Funny Girl(60)

‘Good evening,’ said Whitfield loudly, while Robert Mitchell was still talking, and while the camera was trained elsewhere.

The tiniest flicker of irritation crossed Mitchell’s face, and Whitfield started blinking and sweating furiously. He was wearing too many clothes – a shirt and a tie and a cardigan and a jacket – and suddenly Dennis realized, with a slight pang of disappointment, that Whitfield was going to be completely hopeless on television.

He kicked off with an attack on the emptiness of light entertainment, mostly routine Third Programme stuff that Dennis had anticipated. The blinking, however, had now been replaced by a wild-eyed stare, and the perspiration was beginning to turn his white shirt translucent.

‘I wonder,’ said Dennis carefully, ‘whether there’s a different way of looking at intelligence.’

Whitfield smiled patronizingly.

‘I’m sure there is, these days,’ he said. ‘I’m sure people who work in comedy have found a way of redrawing the boundaries so that they include themselves.’

‘You don’t think comedy can be intelligent?’

‘Some of it can, of course. The new satirical shows are very clever.’

‘But then, they’re written and performed by Cambridge graduates,’ said Dennis.

‘Exactly,’ said Whitfield. ‘Bright chaps.’

‘And what about Shakespeare?’ said Dennis. ‘Much Ado About Nothing and All’s Well That Ends Well and so on?’

‘Ah, I see,’ said Whitfield. ‘Jim and Barbara is Shakespeare, is it? Jolly good.’

‘Shakespeare made ordinary people laugh.’

‘ “Ordinary people”,’ said Whitfield. ‘The last refuge of the scoundrel.’

‘But what’s the difference?’

‘Much Ado About Nothing,’ said Vernon Whitfield, with all the relish of a man who’d lured his opponent into a fatal trap, ‘had its roots in the Italian Renaissance.’

‘Barbara (and Jim) has its roots in the golden age of BBC radio comedy.’

‘I’ll presume you’re being facetious and ignore that,’ said Whitfield.

‘I’m just pointing out that everything has roots,’ said Dennis.

‘Not in the Italian Renaissance,’ said Whitfield.

‘Well, no,’ said Dennis. ‘But you can trace a great deal of pornography back to the Italian Renaissance too.’

He had no idea whether this was true, but it sounded true, and that was good enough. Anyway, it produced a lot of blinking and sweating.

‘And, in any case, Much Ado About Nothing has Shakespeare’s glorious language.’

‘You’ve got me there,’ said Dennis. ‘Let’s hear some of it.’

Whitfield stared at him with panic in his eyes, like a dying Nazi in a war film. Dennis smiled politely. There were long moments of silence.

‘I wonder whether people laughed, not because of the glorious language, but because of Shakespeare’s technical skill,’ said Dennis. ‘The plays are extremely well constructed. And that’s where the intelligence of my writers goes. Into the construction, and the characterization, and –’

‘ “Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more”!’ Vernon Whitfield said suddenly. ‘ “Men were always deceitful”!’

‘Marvellous stuff,’ said Dennis. ‘They didn’t call him the Bard for nothing, did they?’

Robert Mitchell laughed.

‘ “Deceivers ever”!’ said Whitfield. ‘Not “always deceitful”.’

‘That’s better,’ said Dennis.

‘That’s not a very good bit,’ said Vernon Whitfield.

‘Perhaps we should move on,’ said Robert Mitchell, fearful of Whitfield’s long, sweat-drenched silences.

Dennis knew it was over.

‘I think you might have been on a show like this four hundred-odd years ago,’ said Dennis, ‘complaining about the morons laughing at Shakespeare.’

‘On television?’ scoffed Whitfield.

Dennis rolled his eyes, and Whitfield became red-faced with rage.

‘Don’t roll your eyes at me!’

‘What worries me,’ said Dennis, ‘is that Vernon Whitfield and his type don’t really like people enjoying themselves very much. I don’t think he likes people at all, in fact. It won’t be long before Vernon Whitfield starts banging on about eugenics.’