The Making of Minty Malone

‘I say!’ Pedro squawked.

‘We could have really intellectual evenings, with plenty of booze thrown in! We could hold them here!’ she exclaimed. ‘You don’t mind, do you, Mint?’

‘Oh! Well, no, all right, if you set it up,’ I said as I picked up my bag. ‘I haven’t got time to organise it myself. And – Oh Christ, I’ll be late for work!’

‘Constipated? Then take Green Light for inner cleanliness …’

Oh God, not this one again, I thought, an hour later as I sat at my desk chewing the rubbery breakfast roll I’d bought in the canteen.

‘Just one little Green Light and you’ll be raring to GO! Only £3.95 from all good chemists. Or £5.95 for economy size.’

All of a sudden Jack appeared. He was tense. We knew this, because he was twisting a length of yellow leader tape in his hands.

‘Meeting!’ he barked. ‘And you’d better have lots of ideas after our impressive performance in the ratings.’

We all knew about this – it was plastered over the front page of Broadcast. ‘London FM Loses Grip! Audiences Right Down!’ We’d slumped by a disastrous 10 per cent in the quarterly figures compiled by RAJAR. We trooped into the boardroom, where Jack was fiddling with the speakers, trying to eliminate the incessant sound of the output. It’s like trying to cope with an unwanted guest, babbling away nonstop.

‘Do YOU have athlete’s foot? Then try Fungaway, the topperformance treatment for toe fungus of every kind. Fungaway works by –’ Click. Jack had found the switch. Silence. Thank God for that.

Then Melinda’s face lit up. ‘I know!’ she said. ‘Celebwity diseases!’

‘What?’ we all said.

‘Celebwity Diseases!’ she announced. ‘We could make it a wegular spot!’ She then went on to explain that this Hollywood actor had herpes, and that director was said to have AIDS, and she’d heard that a well-known British soap star was known to have chronic piles, and why didn’t we do a weekly feature in which the stars would discuss their ailments?

‘Great idea, Melinda,’ said Jack. ‘We’ll give it the thought it deserves.’

Melinda beamed, and shot me an excited smile.

‘Anyone else?’ said Jack.

This time, shaken by the declining audience figures, we had come fairly well prepared. Newspapers and magazines had been read, Time Out and Premiere studied, the Celebrity Bulletin had been scrutinised, and the Future Events List given more than a glance.

‘– London Fashion Week.’

‘– Tall Persons convention.’

‘– New show by Theatre de Complicité.’

‘– Alternative health exhibition.’

‘– Royal Opera House – new crisis.’

Half an hour later we had come up with enough feature ideas and suggestions for studio guests to fill the next three editions of the programme. We’d bought ourselves some time.

‘Minty’s piece about marriage went down well with the listeners,’ Jack went on. ‘We’ve had lots of letters asking us to do more social affairs stories like that. So I’d like Minty to compile a series of in-depth features, and we could run one every week. Right. What are the big social trends of the moment?’

‘Um …singleness?’

‘– Divorce.’

‘– Family breakdown?’

‘– Child support.’

‘– Nursery provision.’

‘– Late motherhood.’

‘– Fertility treatment,’ added Sophie. ‘The first test-tube baby, Louise Brown, is twenty-one this year,’ she went on knowledgeably. ‘We could use that as a peg to look at what reproductive science has achieved since then.’

‘Minty could interview Deirdwe!’ said Melinda happily.

‘Why?’ said Jack.

‘Because evewyone knows that Wesley’s been twying to get her pwegnant for years!’

’– er, anyone seen my stopwatch?’

‘– good piece in the Guardian about Fergie.’

‘– we really should do something about the cleaners.’

‘– see Prisoner Cell Block H last night?’

‘I know a vewy good fertility doctor, Wesley,’ Melinda went on benignly. ‘Not that I needed him myself!’ she added with an asinine laugh as she tapped her bulging middle. ‘I’ll wite his name down for you,’ she pressed on with tank-like persistence, as she groped in her bag for a pen. ‘It’s Pwofessor Godfwey Barnes.’

‘It’s quite all right, Melinda,’ Wesley replied, curtly. ‘I’m sure I’m quite capable of getting Deirdre pregnant in the conventional way.’ It was a good retort, but I doubted it was true. I remembered Deirdre confiding in me at the London FM Christmas party that her lack of a baby was entirely Wesley’s fault.

‘It’s certainly not my eggs,’ she’d whispered, as we sipped cheap Frascati out of plastic beakers. ‘I had my ovaries checked out and they’re fine. Absolutely fine. My eggs aren’t scrambled at all,’ she went on with a tinkling laugh.

‘Oh, well, good,’ I said, feeling slightly embarrassed that she’d chosen to share this information with me.

‘The doctor said it’s all shipshape,’ she continued. ‘Even though I’m thirty-nine. He said it must be Wesley’s sperm.’

‘Oh dear.’

‘It’s lazy,’ she giggled. ‘A bit like him! But he refuses point-blank to come to the clinic.’

‘Well, I hope he changes his mind,’ I’d said. What else could I say? Poor Deirdre. She was laughing about it, but she was clearly very sad. I felt sorry for her. She was nice. And she’d lived with Wesley for eight years, with neither a wedding ring nor a child to show for it. And this must have been all the more galling for her, because she was the supervisor at their local Mothercare. No wonder she always looked so dowdy and downbeat.

‘No, weally, Wesley, this doctor’s jolly good …’ Melinda was carrying on, impervious to our embarrassed coughs, while Wesley’s face radiated a heat I could almost feel.

‘Thank you very much, Melinda,’ said Jack. ‘Meeting over. Sophie, would you ring publicity, and tell them to make sure that all the radio critics know about Minty’s series.’

Half an hour later, Jack and I had drawn up the plan for my Social Trends slot. It would be hard work, I reflected as I returned to my desk; but that was a good thing because then I’d have no time to think about Dominic. What’s more, it was a good career move, and might take me closer to my professional goal.