Screen Savers Page 2

  ‘Both, in fact; there are two variants. What we’re talking about here is a plug-in rechargeable, robotic partnership simulation, alternative humanoids whom the young people can adopt as leaders and role models.’

  ‘You mean like parents used to be? Brilliant idea,’ I said in a sudden burst of artificial conviction. ‘Ideal for a high achiever partnership in a double-income situation. Buy a couple of these simulated partners for the kids and the carers can devolve young people management responsibility to them, freeing up more time for income generation.’

  There was a silence on the other end of the line. I guessed that Mark had finally figured out that I was ripping the shit out of him. (That’s like taking the piss, only a lot less gentle.) Or maybe it was the other way around, and he guessed that he had been well and truly rumbled. Across the room, Prim and Lulu, our secretary, were staring at me, each of them just a touch glassy-eyed.

  ‘God!’ His voice was suddenly choked. ‘What a brilliant concept. We’ve written the story-board for the commercial already, but I’m sure we can work that theme in; subliminally, of course. It’s much too sensitive for us just to go balls-out with it.’

  I felt my eyes beginning to glaze over too. ‘Mark, can we get this conversation back on track, please?’

  ‘Yes, Oz, of course. I’m sorry; got a bit carried away there. Truly original creative thinking has that effect on me. Yes: the voice-over. Great news for you. Mr Barowitz, the CEO of Roxy Matrix, asked for you personally. Scots accents are very popular just now, but he didn’t know that. In fact, his wife, Ronnie, is a great fan of your wrestling programme, and she insists that you have exactly the right voice for the new commercial. And Mrs Barowitz has great influence over her husband.’

  ‘Let me guess, she’s a killer blonde and thirty years younger than him.’

  ‘Maybe twenty years, but you’ve got the principle right. She’s a power in the business. Mind you we didn’t just roll over and do what we were told. We at RHB and F are true professional advisers. We watched a couple of your shows before we accepted her idea. She’s dead right, you know; your voice and your industry persona are just right for the product. They’re called Rick and Ronnie Power, by the way.’

  ‘Mr Barowitz’ name wouldn’t be Richard, would it?’

  ‘How did you guess that?’

  ‘It just came to me. And how did you come to me? How did you get my number?’ There was an edge to my question, I still wasn’t anything like convinced by Mr Webber. I thought I detected a strong whiff of bullshit coming down the line.

  ‘I called the GWA. I spoke to Mr Matthews. He’s one of the wrestlers, isn’t he? He gave it to me.’ I made a mental note to have a word with Liam.

  ‘Look, as you said, let’s cut to the chase here. We’d like you to do the ad. Your part will take a couple of days; we’ll fly you down, and put you up in the Park Lane Hilton . . .’

  I decided to play it all the way. ‘Not me, Mark, us. My partner comes too.’

  ‘No problem. Now Oz, you’re not an Equity member, are you. I couldn’t find you on their listing. We have a house rule here that we only use Equity people; one of our directors was a member of the Cabinet and he wants to get back in, and there are still a few dinosaurs in our industry, so we don’t want to compromise him by landing him in the middle of a public union row.’ The words came tumbling out. ‘I can fix that, though. The work you’ve been doing on television qualifies you for membership, and I have a contact in the Equity office. I’ll place you with an agent too; we like to go through them. It’ll take no time at all.’

  Mr Webber was beginning to lose his audience; the whiff in my nostrils was getting stronger.

  ‘As to the fee, I’ve looked at the budget and we can squeeze it up to fifteen.’

  ‘Fifteen?’ I repeated, a yawn in my voice.

  ‘Yes, fifteen thousand. Sylvester Burr, your agent, normally takes twenty per cent but, in the circs, I’ll beat him down to ten.’

  The phone almost slipped out of my hand. I took a deep breath. ‘I see.’

  There was a silence. ‘Okay,’ said Webber, at last. ‘We’ll pay Burr’s commission this time. That’ll leave you with fifteen clear. What d’you say, Oz?’

  I did some quick thinking. ‘I’ll tell you what I say. Put it in writing inside forty-eight hours. No faxes; letter-head, signature in blood, all that stuff.’ I gave him the office address.

  ‘And you’ll do it?’ He sounded genuinely excited.

  ‘If it checks out.’ I started to hang up then changed my mind. ‘By the way, Mark,’ I added, ‘if Detective Inspector Mike Dylan is behind all this, tell him from me that I’ll have his nuts for desk ornaments . . . they’d be too small for paperweights.’

  ‘Well?’ The question exploded from Prim, as I cradled the phone, and doubled over in pent-up laughter. ‘What the hell was all that about?’

  When I could control myself, I told her. ‘You’re right,’ she agreed, at once. ‘It’s got Dylan’s stamp all over it. He probably recruited a young constable with a posh voice and gave him a script.’

  ‘There’s one way to find out.’ I picked up the phone and called the GWA office, on the west side of the city. It was mid-morning, so I knew that the superstars would be hard at work. The switchboard operator traced Liam Matthews in less than three minutes.

  ‘Mornin’ Oz, me ould lad,’ he drawled in his accentuated Oirish, slightly out of breath from his training session. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Did you take a call a while back from a guy, looking for me, from an advertising agency called RHB and F or some such?’

  ‘Sure, and I did. Christ was he keen! What was up? Have you got his sister pregnant or something.’

  ‘Not as far as I know.’ Interesting. If Mark Webber was a Dylan stooge, he’d wouldn’t have needed to call the GWA for my number.

  ‘He seemed harmless to me, Oz,’ said Liam. ‘I wouldn’t have given him your number otherwise. No problem, is there?’

