Issue #8 : Fame

This issue’s featured piece of music is from:
‘Le Tombeau de Couperin’ by Maurice Ravel
performed by Anne Queffelec  

First of all I thought you might be interested to learn that the last issue’s quasi-witless bunny-themed BP generated the biggest reader response so far to date. And I’m not just talkin’ bout the haters. So expect more rabbits, stoats, badgers and voles soon y’all. 

I also mentioned in the previous edition that I had a new book out. Part of this week has been spent on the ‘publicity trail’ in promotion of this mighty tome. Occasionally people who don’t get out much suggest that being a writer must be quite ‘glamorous’. These people have presumably spotted the hysterical pandemonium that greets J.K. Rowling’s wizard product, and/or the queues of rapt intellectual admiration provoked by Ian McEwan and his ilk. You know, proper writers. For auteurs of the public standing of, for example myself, the promotional treadmill is a different, perhaps more prosaic kettle of (sweet little) bunnies. Last Wednesday I travelled up to London for a round of promotional interviews with a bunch of regional radio stations. I was accompanied by my publicist in the Penguin press department; a very pleasant young lady by the name of Katya. As I’d never met Katya before, we arranged to met outside Oxford Circus tube station at 10.20am. This afforded me the rare opportunity to stand and (legitimately) stare openly at every pleasant-looking young lady who emerged up the steps from the tube station, wondering if any of them were Katya. None of them were. So I went home. Not a bad day, all told.

Not really! One of em was Katya. At least she said she was. So together we walked up the road to the BBC’s Western House radio studios on Great Portland Street and signed in at reception, from whence we were pointed in the direction of a small cluster of mini-studios (think: the transporter room in Star Trek), whose own receptionist suggested we take a seat until our own designated mini-studio / cubicle was free. I took a seat next to Douglas Hurd, Tory grandee (how come any old Tory b**tard gets to be called a ‘grandee’ as soon as he gets senile, eh?), former Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Northern Ireland Secretary and so on, who was also waiting for a cubicle of his own. (Hurd had written some s**tty book about some c**t or other yet not, I should add, his own memoirs, thank f**k.) Hurd had two lackeys with him, both of whom ostentatiously guffawed at his every whinnying utterance. During the short time I was sitting next to Sir Admiral Lord Hurd, all his utterances were to do with himself and his own vainglorious past exploits or his last trip to the toilet. When, following yet another of these interminable pearls, Katya and me declined to chortle along, he craned his crimson turkey neck around to give us a look sour enough to have curdled Baroness Thatcher’s breast milk. Needless to say, his lackeys lapped this up too. 

We were soon ushered away from Hurd and into our mini-studio (broom cupboard) containing a small radio desk and two chairs, and I took a seat behind the small table on which sat a single bulbous microphone, donning a pair of headphones all ready for the first of my desperate airwaves-exhortations.

First up was the lovely Jane, from Radio Three Counties’ ‘Book Hour’.

‘Are you ready?’ said Jane, in one of these Three Counties, I don’t know which; indeed I don’t know which Three they are in the first place. Bedfordshire maybe? Buckinghamshire?

‘Yes,’ I replied.

And we did the interview. I said the same hilarious s**t I always do. It went alright; I mean, nobody laughed, but it went alright. I’m used to it, readers. Although this one was a pre-record, I learned later than all Three Counties went mad for me. Their switchboards fused together in a spontaneous molten mass of regional appreciation and electrical faults. After the interview was over, the line went dead in my cans and Katya and me sat there in silence.

‘How do you think that went?’ I asked.

‘You should try and mention the Bitterest Pill next time,’ she said.

‘Oh yes, good point.’

The glamour was ratcheting up.

Next up was Pat at Radio Kent. This one was live. Katya decided to take her chances sitting outside next to Hurd and his gang rather than subject herself to yet more of my broadcasting wit and skill.

‘Not nervous, are you?’ said Pat down the line from Kent.

‘No,’ I replied. ‘Why do you think I’m nervous?’

‘Oh nothing. Great! OK, we’ll be on directly after the weather and travel, OK?’

‘Yes that’s fine.’

I listened to the Kent weather and travel, and then Pat introduced me and we did the interview. It went OK. At the end, I stepped out of my broom cupboard to find Katya laughing uproariously along with Grandee Hurd and his lackeys.

‘Was that OK?’ she asked.

‘I think so. Who knows?’

‘Did you mention the Bitterest Pill?’

‘No I forgot again.’

Katya glanced down at her schedule.

‘OK. Next up, it’s another pre-record, this time for Radio Humberside’s ‘Afternoon Programme’. Are you ready?’

‘I guess.’

