Tony Parsons: Man and Boy

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Well, it’s Badoit.’

Marty looked at her.

‘But there wasn’t any Evian in the vending machine,’ she said.

‘Try the green room,’ he suggested with a little sigh.

There were murmurs of assent. The green room – the holding pen for the show’s guests – was definitely the place to find Marty’s Evian. Crestfallen but smiling bravely, the girl in combat trousers went off to find the right water.

‘I’m thinking classic encounter with Hollywood legend,’ Marty said. ‘I’m thinking Michael Parkinson meets the stars with his clipboard. I’m thinking Tinsel Town. I’m thinking Oscar nominee. I’m thinking … Jack Nicholson?’

‘Jack’s not in town,’ our researcher said. She was a small, nervous girl who wouldn’t be doing this job for much longer. Her fingernails were already chewed to the knuckle.

‘Leonardo DiCaprio?’

‘Leo’s unavailable.’

‘Clint Eastwood?’

‘I’ve got a call in with his office. But – doubtful.’

‘Robert Mitchum? James Stewart?’

‘They’re dead.’

Marty shot her a vicious look.

‘Don’t ever say that,’ he said. ‘They are merely unable to commit to the show at this moment in time.’

He looked at me in the mirror, his beady eyes blinking inside a cloud of orange foundation.

‘Why can’t we get any of these fucking screen greats, Harry?’

‘Because none of the people you mentioned have any product out,’ I told him, as I had to tell him every week. ‘And when they do, we still have to fight for them with all the other talk shows.’

‘Did you see the news tonight?’ the make-up girl said dreamily, the way make-up girls do, completely oblivious to the nervous breakdowns that were happening all around her. ‘It was really interesting. They showed you those protesters out at the airport. The ones chaining themselves to the trees? Protesting against the new terminal?’

‘What about them?’ Marty asked. ‘Or are you just making conversation?’

‘I really like their leader,’ she said. ‘You know – Cliff. The one with the dreadlocks? He’s gorgeous .’

Every woman in the room muttered agreement. I had seen this Cliff character up his tree – skinny, well-spoken, dreadlocks – but I had had no idea he was considered a sexual entity.

‘That’s who you should have on the show,’ the make-up girl said triumphantly, dabbing Marty’s face with a powder puff. ‘He’s much more interesting than some old superstar with a hair transplant and an action thriller on general release.’

‘Cliff’s not a bad idea,’ I said. ‘But I don’t know how to reach him. Although he can’t be as difficult as Clint Eastwood.’

‘Well, I’ve got a mobile number for him,’ someone said from the back of the make-up room. ‘If that’s any use.’

We all turned to look at her.

She was a slim redhead with that kind of fine Irish skin that is so pale it looks as though it has never seen the sun. She was in her early twenties – she looked as though she had been out of university for about forty-five minutes – but she still had a few freckles. She would always have a few freckles. I had never seen her before.

‘Siobhan Kemp,’ she said to no one in particular, blushing as she introduced herself. ‘I’m the new associate producer. Well – shall I give Cliff a call?’

Marty looked at me. I could tell that he liked the idea of the tree man. And so did I. Because, like all television people, what we worshipped above all else was authenticity. Apart from genuine, high-octane celebrity, of course. We worshipped that most of all.

We were sick of junior celebs pushing their lousy product. We hungered after real people with real lives and real stories – stories not anecdotes. They offered us great television at rock-bottom prices. We offered them therapy, a chance to get it all off their chest, an opportunity to let it all just gush out over a million carpets.

Of course, if Jack Nicholson had suddenly called up begging to appear on the show then we would have immediately called a security guard to escort all the real people from the building. But somehow Jack never did. There were just not enough celebrities to go round these days.

So we revered real people, real people who felt passionate about something, real people with no career to protect. And someone up a tree with police dogs snapping at his unwashed bollocks sounded about as real as it gets.

‘How do you know him?’ I asked her.

‘I used to go out with him,’ she said.

Marty and I exchanged a glance. We were impressed. So this Siobhan was a real person too.

‘It didn’t work out,’ she said. ‘It’s difficult when one of you is up a tree for so much of the time. But we managed to stay close and I admire him – he really believes in what he’s doing. The way he sees it, the life-support systems of the planet are nearing exhaustion, and all the politicians ever do is pay lip service to ecological issues. He thinks that when man enters the land, he should leave only footprints and take only memories.’

‘Fucking brilliant,’ Marty said. ‘Who’s his agent?’

I was up in the gallery watching a dozen screens showing five different shots of Marty interviewing a man who could inflate a condom with it pulled down over the top half of his head – he was actually pretty good – when I felt someone by my side.

It was Siobhan, smiling like a kid on her first day at a new school who has suddenly realised that she is going to be okay.

In the darkness of the gallery her face was lit by the monitors on the wall. They are TV sets, that’s all, but we call them monitors. They provide the director with a choice of shots for transmission. Monitors don’t only show the image that is going out, but all the images that could be. Siobhan smiled up at them. She had a beautiful smile.

‘I thought that this Cliff didn’t do interviews,’ I said. ‘Not since he was stitched up by that Sunday paper who said he was just in it for the glory and the hippy chicks.’ Then I remembered she had gone out with him. ‘No offence meant.’

‘None taken,’ she said. ‘That’s true, but he might do this one.’

‘Why? Because of you?’

‘No,’ she laughed. ‘Because he likes Marty. He doesn’t consider him part of the media establishment.’

I looked at Marty on the monitors, almost gagging with laughter as the condom exploded on the guy’s head. If anyone was part of the media establishment, it was Marty. He would have considered it a compliment.

‘And most of all,’ said Siobhan, ‘because we’re live.’

It was true that we were practically the last live show on television. By now most shows were what are called ‘as live’ – meaning they faked the excitement of live television while always having the safety net of recording. Phoney as hell.

But The Marty Mann Show was the real thing. When you watched that guy with a condom on his head, it was actually being inflated at that very moment.

‘The way these eco-warriors see it,’ Siobhan said, ‘the only place in the media where there’s no censorship is live television. Can I ask you something?’

‘Go ahead.’

‘Is that your MGF down in the carpark? The red one?’

Here it comes, I thought. The lecture about what cars do to the muck in the air and the hole in the sky. Sometimes I despair for the young people of today. All they ever think about is the future of the planet.

‘Yeah, that’s mine,’ I said.

‘Nice car,’ she said.

They were both asleep by the time I got home. I brushed my teeth and undressed in the darkness, listening to my wife softly breathing in her sleep.

The sound of Gina sleeping never failed to stir an enormous tenderness in me. It was the only time she ever seemed vulnerable, the only time I could kid myself that she needed me to protect her. She stirred when I slid into bed and wrapped my arm around her.