’s ever over.”
“You think I’m daft, or d’you think I’m daft?”
“I think you’re the nicest daft person I’ve ever known.”
“So kiss me.”
“Okay, Paul.” That was the line that had Julie chuckling till her eyes closed on a whole new future.
~ * ~
“So Double O Seventeen, come to your senses on this Beatles nonsense yet?” Dame Muriel asked Maurice Moffat when he finally turned up for his appointment at MI6 HQ. “I’ve been talking the matter over with Sir Hubert at MI5 and he reckons you’re off your trolley. He likes the idea of music-related Internet counter activity, but reckons Richard Wagner would be a better bet than the mindless tunes of some scruffy louts from Liverpool. He became somewhat exercised over the matter.”
Maurice smiled. “He would.”
“Explain yourself, Double O Seventeen.”
“Sir Hubert is a high culture snob.”
“Ex cuse me ! Sir Hubert is a man of the greatest distinction, a man who…”
“Has conveniently forgotten Hitler’s passion for Wagner. You may recall the Führer’s hi-jacking of the Übermensch when calling for racial purity in Germany.”
“Oh dear,” said Dame Muriel.
“‘Oh dear’ is correct, ma’am. And to use such music when working to nobble Ripurpantzov and the madman in the White House would only play into their equally dirty hands. By the by, we are clear, are we not, that you have passed none of my plans along to the PM?”
“Not a dicky bird.”
“Good, because one suspects she too may be susceptible to delusions of grandeur.”
“Am I therefore to assume it is to low culture snobs you are hoping to appeal, Double O Seventeen? Because it seems to me they can be as nastily parochial as the high culture brigade.”
“Indeed so, ma’am. When it comes to outsiders, there is an unholy alliance between the non-reflectives on both sides, with only the liberally democratic “art-farties’ in the middle. Hence the disaster of Brexit.”
“And you think your Beatles have a role to play in all of this?”
“Indeed I do, ma’am.”
“Because?”
“They’re class-neutral. Their words, especially Lennon’s, strike chords in all of us.”
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