The Complete Man and Boy Trilogy: Man and Boy, Man and Wife, Men From the Boys. Tony Parsons
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phone-in – the nut shift, we called it – to a job in cable television, I persuaded the station to give Marty a shot. Partly because I thought he would be good at it. But mostly because I was terrified of having to do it myself.
Amazingly, he worked wonders with the most unpromising material imaginable. Five nights a week Marty took calls from hangers, floggers, conspiracy theorists, alien watchers and assorted loony tunes. And he turned it into good radio.
What made it good radio was that Marty sounded like there was nowhere else he would rather be than chatting to the mouth-foaming denizens of nut nation.
We slowly started to build what they call a cult following. After that, we very quickly began to get offers to put the show on television. People bought us lunch, made flattering noises and made big promises. And very soon we abandoned our successful radio show, a rare case of rats deserting a floating ship.
But it was different on television. We couldn’t just let our guests practically wander in off the street as they had done on radio. Amusing lunatics who had been impregnated by randy aliens were no longer quite enough.
After a year fronting his own show, Marty still looked like he was exactly where he wanted to be. But the strain was starting to tell, and every week he needed a little more time in make-up to cover the cracks. It wasn’t just the seven-day stress of finding good guests that was putting those licks of grey in his bottle-blond hair. When we were on radio, Marty had nothing to lose. And now he did.
He was in the chair of the make-up room when I arrived at the studio, brainstorming about future guests to the group of young women who surrounded him, hanging on to his every wishful thought while the make-up girl attempted to make his skin look vaguely human for the cameras. He dubiously sipped the glass of water which had been placed in front of him.
‘Is this Evian?’
‘Did you want sparkling?’ asked a sweet-faced young woman in combat trousers and army boots.
‘I wanted Evian.’
She looked relieved. ‘That’s Evian.’
‘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