I went back into the broom cupboard. Or a different broom cupboard. There are like, four there, all identical. Meanwhile Sir Hurd strode into an adjoining one.

‘Good luck, Sir Douglas!’

I put the headphones on. My mouth was dry.

‘Seb, are you there?’ asked Sue down the line, from Humberside.

‘Yes.’

‘Great, let’s go! So. One sec. Almost ready. OK, let’s do it. I have with me the writer Seb Hunter. Hello Seb.’

‘Good morning.’

‘Right, can we just start that again? This is the ‘Afternoon Show’, so you either need to say “good afternoon” or just “hello”. OK?’

‘Sorry, yes. Good afternoon.’

‘Not yet.’

‘Sorry.’

And we did the interview and it was fine, I think. Who knows? I forgot to mention the Bitterest Pill again. The glamour inched yet further skyward. 

But now it was time for lunch, phew.  

After lunch, Katya had ‘other things’ to do, and so I tackled the remainder single-handedly. Douglas Hurd had also disappeared. Everyone had probably gone off to the Groucho Club or somewhere, for cocktails.

‘Hello,’ said Richard, down the wire from Radio Bristol. ‘We’ll be going live, right after the news, the weather, the travel, and then some music and a word search. So we’ll be just a jiffy. How does that sound?’

‘It sounds… brilliant.’

‘Fantastic! Be right with you. Sorry, and your book’s called?’

‘Rock Me Amadeus: When Ignorance Meets High...’

‘Fantastic! Back soon.’

And well readers, I remembered to mention the Bitterest Pill. So I would like to take this opportunity to welcome all you thousands of exciting new Bristolians into the BP fold. Plenty of Massive Attack, Tricky and Portishead around here. Oh yes, or rather ‘ooh arrr’. Plus cider and turnips. Or is that Somerset? 

Have you had enough of this authorial glamour yet? Every single day of the year there’s some poor b**tard going through this exact same ritual somewhere within the bowels of the BBC radio network. And you know what else? They’re all dummy rigs. We’re not really going out to Kent or the Three Counties – this is all a sham, paid for by a publishers’ collective, to assuage demanding, solipsistic authors (like there’s any other kind). You can probably already tell that ‘doing the promotional rounds’ never fails to reveal a writer’s sunny side. Quick, let’s get to the music before I write another one.

This week’s is a piano piece by musically Impressionist Frenchman Maurice Ravel - the fugue (second movement) from ‘Le Tombeau de Couperin’. Each of the six movements that make up ‘Le Tombeau de Couperin’ was dedicated to the memory of one of his friends who died in the First World War, in which Ravel himself was injured whilst driving an ambulance. I bought this CD in HMV on Oxford Street between interviews at lunch, after Katya went off with his Lord Snooty and his f**king pals. I didn’t have much else to do. For those of you whose sole experience of Ravel’s music is the pompous plod of the purple-clad ice skaters’ ‘Bolero’, this might come as a refreshing surprise: it’s chimerical yet sharp; world-weary; bright-eyed; drowsy but dramatic. Difficult to ice skate to. I really like it. What the hell, it’s only short, so I’ll expand this to include the first three movements. I hope you like em too.  

I too had/have a Miffy-addicted child and that song has been squatting in my head for roughly five years. It still lurks. I combat it to this day. For instance on Saturday night I went to see Lamb of God play here in Sheffield. A mighty gig, I nearly died in the pit, and yesterday my hearing was completely shot, just a constant whine and muffled voices… but no Miffy song. Voila. It’s back today though, thanks to the Bitterest Pill 7, bah!’ – David Bailey, Sheffield

‘Believe me, it only gets worse. For the last three months we have had ‘Cranky’s Bugs’ (Thomas the Tank Engine DVD, Season Five, Episode One) on repeat. It’s getting to the point where I’m actually offering Alex some of my favourite CDs to break. I now dread the episode ending to be followed by a word which makes my blood run cold… ‘more’. – Chris Booker, of barryandthebeachcombers.co.uk

‘Stupidly ignoring your advice, I put 11 month-old Finn on my knee and Googled ‘Miffy the Dutch Bunny’. Unfortunately I must have slightly misspelled the name ‘Miffy’. Thanks to you, my son has just had his first experience of hardcore Euro porn.’ – Mr D. Williams and family, Acton

‘That’s five minutes of my life I’ll never get back.’ – Natalia, U.S.A.

‘Thanks again for the Miffy song. It’s good to hear Supertramp’s working again.’ – Mr B. Mulhern, Boston, Massachusetts

‘In case you weren’t familiar with it: www.badgerbadgerbadger.com’ – Mr A. Depetrillo, London