floral tribute but thought it best not to go. Connor’s friends would think she was his aunt or someone. She had never met his parents and didn’t especially want to.
From the sandwich shop, Sally saw the square. A knot of messengers hung about the gazebo, all in lycra shorts and squiggly T-shirts. Sprawled on benches, they let long legs dangle as they worked pain out of their knees. Some, unlike Connor, had helmets like plastic colanders. Staff at Charing Cross Hospital had a nickname for Central London cycle messengers: organ donors. Scrapes and spills were an inevitable part of accelerated lives. And so was human wastage. Ironically Connor had carried a donor card: he was buried without corneas and one kidney.
‘Come on,’ said April, looking at her pink plastic watch, ‘back to the front...’
* * *
If she had doubts about the identity of the consortium’s financial backer, they were dispelled by the front page of the Comet, tabloid flagship of Derek Leech’s media empire. Ronnie Shand was caught in the glare of flash-bulbs, guiltily emerging from a hotel with a girl in dark glasses. The story, two hundred words of patented Comet prose, alleged Up Your Alley was fixed. Contestants who put out for Shand (51, married with three children) were far more likely to score a strike and take home a fridge-freezer or a holiday in Barbados. An inset showed Ronnie happy with his family in an obviously posed publicity shot. Inside the paper, the girl, an aspiring model, could be seen without clothes, a sidebar giving details about ‘my sizzling nights with TV’s family man’. Shand was unavailable for comment but GLT made a statement that Up Your Alley would be replaced by repeats of Benny Hill while an internal investigation was conducted. Sally wondered whether theyd investigate the allegations or witch-hunt their staff for the traitor who’d tipped off the Comet.
Tiny was a bundle of suppressed mirth at their meeting and chuckled to himself as she reported. She’d carried out a thorough, boring check of the finances of GLT’s component parts, and discovered profits from hit shows had been severely drained by a couple of disastrous international co-productions, The Euro-Doctors and The Return of Jason King. The interruption of Up Your Alley was a severe embarrassment. GLT must be hurting far more than their bland press releases suggested.
‘If it comes to it, we can outspend the bastards,’ Tiny said. ‘We’ll have to make sacrifices. Congratulations, Sally. I judge you well.’
There was something seductive about covert work. Setting aside moral qualms about the franchise system and relegating to a deep basement any idea of serving the viewing public, she could look at the situation and see any number of moves which would be to Mythwrhn’s advantage. Taken as a game, it was compulsive. It being television, it was easy to believe no real people at all were affected by any action she might suggest or take.
‘I’ve been looking at Cowley Mansions ,’ she said, referring to GLT’s long-running thrice-weekly soap set in a Brixton block of flats. It was said GLT wouldn’t lose their franchise because John Major didn’t want to go down in history as the Prime Minister who took away the Mansions .
Tiny showed interest.
‘I’ve not got paper back-up but I heard a whisper that GLT took a second mortgage to finance The Euro-Doctors and put the Mansions on the block.’
‘Explain.’
‘To sucker in the Italians and the French, GLT threw in foreign rights to the Mansions with the deal. Also a significant slice of the domestic ad revenues for a fixed period.’
Tiny whistled.
‘As you know, TéVéZé, the French co-producer, went bust at the beginning of the year and was picked up for a song by a British-based concern which turns out to be a subsidiary of Derek Leech Enterprises.’
Tiny sat up.
‘If I were, say, Derek Leech, and I wanted to gain control of the Mansions , I think I could do it by
From the sandwich shop, Sally saw the square. A knot of messengers hung about the gazebo, all in lycra shorts and squiggly T-shirts. Sprawled on benches, they let long legs dangle as they worked pain out of their knees. Some, unlike Connor, had helmets like plastic colanders. Staff at Charing Cross Hospital had a nickname for Central London cycle messengers: organ donors. Scrapes and spills were an inevitable part of accelerated lives. And so was human wastage. Ironically Connor had carried a donor card: he was buried without corneas and one kidney.
‘Come on,’ said April, looking at her pink plastic watch, ‘back to the front...’
* * *
If she had doubts about the identity of the consortium’s financial backer, they were dispelled by the front page of the Comet, tabloid flagship of Derek Leech’s media empire. Ronnie Shand was caught in the glare of flash-bulbs, guiltily emerging from a hotel with a girl in dark glasses. The story, two hundred words of patented Comet prose, alleged Up Your Alley was fixed. Contestants who put out for Shand (51, married with three children) were far more likely to score a strike and take home a fridge-freezer or a holiday in Barbados. An inset showed Ronnie happy with his family in an obviously posed publicity shot. Inside the paper, the girl, an aspiring model, could be seen without clothes, a sidebar giving details about ‘my sizzling nights with TV’s family man’. Shand was unavailable for comment but GLT made a statement that Up Your Alley would be replaced by repeats of Benny Hill while an internal investigation was conducted. Sally wondered whether theyd investigate the allegations or witch-hunt their staff for the traitor who’d tipped off the Comet.
Tiny was a bundle of suppressed mirth at their meeting and chuckled to himself as she reported. She’d carried out a thorough, boring check of the finances of GLT’s component parts, and discovered profits from hit shows had been severely drained by a couple of disastrous international co-productions, The Euro-Doctors and The Return of Jason King. The interruption of Up Your Alley was a severe embarrassment. GLT must be hurting far more than their bland press releases suggested.
‘If it comes to it, we can outspend the bastards,’ Tiny said. ‘We’ll have to make sacrifices. Congratulations, Sally. I judge you well.’
There was something seductive about covert work. Setting aside moral qualms about the franchise system and relegating to a deep basement any idea of serving the viewing public, she could look at the situation and see any number of moves which would be to Mythwrhn’s advantage. Taken as a game, it was compulsive. It being television, it was easy to believe no real people at all were affected by any action she might suggest or take.
‘I’ve been looking at Cowley Mansions ,’ she said, referring to GLT’s long-running thrice-weekly soap set in a Brixton block of flats. It was said GLT wouldn’t lose their franchise because John Major didn’t want to go down in history as the Prime Minister who took away the Mansions .
Tiny showed interest.
‘I’ve not got paper back-up but I heard a whisper that GLT took a second mortgage to finance The Euro-Doctors and put the Mansions on the block.’
‘Explain.’
‘To sucker in the Italians and the French, GLT threw in foreign rights to the Mansions with the deal. Also a significant slice of the domestic ad revenues for a fixed period.’
Tiny whistled.
‘As you know, TéVéZé, the French co-producer, went bust at the beginning of the year and was picked up for a song by a British-based concern which turns out to be a subsidiary of Derek Leech Enterprises.’
Tiny sat up.
‘If I were, say, Derek Leech, and I wanted to gain control of the Mansions , I think I could do it by
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