Read Online Situation Tragedy by Simon Brett - Free Book Online Page B

on at W.E.T.. I thought she might know of something coming up for me. The fact is, Charles, not to put too fine a point on it, I am out of a job. I’ve been out of a job now for five months. I’ve tried writing round all the companies, going to see people, using every contact I’ve ever made, and all of them lead to the same answer – nothing doing.’
    â€˜Couldn’t you go back to the Beeb?’
    â€˜No chance. They’re in as bad a state as anyone else. Worse. They’ve got no money and can’t think of taking on new staff. And if they did, I don’t think people who resigned three years ago at the age of fifty-four would be top of the list. The BBC is very paternalistic and looks after you very well, so long as you remain on the staff. But if you commit the unforgivable affront of resigning, well, you look after yourself, matey. It’s fair enough, but I’m afraid it means, in answer to your question, No, under no circumstances could I go back to the Beeb.’
    â€˜Something’ll come up,’ Charles offered meaninglessly.
    â€˜It’d better. Needless to say, I’ve screwed up the full pension I would have got if I’d stayed.’
    â€˜Have you got any savings?’
    Walter laughed shortly. ‘Never had many. By the time I’d sorted out the divorce and moved a couple of times . . . And then being out of work is bloody expensive. Trying to get jobs is, anyway. I mean, if you’re chatting up an old friend who happens to be a Programme Controller somewhere, then you take him out to the sort of lunch you would have taken him out to in the old days. Except of course in the old days, you would have had an expense account. When you’re paying with real money, boy, you notice the difference.’
    â€˜So Sadie . . .’ Charles steered the conversation back on to the course he required.
    â€˜Yes, Sadie was a last-ditch attempt. A contact. I thought she might know the scene at W.E.T.. Tell me if they’d got all the producer/directors they needed for the new stuff they were doing. I mean, I know they’ve got
Wragg and Bowen
coming up, and I worked with them at the BBC. And then there’s this series for the elderly. A real F.G., if ever I heard one.’
    â€˜F.G.?’
    â€˜Franchise-Grabber. You may have been aware, Charles, that all the ITV companies’ franchises run out in a year or so. And so suddenly all of them have started doing very worthy programmes – stuff for minorities, heavily subsidised operas, all kinds of noble enterprises that they wouldn’t normally do in a million years. It’s just so that they can show the IBA what public-spirited and responsible companies they are, and why they ought to continue to have their franchises and continue to make huge amounts of money from their usual run of crap.’
    This cynicism was unlike Walter, who had always been one of those people, like Peter Lipscombe, who found television enormously
exciting.
He read Charles’s reaction. ‘Well, I’m just sick of the whole bloody business. God, I wish I’d just stayed in the BBC and coasted quietly down to my pension. Even taken an early retirement. I don’t think I’d have any pride left about that sort of thing now. Have you any idea what it’s like going round to people all the time, begging them to employ you?’
    Charles shrugged. ‘I’m an actor.’
    â€˜Yes, of course, so you know all about it. But at least you’ve had practice. I find it’s a bit late in life for me to learn how to cope with it.’
    â€˜But Sadie,’ Charles insisted mildly, ‘couldn’t help?’
    â€˜Wouldn’t help certainly. Probably couldn’t either.’ He looked very doleful. ‘Oh, she was probably right.’
    â€˜What did she say?’
    â€˜That I was past it. Past everything, she said. Certainly washed up as a television