Men from the Boys. Tony Parsons

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СКАЧАТЬ want to kill your kids.’

      ‘Those bastards in Smart cars,’ Marty said, as he kept moving.

      ‘People, really,’ I said, calling after him. ‘Feeling angry at people. Any kind of rudeness, finger wagging or ignorance. And then maybe go to a bit of Spandau Ballet.’

      ‘I can do that,’ he said, and then he was gone.

      ‘Two minutes forty on and we’re back live,’ said Josh, the Oxford graduate who ran our errands – the BBC was full of them, all these Oxbridge double-firsts chasing up wayward mini-cabs – and I could hear the nerves in his voice. But I just nodded. I knew that Marty would be back just as Whitney was disappearing from Kevin Costner’s life forever. We were not new to this.

      Marty and I were back on radio now – a couple of old radio hams who had taken a beating on telly and crawled back to where we had begun. It happens to guys like us. In fact, I have often thought that it is the only thing that happens to guys like us. One day the telly ends. But we were making a go of it. A Clip Round the Ear was doing well – we had that glass ear awarded by our peers to prove it. Ratings were rising for a show that played baby boomer standards and boldly proclaimed that everything was getting worse.

      Music. Manners. Mankind.

      I watched Marty come out of the gents, clumsily fumbling with the buttons on his jeans – I know he was angry about there never being zips on jeans – and saw a couple of guests for the show next door do a double take. Since his golden years as the presenter of late-night, post-pub TV, he had put on a little weight and lost some of that famous carrot-topped thatch. But people still expected him to look as he did when he was interviewing Kurt Cobain.

      ‘What?’ he said.

      ‘Nothing,’ I said, and I felt an enormous pang of tenderness for him.

      Being on television is a lot like dying young. You stay fixed in the public imagination as that earlier incarnation. Someone who interviews the young and thin Simon Le Bon – they do not grow old as we grow old. But every TV show comes to an end. And, as Marty was always quick to point out, even the true greats – David Frost, Michael Parkinson, Jonathan Ross – have their wilderness years, the time spent working in Australia or getting rat-faced in the Groucho Club, waiting for the call to come again.

      Marty settled himself in front of the mic, and pulled on his headphones. I didn’t know if Marty – and by extension, his producer: me – would ever get that call. For every great who comes again there are a thousand half-forgotten faces who never do come again. As much as I loved him, I suspected that Marty Mann was more of a Simon Dee than a David Frost.

      ‘You are angry because you know how things should be,’ Marty was saying to his constituency, as he teed up Morrissey. ‘Anger comes with experience, anger comes with wisdom. This is A Clip Round the Ear saying embrace your anger, friends. Love your anger. It is proof that you are alive. And – how about a bit of English seaside melancholia: “Everyday Is Like Sunday”.’

      Then the two hours were up and we gathered our things and got ready to go home. That was a sign of the times. When we worked on The Marty Mann Show – when he was television’s Marty Mann – we always hung around for hours when we were off air, working our way through the wine, beer and cheese and onion crisps in our lavish green-room banquet, coming down off of that incredible rush you only get from live TV – even if you are behind the cameras. When we were doing The Marty Mann Show ten years ago, we could carouse in the green room until the milkman was on his way. But that was telly then and this was Radio Two now.

      Broadcasting House was a bit of a dump when it came to post-gig entertainment. The place did not encourage loitering, or hospitality, or lavish entertaining. There wasn’t a sausage roll in sight. You did your gig and then you buggered off. There was nothing there – just a couple of smelly sofas and some tragic vending machines.

      The green room. That was another thing that wasn’t as good as it used to be.

      

      Gina was waiting for me when I came out of work.

      Standing across the street from Broadcasting House, in the shadow of the Langham Hotel, just where the creamy calm of Portland Place curves down to the cheapo bustle of Oxford Circus.

      She looked more like herself now – or at least I could recognise the woman I had loved. Tall, radiant Gina. Loving someone is a bit like being on TV. A face gets locked in a memory vault, and it is a shock to see it has changed when you were not looking. We both took a step towards each other and there were these long awkward moments as the cars whizzed between us. Then I shouldered my bag and made it across.

      ‘I couldn’t remember if you were live or not,’ she said.

      ‘What?’

      ‘The show,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know if you recorded it earlier. Or if it really was ten till midnight.’

      I nodded. ‘A bit late for you, isn’t it?’

      ‘My body’s still on Tokyo time,’ she said. ‘Or somewhere between there and here.’ She attempted a smile. ‘I’m not sleeping much.’

      We stared at each other.

      ‘Hello, Harry.’

      ‘Gina.’

      We didn’t kiss. We went for coffee. I knew a Never Too Latte just off Carnaby Street that stayed open until two. She took a seat in the window and I went to the counter and ordered a cappuccino with extra chocolate for her and a double macchiato for myself. Then I had to take it back because she had stopped drinking coffee during her years in Tokyo and only drank tea now.

      ‘How well you know me,’ she said after I had persuaded some Lithuanian girl to exchange a coffee for tea. Was she that sharp when we were together? I don’t think so. She was another one who had got angrier with the years.

      ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Stupid of me not to read your mind.’

      And we took it from there.

      ‘Japan’s over,’ she said. ‘The economy is worse than here.’

      ‘Nowhere is worse than here,’ I said. ‘Ah, Gina. You could have called.’

      ‘Yes, I could have called. I could have phoned home and had to be polite to your second wife.’

      ‘She’s not my second wife,’ I said. ‘She’s my wife.’

       My first wife wasn’t listening.

      ‘Or I could have phoned your PA at work and asked her if you had a window for me next week. I could have done all of that but I didn’t, did I? And why should I?’ She leaned forward and smiled. ‘Because he’s my child just as much as he’s your child.’

      I stared at her, wondering if there ever came a point where that was simply no longer true.

      And I wondered if we had reached that point years ago.

      ‘What’s with the keep-fit routine?’ I said, changing the subject. She was in terrific shape.

      ‘It’s not a routine.’ She flexed her arms self-consciously. ‘I just want to look after СКАЧАТЬ