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Authors: Eric Ambler
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What the programmer had failed to understand, and I in my ignorance of the medium had failed to perceive, was that the sarcasms with which I had assailed the moderator of the talk show had merely been my last-ditch desperate response to a chattering, maddening imbecile who didn’t know that ‘literary’ and ‘literacy’ are words with different meanings. The trouble with
First of the Week
was that none of the men and women I interviewed was an imbecile, all had been interviewed many times before by radio and TV people who really knew their jobs and most were practised debaters who could run rings around me. The fact that their arguments were very often specious and their supporting evidence plainly dreamed up on the spur of the moment seemed never to matter. They always scored. None of my experience with politicians had prepared me for that sort of rough-and-tumble and my wild attempts to assert myself were brushed aside with careless ease. They were as used to swatting hecklers as they were to scoring phony points.
After the first three shows had been taped, the producer held an inquest. ‘Bob,’ he said, ‘you’re letting these guys walk all over you. You’re letting them come on strong and stay that way. You’ve been fully briefed. Most of these people are crooks and at least a couple of them are heading for perjury indictments. You know things they don’t want anyone else to hear. You’ve got to get in there and catch them off balance, put them on the defensive. We know what’s going to sell this show – plenty of blood on the floor. Right? But let’s make sure it’s their blood, not yours. Okay, killer?’
But it never was okay. I was trying to do a job for which I had no talent, and all the clever editing that was later done couldn’t conceal the fact. What you saw was a series of affable politicians humouring an ill-tempered and at times impertinent interviewer who never seemed to have any facts to back up the irresponsible allegations he was making. The politicians all came out looking good. The interviewer, of whom you saw less as time went on, tended to come out looking either petulant or sheepish. The blood on the floor was always mine and I supplied pints of it.
I didn’t waste time wondering how Zander-Luccio could have seen any of those interviews – if he could recruit bomb-makers in Miami he could, presumably, watch tapes of American network television – but there was no escaping the likeliest reason for his interest in them. My incompetence as a TV interviewer could very well have appealed to someone thinking of hiring a collaborator dim-witted enough to be used later as a scapegoat.
I heard a knock on the sitting-room door and then the sound of the door opening. A voice said, ‘Prego,’ and something bumped. I gathered that my bags were being brought in. I was in the bathroom drying my hands and admiring the veining of the marble around the washbasin, so I called through, ‘In camera da letto, per favore,’ hoping to convey that I wanted the bags brought into the bedroom. When there was no answer, I put the towel down, picked up my jacket which had in it the Italian money I would need forthe tip and went through into the sitting room.
There, in addition to my bags stacked on a porter’s trolley, stood a big hotel linen wagon and two persons in porters’ work-coats with the hotel name and crest embroidered on them. The pair could have been Italian but did not look like hotel porters. One was a slim, smiling young man, the other a husky teenage girl. A third person was locking the door to the corridor on the inside. She was tall, dark, and strikingly handsome. As she turned away from the door I saw that she was pointing a revolver at me. With the gun and in her unisex black sweater-and-pants outfit she looked like the lead character in a comic strip to be called SUPERPERSON .
‘Good evening, Mr Halliday.’ She
What the programmer had failed to understand, and I in my ignorance of the medium had failed to perceive, was that the sarcasms with which I had assailed the moderator of the talk show had merely been my last-ditch desperate response to a chattering, maddening imbecile who didn’t know that ‘literary’ and ‘literacy’ are words with different meanings. The trouble with
First of the Week
was that none of the men and women I interviewed was an imbecile, all had been interviewed many times before by radio and TV people who really knew their jobs and most were practised debaters who could run rings around me. The fact that their arguments were very often specious and their supporting evidence plainly dreamed up on the spur of the moment seemed never to matter. They always scored. None of my experience with politicians had prepared me for that sort of rough-and-tumble and my wild attempts to assert myself were brushed aside with careless ease. They were as used to swatting hecklers as they were to scoring phony points.
After the first three shows had been taped, the producer held an inquest. ‘Bob,’ he said, ‘you’re letting these guys walk all over you. You’re letting them come on strong and stay that way. You’ve been fully briefed. Most of these people are crooks and at least a couple of them are heading for perjury indictments. You know things they don’t want anyone else to hear. You’ve got to get in there and catch them off balance, put them on the defensive. We know what’s going to sell this show – plenty of blood on the floor. Right? But let’s make sure it’s their blood, not yours. Okay, killer?’
But it never was okay. I was trying to do a job for which I had no talent, and all the clever editing that was later done couldn’t conceal the fact. What you saw was a series of affable politicians humouring an ill-tempered and at times impertinent interviewer who never seemed to have any facts to back up the irresponsible allegations he was making. The politicians all came out looking good. The interviewer, of whom you saw less as time went on, tended to come out looking either petulant or sheepish. The blood on the floor was always mine and I supplied pints of it.
I didn’t waste time wondering how Zander-Luccio could have seen any of those interviews – if he could recruit bomb-makers in Miami he could, presumably, watch tapes of American network television – but there was no escaping the likeliest reason for his interest in them. My incompetence as a TV interviewer could very well have appealed to someone thinking of hiring a collaborator dim-witted enough to be used later as a scapegoat.
I heard a knock on the sitting-room door and then the sound of the door opening. A voice said, ‘Prego,’ and something bumped. I gathered that my bags were being brought in. I was in the bathroom drying my hands and admiring the veining of the marble around the washbasin, so I called through, ‘In camera da letto, per favore,’ hoping to convey that I wanted the bags brought into the bedroom. When there was no answer, I put the towel down, picked up my jacket which had in it the Italian money I would need forthe tip and went through into the sitting room.
There, in addition to my bags stacked on a porter’s trolley, stood a big hotel linen wagon and two persons in porters’ work-coats with the hotel name and crest embroidered on them. The pair could have been Italian but did not look like hotel porters. One was a slim, smiling young man, the other a husky teenage girl. A third person was locking the door to the corridor on the inside. She was tall, dark, and strikingly handsome. As she turned away from the door I saw that she was pointing a revolver at me. With the gun and in her unisex black sweater-and-pants outfit she looked like the lead character in a comic strip to be called SUPERPERSON .
‘Good evening, Mr Halliday.’ She
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