The Right Man Read Free

unfashionable. Despite this multiplicity of
opinion, ‘You never made me come’ is still one of the worst put-downs available
to a woman when trying to humiliate an irritating mate. There is also the
faking option — unavailable to men — although my Liz would not have bothered
with that one. I sometimes wish she had; it might at least have shown willing.
    Once I
timed her. I know that’s unromantic, but twenty-four minutes! Eighteen minutes
of stimulation with no sign of life from her, then a few brief minutes of
arousal — still with her eyes closed — followed by her orgasm: twenty seconds
of groaning and a slight tremble followed by silence. Maybe I should have tried
harder, been sexier, but my arm was tired. I was worried I might develop
Repetitive Strain Injury. I ran out of dirty talk after four minutes, which may
make me sound like a wimp, but four minutes is one minute longer than a pop
record and eight times longer than the average commercial.
    Ever
onwards. In the half-hour I’d been out dealing with Mrs Henderson and her
theatrics there were nine call-back messages for me, three scripts to skim and
the problem of the undelivered manuscript of Neil James’s first novel to deal
with. Neil was turning into a problem client in general. A blunder kid. Too
much mopping up to do, not enough creative play.
    Naomi Ketts
and I worked ridiculously hard to get this agency off the ground and keep it
flapping about in the sparkly blue. It’s taken us ten years of near obsessive
dedication. We’ve been through a lot together and now have developed a working
relationship which is completely symbiotic. Often, we don’t even need to speak,
we know what the other is thinking before it has been thought. But unlike me,
she still gets a thrill out of the whole shebang. She still flies off the
handle, shouts at the girls, gets rip-roaringly drunk to celebrate a deal
clinched. Still goes to see all the new shows. Studies the business press like
a circling vulture. Still vibrates to the electric charge of it all. She still
needs that entertainment-biz petrol.
    I can’t
really call it a mid-life crisis — I’m too young for that, I hope — but in the
last couple of years I’ve definitely gone through some sort of sci-fi dooweeoo
time shuffle. Much of what goes on at work just seems, well, adolescent to me
now, and it’s definitely to do with Grace. April the fifth 1994, 2.30 a.m., 8lb
3oz. When they bunged her, covered in white stuff, her fanny all blue, into my
arms at Queen Charlotte’s that night, I had a profound feeling of something.
Not that everything else became meaningless, not that. But priorities suddenly
seemed to shift into a different focus. A new sense of proportion prevailed.
    What I’ve
been trying to do since Grace was born is to narrow down my field of hands-on
operation to just seven clients, my ‘heavy seven’. Maybe a couple more: Jenny
Thompson perhaps, Simon Eggleston — Barbara Stenner of course — but basically,
keep my personal client list small enough to be able to take a more active role
in child-rearing. Ideally, I would like to work only three days a week, maybe
doing the rest from home. Obviously I could never stop seeking out new talent —
that would be unsafe — but I am very happy nowadays to delegate work on my
forty or so other clients, to Naomi or Tilda in the office. Both of whom are
more than competent.
    To
succeed, to get anywhere as an agent, you have to burn with it. You have to
wake in the morning with last night’s prime-time TV ratings figures beckoning
you into consciousness. You have to put down the office phone, look at your
watch and realize that it’s half past eight at night already and that you haven’t
eaten for the last seven hours. You have to be able to keep a cast list of
names, faces and phone numbers at the forefront of your mind for fourteen hours
on the trot. For it to be fun, which it can be, requires that you engage your
third gear after breakfast,