Woman of the Hour Read Free Page B

news editor spoke up now.
    ‘I assume we’re talking the feature presenters here, Julius? News can hardly be pastel.’
    Bob runs the team of news reporters and they are overwhelmingly male and macho. In every TV station there is a great divide between the features team and the news team which is why his support of me yesterday was unexpected. Julius gave Bob a hard look.
    ‘I want to see the news reporters in pale blue shirts,’ he said, standing up, ‘from next Monday.’
    The meeting was over and Julius walked out of the room. I was keen to talk to Bob about this latest development and followed him to his office. I could tell by the way he was walking that he was furious. He sees himself as a serious news man in competition with much larger outfits. He prides himself on getting exclusives and on selling these on to other TV stations. We reached his office and he slammed his door shut.
    ‘Pastels! Such bullshit,’ he said, throwing his papers onto his desk.
    ‘You’d think we were a supermarket or an airline. Welcome to StoryWorld... fasten your seat belts,’ I said.
    ‘You know what gets me? It’s a fucking great power trip, that’s what this is all about. It’s about him getting us to do something and there’s never any room for discussion.’
    It was true and I wondered if Julius was punishing Bob for his intervention yesterday. He has pockmarked cheeks and dark angry eyes and he’s weirdly attractive and magnetic. He’s been at the station about two years. As a rule the news editors don’t last long here. Sooner or later they clash with Julius and Julius always wins any power struggle.
    ‘What are you going to do?’ he asked.
    ‘Carry it out, of course,’ I said.
    ‘You’ve worked with him a long time, haven’t you?’
    ‘I have and I’ve learned to pick my fights. I’m not going to fight over what colours people wear.’
    He knelt down to pick up the papers that had slid off his desk onto the floor.
    ‘Yeah, but just the once I’d like him to get what’s coming to him,’ he said.
    I went downstairs to get myself a coffee from the staff café which is called the Hub. The management spent a shed-load of money on this café and got an architect in to design it. Julius has a theory that if you give the staff a good place to eat and drink they are more likely to put in the long hours. There is a central circular food and drink bar and spreading out from these like the spokes of a wheel are stylish lime-green and orange designer tables and chairs. The lighting is trendy and can be changed to create different moods – we use the Hub for presentations sometimes. The menu caters for all types and all allergies. Gerry Melrose, our astrologer, was sitting in there drinking a diet Coke. He told me recently that he’s on a diet and is aiming to shed a stone. He’s in his late-forties and his partner, Anwar, is younger than him and Gerry worries about his appearance. No time like the present, I thought, as I sat down opposite him. He was wearing a rather nice dark blue jumper over a crisp white shirt.
    ‘How are things with you, darling?’ he asked.
    ‘OK,’ I said, stirring half a spoon of sugar into my coffee. ‘Julius has this new idea. He wants all the presenters to wear pastel colours; yellow, pink, pale blue. But not dark blue like your nice jumper, and definitely no black. He was adamant about it. Said it’s the StoryWorld brand to be bright and cheerful and he wants us to implement this straight away.’
    ‘Pastels can be fattening, you know?’ Gerry said.
    ‘I know they can.’
    ‘What’s he got against dark colours?’
    ‘He says they stand for misery and death,’ I said, trying to resist the impulse to roll my eyes.
    ‘That’s an Aquarius for you, free thinkers, mould breakers.’
    ‘Julius is an Aquarius?’
    ‘Oh yes. I did his chart a while back.’
    I tried to imagine how Julius would have reacted to this. Julius is the most private of men and he would have had to