Ben Elton - Inconceivable

Better stop. Got to read a script tonight, a comic play which has developed out of a new writing workshop we’ve been running at the Beeb. The author has already had a one-act piece put on at the Royal Court or some other gruesome up-its-own-arse, over-subsidized London centre of theatrical wankdom. Lucy tells me we actually saw it but I can’t remember it for the life of me. The new play is called Fucking and Fucking . I told him that we’d have to change the title and he looked at me as if I was some kind of fascist. It’s so depressing. It seems only yesterday that I was considered a hip and dangerous young producer because I commissioned sketches about tampons. Now I’m a Nazi for telling young writers they can’t use the word “fuck” in their titles. Of course at the Royal Court they positively insist on having rude words in their titles and anal sex by the end of scene one.

I can’t believe how quickly I’m turning into a sad, reactionary old git.

Dear Penny

I’m not putting it off any longer, Penny. I’ve made an appointment to go and talk to my doctor. Five years and a month (soon no doubt to be five years and two months) is too long for it to be bad luck. There is obviously something wrong and quite frankly it will be a relief to know the truth. Anyway, it seems to me that the best way to get pregnant is to go and start the process of some sort of fertility treatment. At least it is according to the seventeen million old-wives’ tales and urban myths I’ve been told over the last couple of years. You hear constantly of people who know people who had decided to start IVF only to get pregnant by conventional means on their way to the first appointment! There are also any number of stories of couples who failed at IVF but then immediately got pregnant by conventional means or by sitting on wet grass or something. Add to this the numerous people who have a cousin who signed up to adopt and then immediately fell pregnant, plus of course the tales of people who got pregnant in the five-mile-high club on the way back from trying to get a Bosnian Baby. All in all I have come to the conclusion that the only absolutely sure way to get pregnant is to be pronounced infertile.

Carl Phipps, our new star, came in to the office again today to drop off his current ten-by-eight. He’s already had an offer of a film and he’s only been with us a few days! I’m afraid this has made him rather grand. We call his type Uhoaas which stands for “Up his own arse actor”.

Dear etc

Depressed. Very depressed. I met the new BBC1 Controller today. He’s younger than me! This is the first time this has happened. I mean me being older than one of my bosses. I don’t like it at all. He’s a whizzkid from Granada. I think he made some documentary proving that the Conservative Party is funded by a gang of Middle Eastern prostitutes, so obviously that qualifies him to schedule the entertainment of a nation. Looking at him, I suddenly felt the icy hand of mortality upon my shoulder. I’m thirty-eight, I’ll be forty in two years.

I thought about going for a run. I didn’t go, but I thought about it.

I feel very sorry for poor old Lucy at the moment. Not only has she got all this fertility business on her mind, but now it sounds like she’s got a real idiot to look after at work. That new actor, Phipps guy, can’t remember his first name, Cunt or something, although I doubt that could be it. He sounds like a right pain. She went on about him a bit over dinner, so I could tell he’s got right under her skin. As if she didn’t have enough to worry about.

Dear Penny

I’m going to see Dr Cooper today. I feel better now that I’m finally acknowledging that there actually probably is a problem and that I’m beginning the process of dealing with it. All the girls plus my mum and Sam’s mum continue to assure me that five years and one month (nearly five years and two months) is not that long to be trying. I continue to be bombarded with the same old drivel about various women who tried continually and energetically for seven years and then – bang! – out popped triplets. I do wish people wouldn’t all say the SAME BOLLOCKS to me all the time. They might at least vary it slightly. There seem to be more urban myths attached to infertility than there are to famous film stars filling their bottoms with small animals. It will be so good to get an informed opinion rather than all this anecdotal hearsay.

Just got back from Dr Cooper’s. He says that five years or so is not actually that long to be trying and that he knows any number of women who tried for seven years and then had twelve apiece. I feel a huge gin and tonic calling.

Dr Cooper has, however, offered to do a blood test to check my hormone levels and a sperm test for Sam. I told Sam about it this afternoon and he took it very well. I thought it might bother him a bit – men are so funny about their manhood and anything remotely associated with their willies – but he was great and said it was simply not a problem and did not bother him in the slightest.

FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!!!!

I’ve got diluted sperm. I know it. My sack is empty! My balls undone! Can’t write any more tonight.

Dear Pen Pal

The blood test is all set up for next Tuesday. Apparently this will ascertain if I’m ovulating or not. My God, I shall be so annoyed if I’m not. Ten years of condoms, caps, coils and abstinence followed by five years of thermometers, counting days and weeing on traffic lights would all be completely wasted.

Drusilla is horrified at the prospect of me having a blood test. She thinks that modern medicine is totally intrusive (and I suppose wandering about naked at Stonehenge isn’t intrusive). She thinks I should employ visualization therapy, which apparently consists of breathing, relaxing (surprise, surprise) and visualizing. She wants me to visualize a baby inside me, in my stomach, in my arms, in my very soul, a complete and perfect part of me. I said, “Drusilla darling, that’s all I ever bloody do,” and she said that was the problem. I’m obsessive, I need to visualize mystically rather than desperately, I need to allow myself the freedom to dream. Sounds like absolute bollocks to me.

I’ve booked a class for tomorrow night.

Sheila has suggested that I drink more heavily and take up smoking. This is because the only two times she’s ever got pregnant (Joanna and I were amazed, we had no idea she ever had been) were after colossal binges. It happened in her wild youth and resulted in abortions as she had no idea who the fathers were. I told her I’ve had many a drunken shag in my time and sadly the booze method does not work for me.

Sam seems to be going a bit funny over the prospect of his sperm test.

Dear Self

Heard an interesting fact about sperm today. Not that sperm is on my mind or anything but the subject came up in a taxi, as it will from time to time. Sperm counts, it seems, are generally down in the Western world. Seriously down, in fact, twenty-five per cent since before the war, or maybe fifty, the cab driver couldn’t remember the exact figure. It seems that for whatever reason, be it additives in the food, pollution, radiation from our mobile phones, or the gunk at the bottom of Pot Noodles, we modern men are considerably less flush in the sperm department than our grandfathers were. Isn’t that strange? I mean modern society’s attitude to old people is basically one of contempt. We don’t want to look like them and they cost too much to run. Most people think of old-age pensioners as being embarrassing wrinkly sad acts, terminally unhip.

“Poor old Grandad,” we think.

“Look at him, sitting in the corner dribbling and sucking his gums, always wanting to watch a different television channel from the rest of the family.”