Ben Elton - Inconceivable

Anyway, once they’ve got everything pumped up and dyed and prodded into position they make a hole just under your belly-button and put a long fibre optic telescope through with a camera on the end. God, what a thought. As I was telling Sam, I was actually beginning to feel sicker and sicker. It was lucky that I didn’t have anything in my stomach to throw up as we’ve just had the car valeted. One strange thing was that as I was telling Sam the gory details I suddenly remembered that I’d meant to have my bikini line done and I was really annoyed that I hadn’t. I mean why would I worry about that? It’s absurd. I never worry about a bit of escaper normally, not for smear tests and all that, sometimes don’t even bother for the beach. But for some reason today I just felt like looking my best. I can’t imagine why. Perhaps this whole business makes me feel less like a woman and I wanted to reassert my softness and my femininity.

One brilliant thing Lucy told me was that she had wanted to have her bikini line waxed! Superb stuff! I improvised a line there and then… I said, “Blimey, Lucy, it’s a laparoscopy, not lap dancing,” which I think cheered her up and I’ll certainly keep it for the script.

Sam just made stupid jokes, which was a bit irritating, although I know he meant well. The thing is that I don’t think he really understands how demeaning and dehumanizing the whole process is. You’re not a woman any more, you’re just a thing under a microscope, like in biology at school. I shan’t write any more now because I can hear a trolley clanking in the corridor and I fear my hour has come.

Lucy was pretty zonked out when I picked her up this afternoon, so I couldn’t get much out of her on the journey home. The doctor said it had all gone fine, anyway, and that they would give us the results in a few days, “When we’ve got the photos back from the chemist,” he said. I hate doctors who crack glib little jokes like that. I mean, that’s my wife’s internal organs he’s talking about! I think I’ll use him in the movie, though. Stephen Fry would play him brilliantly.

The trip home was even worse than in the morning. What are we doing to the world? Actually, more to the point, what are we doing to ourselves? At one stage I spent twenty-five minutes in a virtually stationary battle to prevent a bloke getting in front of me from out of a side street. Every inch of road that became available I filled, in order to prevent him from edging in, never once allowing myself to catch his eye. Why? Why did I do that? It’s something about cars. They shrink our souls. If I met the same man on foot I’d say, “Oh, excuse me,” and make way. Instead I spent twenty minutes of my life, when I could have been relaxing, obsessed with stopping a bloke getting two feet in front of me in a stationary queue. I really am pathetic.

When we got home Lucy went straight to bed. I’d intended to spend the evening doing some more work on my script but somehow I don’t feel like it. What with Lucy in a drugged sleep upstairs, I’m feeling a bit cheap. Guilty conscience, I’m afraid. I do hope I’m not weakening. I must see this through. It’s the first thing I’ve felt genuinely excited about in years.

Dear Penny

Well, yesterday I had the laparoscopy and today I’ve got a very sore throat. Sam was particularly interested in that, wondering how you could end up with a sore throat when the business was so very much down the other end. He seemed quite excited for a minute as if there might be some extraordinarily exotic reason for this phenomenon. When I explained it was just where the anaesthetist had stuck a breathing tube down my throat he actually seemed quite disappointed. Very strange.

I think this new job at Radio is getting him down. I must say, it doesn’t sound very stimulating.

Dear Book

There really is no job for me at Broadcasting House. They just made one up to avoid a run-in with the union. Ostensibly my responsibility is to commission youth-orientated comedy, but I have absolutely no money whatsoever to do this with. The entire youth entertainment budget, and I mean all of it, has been spent on Charlie Stone’s wages. I couldn’t believe it when I found out. The breakfast show is considered such a flagship for the station that every resource has been sacrificed to its success, which basically is Charlie. I dropped in on his show again this morning to have another look at what we’re paying for, and because, frankly, I had absolutely nothing else to do. It was rather traumatic for me actually, as he was interviewing a couple of the grrrls from Grrrl Gang. I’m afraid it brought back very painful memories of my Livin’ Large disaster.

“All right,” said Charlie, and those words alone cost the licence payer about five pounds. “Coming up now we’ve got Strawberry and Muffy from the all-conquering Grrrl Gang, and my trousers are swollen to bursting point. No doubt about it, these girls give me a third leg! You should see them! Grrrl Gang? More like Phwoar Blimey Gang from where I’m sitting! Anyway, grrrls, I know that it’s very important to you that you write a lot of your own lyrics. Tell us a bit about where the band is coming from.”

“It’s about everything, right!” replied Strawberry or Muffy, I don’t know which. “It’s a whole philosophy! It’s whatever you want it to be. It’s about having a totally positive attitude and kickin’ it big for your babe mates and all your sistas! So get on the case! Get a grip! Get with the plot! You gotta go out and grab whatever you want! Like a degree in physics or a cute bloke’s buns! Just grab it, grrrl!”

I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything quite so fatuous in all my life. Certainly not since I last attended a BBC targeting and strategy meeting (entitled “Meeting the Future: Policing the Gateway”).

I was glad I popped in, though, because it strengthened my resolve about my film. I mean I can’t spend the rest of my career pretending to laugh at Charlie Stone’s knob gags, I just can’t. My script development is my way out. Lucy would understand, I know she would.

Not that I’m going to tell her.

Dear Penny

Sam and I went to see Dr James, my consultant, today. Actually I think he’s called Mr James. I’ve always found that confusing about consultants. It seems that the higher a person rises in the medical profession the less grand the title they get. Probably quite healthy really. Stop them getting too pompous.

Anyway, the good news is that they’ve found nothing wrong with my innards. I do not have endometriosis, which is an enormous relief. Also there are no adhesions on the abdominal cavity and I have recently ovulated.

“ Tremendous news, that,” said Mr James, who is a brutally cheerful type. “Can’t make an omelette without eggs, and by omelette, of course, I mean baby.”

There are no fibroids on the outside of the uterus and to the best of Mr James’s knowledge no congenital problems in the womb (“can never be one hundred per cent sure, though”). There are also no cysts, thank God, as the very thought makes me feel sick, and no apparent abdominal diseases. It was quite shocking really to hear the catalogue of things that could have spelled disaster.

We were also shown some photographs of my insides, which Mr James described as “beautiful” but which Sam and I agreed were absolutely obscene. All yellow and red and purple. They were like stills from a horror movie. Strange to be looking at one’s own innards. Stranger still to have someone admiring them.

“ Lovely” said Mr James. “Absolutely lovely. You’ve got tip-top guts. Good big healthy bowel, too. That’s the orange splodge. Beautiful bowel, facilitates a superb movement, I imagine. Well done. Don’t worry about it being orange. It isn’t orange, it just comes out orange on the slide for some reason.”