poached by Channel 4 News and there I was, on the spot. That was three years ago. My life seemed complete. I had fallen in love with radio; and then I fell in love with Dominic too.
‘That weely is cwap!’ Melinda screeched again, as I sat down in the boardroom on my first day back.
‘I thought Wesley’s idea was rather good,’ Jack said.
‘Oh, thanks, Jack,’ simpered Wesley. ‘Do you really think so?’ And then Wesley noticed me, and smiled.
‘Oh, hel-lo, Minty,’ he said. Then his features folded into an expression of sympathetic concern. ‘Minty, look, I’d just like to say –’
‘Wesley!’ Jack cut in. ‘Kindly tell us all who you would invite into the studio for this item on astrology.’
‘Well,’ he began. ‘Well …’ Wesley never has any ideas. His mind was clearly as empty as the Outback as he pursed his lips, then stared at the floor.
‘How about an astrologer?’ Jack prompted crisply.
‘Yeah!’ said Wesley. ‘Fab! Brilliant idea. There’s that woman from the Weekly Star …’
‘Sheryl von Strumpfhosen?’ I offered.
‘Yeah. Thanks, Minty.’
‘She’s no good,’ I added bitterly.
‘Minty, look,’ said Wesley, ‘I’d really just like to say-’
I felt my face redden, and my heartbeat rise, but Jack deflected him again.
‘What other ideas do you have, Wesley?’
‘Well …’ Wesley began. ‘Well …’ He ran a limp hand over his balding head, then fiddled with the top button of his polyester shirt. He cast his watery blue eyes to the ceiling, and made funny little sucking noises with his teeth, but inspiration clearly eluded him.
‘Anyone else?’ said Jack tersely. Silence. As usual, none of the producers had a clue. They always leave it to Sophie, our new researcher. She’s just out of Oxford, ferociously ambitious, and as sharp as broken glass.
‘Sophie, are you prepared to help your clueless colleagues?’ said Jack.
She consulted her clipboard, tucked her hair behind one ear and pushed her wire-rimmed glasses up her nose.
‘There’s a report out today on drug-taking in schools,’ she began crisply, ‘and there’s another appeal being launched to save Bart’s. I see from the publishing catalogues that a new biography of Boris Yeltsin is published this week, so I’ve put in a bid for the author, and of course the shortlist for the Turner Prize is being announced in three days.’
‘Excellent,’ said Jack. ‘Anything else?’
‘Yes, I’ve spoken to Peter Greenaway’s publicist and I’ve set up an exclusive interview pegged to his new film. We’ve also got another special report coming down the line from the Edinburgh Festival.’
‘Good,’ said Jack. But Sophie hadn’t finished.
‘There’s been yet another resignation at the Royal Opera House; and I’d like to draw everyone’s attention to a very interesting new survey on the declining popularity of marriage,’ she went on enthusiastically. ‘The statistics show that marriages have fallen to an all-time low, so I thought we could get Minty to compile a report on “the myth of wedded bliss” – it’s an absolutely fascinating subject, you know-’
Jack opened his mouth to intervene, but Melinda got there first:
‘How can we possibly ask Minty to do that?’ she enquired indignantly. ‘The poor girl’s just been JILTED!’
My face reddened and my bowels shrank. Bloody Melinda. Stupid cow. Then, to my horror, Melinda stood up, and placed two fat, richly bejewelled hands across her vast stomach.
‘I’d like to say that I think we should all be vewy kind to Minty,’ she announced, ‘because she’s just been thwough something tewwible. Something weally, weally, humiliating. And I just want to say, Minty, that I think you’re VEWY BWAVE!’ She had finished. She sat down and beamed at everyone, as though expecting a round of applause.
In the embarrassed silence they all looked at the floor, while I tried to remember when Melinda’s maternity leave was due to start. It wasn’t that long now. Two or three months? I couldn’t wait. And then I looked at her again and I thought, Amber’s right. She’s right about the horrors of pregnancy, and here was the living proof. Melinda’s fat, bare legs were veined like dolcelatte; she needed iron girders in her bra; short and plump to begin with, she looked as though she’d swallowed a tractor tyre. Particularly in those defiantly tight maternity clothes she sometimes wears. Today a skimpy T-shirt was stretched over her epic bulge. ‘Let Me Out!’ it read. No, let me out, I thought. And she’s a really terrible broadcaster. She can’t say her ‘R’s, for a start. And she makes so many fluffs – it’s appalling. You could stuff cushions with them. I mean, she’s always mis-reading her script. Spoonerisms, in particular, abound. Here are a few she’s slipped up on recently: ‘Warring bankers in the City’; ‘The shining wits of New Labour’; and twice now she has managed to mispronounce the ‘Cunning Stunts’ theatre company, despite extensive practice beforehand. We all cringe – and the letters of complaint that we get! But it’s all water off a duck’s back to Melinda. She thinks she’s marvellous. The cwème de la cwème. Well, she’s certainly rich and thick. I mean, who but Melinda would have welcomed David Blunkett into the studio with the cheery salutation, ‘Hello, David! Long time no see!’ But if there’s the slightest whiff of criticism of her, she goes bleating to Uncle Percy. In the end, that’s why everyone tolerates her. We simply have no choice.
‘Vewy bwave,’ she muttered again, then gave me an earnest sort of smile.
You see, the fact is, she likes me. That’s the awful part. Probably because she relies on me to write her cues. She’s useless, you see. Especially when it comes to current affairs. For example, she thinks Bosnia Herzegovina’s the Wonderbra model. Nor is she much better on cultural things. In May she astonished Ian McEwan – and all of us – by describing him as ‘one of Bwitain’s finest Shakespearwean actors’. Anyway, because she’s so hopeless, she’s forever asking me for help. And though I don’t like her, I’ve always obliged. Why? Because I’m nice. That’s what everyone says about me. ‘Minty’s really nice.’ ‘Why don’t you ask Minty?’ I hear them say. ‘She’ll help you,’ and, ‘Oh, just take it to Minty.’ ‘Oh, no, Minty doesn’t mind,’ they add. But actually, Minty does mind. Minty minds rather a lot. That’s what nobody realises. And though I smile and nod, inside I’m in a rage because, recently, I’ve started to realise that I’m fed up with being nice. The fact is my colleagues exploit me. They really do. And it’s beginning to get me down. Wesley’s the worst. He never edits his interviews down in time, and then he rings me from the studio half an hour before he goes on air and says he’s way over and please would I come and cut six minutes out of this feature, or five and a half out of that, and so I stand there, with my heart banging like a drum, slashing tape against the clock. I could really do without the extra stress, but somehow I can never say ‘no’.
‘Vewy bwave,’ muttered Melinda again. And then her eyebrows drooped theatrically, and she flashed me this compassionate
