Funny Girl(25)

He didn’t want to get out of the lift when the doors opened upstairs, just as Sophie hadn’t wanted to get into it downstairs. But Sophie had already gone, and he was obliged to chase after her.

‘So,’ said Tom Sloan, when they had been served tea and talked about Sophie’s favourite BBC series. ‘I understand the boys are jigging the script around a bit for you.’

‘They’re chucking the old one altogether.’

‘I rather liked it.’

‘Well,’ said Sophie, ‘there’s no accounting for taste,’ and she laughed.

Dennis felt a sudden urge to go to the lavatory.

‘What was wrong with it?’

‘Ooh, it was awful,’ she said. ‘They were a right couple of drips.’

‘And there was me hoping it might become a series,’ he said, and laughed.

‘Oh, no,’ said Sophie firmly. She was, Dennis could see, trying very hard not to tell him what he wanted to hear.

‘Well,’ said Sloan, ‘the thing is, as Head of Light Entertainment, if I want something to be a series, it usually happens.’

‘Was Talk of the Devil your idea?’

Dennis didn’t know whether he could stay in the room. Talk of the Devil was a comedy series about the Devil. He had gone to all the trouble of adopting human form so that he could work in the Vehicle Registration Department of a provincial town hall. It hadn’t gone down terribly well with either critics or audiences, and hadn’t been commissioned for a second series. Nobody talked about Talk of the Devil, not out loud.

‘Unfortunately it never quite found its feet,’ said Sloan. ‘I thought it had some very good things in it.’

‘It couldn’t have found its feet if you’d cut them off and stuffed them into its mouth,’ said Sophie. ‘You don’t want another one of those on your hands.’

Tom Sloan had gone from enchantment to irritation and mild outrage.

‘There are a lot of good actresses from the North who could play Barbara,’ said Sloan.

Sophie was amazed.

‘Really? Comic actresses?’

‘Yes.’

‘Like who?’

‘Marcia Bell, for example. She’s very good.’

‘I’ve never heard of her.’

‘That’s a coincidence, because we’ve never heard of you,’ said Sloan.

‘Marcia Bell, Dennis?’

They both turned to look at him.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘she’s one way we could go, certainly.’

Sophie didn’t draw a finger across her throat, because she was on her best behaviour, but she managed to convey, with a little smile and her eyes, that Dennis was a dead man.

‘How funny is she, Dennis?’ said Sophie.

‘On a scale of one to ten?’ he said, and laughed.

‘Yes,’ said Sophie.

‘If you like,’ said Sloan.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘on a good day …’

‘What was her best day?’

Dennis stood up.

‘Anyway,’ he said. ‘Thanks so much for finding the time to say hello.’

‘Oh, he doesn’t mind,’ said Sophie. ‘He knows I’m right.’

Dennis looked at Tom Sloan. It wasn’t entirely clear that either of these assertions was correct. Dennis sat down again.

‘The other thing is,’ said Sophie, ‘do you really want to lose us all to the other side?’

‘Who am I losing?’

‘Not Dennis,’ said Sophie. ‘He’ll stay here, won’t you, Dennis? He’s a BBC man from his head to the holes in his socks.’

Dennis smiled weakly. He presumed she wasn’t being complimentary.

‘But Bill, Tony and I … The trouble is, the money is so much better over there.’

‘They don’t even have a Comedy Playhouse,’ said Sloan. ‘You can’t take a thirty-minute programme to them and expect them to know what to do with it.’

The commercial channel was Sloan’s nemesis – he’d lost a lot of his star writers and performers over the last few years. Sophie had altered the power balance in the room simply by mentioning the other lot.

‘We wouldn’t be taking one programme to them,’ said Sophie. ‘We’d be taking a whole series.’

‘Have they got enough material for a series?’ Sloan said to Dennis.