was one little girl with no mummy no daddy, no home and no legs. I’d bloody have her any time. Does that make me a patronizing Western imperialist who wants to deprive a child of its culture merely to satisfy my mawkish maternal needs? Probably, but I don’t care. If Sam I can’t have kids (oh God, I’m going teary again) I think I’ll try and work for a children’s charity. I sent £100 to War Child but didn’t tell Sam as we already have a charity covenant and have agreed not to respond to impulse appeals.
Dear Self,
I feel much better about the sperm test now.
I’ve decided that it’s actually politically offensive to get all worked up with fear and shame about something which is simply an accident of nature. Would I consider someone who is born with less than fully functioning legs or arms less of a man or woman for that? No, I damn well wouldn’t. So enough of this nonsense.
I’ll take my sperm result like a man and if it’s a poor one then so be it. If it turns out that the contents of my balls is all stew and no dumplings then that’s fine by me. I’ll simply shrug, c’est la vie style. In fact I’ll take pride in the way God made me.
‘I have runny spunk,’ I shall announce at dinner parties. ‘Does anyone have a problem with that?’
Nonetheless, despite not caring at all, I’m planning to go into a bit of training. Well, you want to do as well as possible, don’t you? I might as well give it my best shot, so to speak (quite funny that, must suggest it to one of our ruder comics). I’ve resolved therefore to cut out the booze for a few days and eat a lot of fruit. Also George told me that he’d heard that zinc was good, so I’ve bought a tub of five hundred tablets from Boots.
I’ve also got multivitamins, a crate of Energizer sports drink and an American book entitled The Testicular Workout . Having said all this, I wish to stress again that I’m not in the slightest bit concerned about my test result.
Turning once more to other matters, I did something a bit devilish at work today. I instigated a bit of tentative job exploration and on BBC time too. I wrote a letter to Simon ‘Tosser’ Tomkins, with whom I was at college. Old Tosser’s done very well of late, having practically cornered the market in supplying the BBC with programmes fronted by posh smart Alecs.
He and his partners have had a quite extraordinary run of success, producing quiz shows (fronted by posh smart Alecs), chat shows (fronted by posh smart Alecs) and endless travelogues (fronted by posh smart Alecs). All these shows, I have to say, have been pretty good, not least, I might add, because the BBC itself pioneered most of the formats on radio.
Anyway, Tosser recently floated his company on the stock market and it turned out that it’s worth seven million quid! Which really is a quite astonishing amount of money. And to think I once saw him shove four radishes up his arse at a May Ball. Blimey.
Anyway, I just sent him a friendly note, you know…
‘ Dear Tosser. The Beeb’s a bit crap these days or what? Too many shows full of yobs going on about how much they like football. I was thinking of putting myself about a bit. What do you think?’
I signed it ‘ Sam Bell, Executive Chief Commissioning Editor, BBC Worldwide ,’ which is actually a post I made up but I didn’t want old Tosser thinking I’m not a major player. Of course, being me, as I was putting the note into an envelope I began to worry about it. I suddenly felt all guilty and started to think that I might be burning bridges at the Beeb. Suppose my negative thinking is showing in my attitude? I wouldn’t wish to blow the credit I’ve built up at TV Centre, certainly not before I get a new job. So I also sent a note to the new Channel Controller asking if he’d like to come to dinner. I very much doubt he will, since as I believe I’ve mentioned he’s younger than me and also knows pop stars and people like that, but it’s nice to
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