  ‘Not if he checks out. In fact, if he does, I’ll buy you a large drink.’

  It checked out less than twenty-four hours later, when a special delivery letter arrived at the office, on the RHB and F letter heading, setting out the terms of my proposed engagement and signed not by Webber, but by the former Cabinet Minister himself. At that point, Prim and I began to believe. I replied, accepting of course, by return of post.

  The letter from Equity, inviting me to join, didn’t arrive until the next day. ‘You . . .’ Prim exclaimed, astonished. I had forgotten to mention that part of my conversation with the ad lad. ‘An Equity member? You’ve never done a day’s acting in your life.’

  ‘Maybe not, but this is a letter from Equity and it is offering me full membership.’ I scratched my chin. ‘I think it’s a condition of employment, so I’d better sign up.’ And that is how I came to be a member of the same profession as Dawn and her husband, the fourth most famous human on the planet.

  We did the shoot two weeks later. I was given a week to learn my lines; which, as I saw at once, had been written in the same style as my standard ring announcements. The main differences were that I was off camera and that the money was fifteen times as good . . . not that I had ever complained about the grand per weekend, plus expenses, that Everett paid me.

  Mark Webber turned out to be a tall, gangling young man in a suit, a silk kipper tie printed with a piece of impressionist art, rimless spectacles, and a pin through his eyebrow: a designer ad-man if ever there was one. He knew his way around the studio, all the same, and knew how to flatter the director of the epic, Ismael Stormonth, a perfectionist with a strong egomaniac streak. If I was on fifteen grand, I wondered what his take was.

  My highly paid gig was similar to my GWA role, in that I spent most of the time hanging around, building myself up for my big moment and watching the professionals, in this case the lighting people and the camera person, do their highly skilled stuff. Even after a year, I still thought of myself as an amateur in the tel
evision business.

  At the end of the first day, I did a first run through of the script, perfecting my delivery so that it was in synch with the rough-cut of the film footage. The second day was spent in the edit suite doing voice-over after voice-over until at last, not just the prickly Ismael, but Richard and Ronnie Barowitz agreed that we couldn’t get it any better. Mark told me that it was unusual for the client to attend a shoot, but said that the Barowitzes had insisted.

  As for Ronnie, she was much as I had expected, thirty-something, blonde, slightly over-stuffed, a former small-time model who probably had the wrong shape at the wrong time. It had been good enough to catch her toy maker, though. Mr Barowitz, king of Roxy Matrix, was a solemn little man who rarely said a word, other than ‘Yes dear.’

  ‘Oz, that was just wonderful,’ she oozed at me as we prepared to strike camp. ‘I knew I was right in going for you.’

  ‘I’m glad it worked out, Ronnie,’ I said. ‘I hope the product does as well as you expect.’

  ‘It will, don’t you worry. Richard is never wrong. Tell me,’ she went on, not giving me a chance to muse on the wee man’s infallibility. ‘Will your wrestling show be on in the south soon?’

  ‘Yes. We’ve got a pay-per-view event in the London Arena in a couple of months or so. I’ll send you a couple of tickets. Hope you can come; we’ve got an Irish bloke on the team who’d just love to meet you.’

  Prim and I enjoyed a nice couple of nights in London, courtesy of RHB and F, and that, I thought, would be it. But I always have been wrong more often than I’ve been right. Less than a week later I was in the office with Lulu, Prim being out on an interview, when the phone rang again.

  ‘It’s a Mr Burr,’ said the wee one, her hand pressed over the mouthpiece. ‘Sounds English.’

  I shrugged and took the call. ‘Oz,’ an exuberant voice exclaimed, ‘this is Sly.’

  ‘Too bloody right it is,’ I answered, conversationally. ‘Who the hell are you?’

  ‘Sly. Sylvester Burr, your agent . . . remember?’

  My eyebrows skidded to a halt halfway up my forehead. ‘Barely,’ I acknowledged, recalling a wee, heavily-bangled man, who had looked in briefly during the second day of the shoot. ‘What can I do for you, Sly? Hasn’t Mark Webber paid your commission?’

  ‘Course he has, son. It’d be more than his job was worth to hold out on me. No, this has got nothing to do with that young ponce. I’ve landed another job for you; another Soho voice-over, two days, week after next. The client’s Arkaloid Sports, one of the world’s major players in leisure wear. I can’t get you fifteen this time though; ten’s their top whack. That’s two for me, eight for you.’

  ‘Plus expenses for Prim and me.’

  ‘I don’t know if they’ll cover your girlfriend.’

  ‘They’d better not bloody try. No, I just want them to pay for her flight and hotel. That’s the deal. Oh yes, and I can only work Mondays to Thursdays. I’m committed the other three days.’

  ‘I’ll tell them; they’ll roll over for it. The dates ain’t a problem either.’ He paused. ‘You’re a quick learner, my boy. You’re not Jewish, are you?’

  ‘No, Sly, religion’s got nothing to do with it. The fact is that Prim and I have this disease; whenever we’re together money just seems to stick to us.’

  ‘Ah, but that’s the same as being Jewish,’ Burr laughed. ‘Whatever, I’ll be seeing you.’

  He wasn’t wrong; even before we recorded the second voice-over, he had come back with a third. In no time at all, I was doing two, sometimes three a month, never for less than five thousand, less commission, plus expenses. Without any conscious effort, I had a third career.

  Chapter 3

  ‘They pay you to do that, mate?’

  There was an odd look in Miles’ eye as he gazed across at me. On the television screen the last image of my latest commercial was locked in freeze frame. I nodded. ‘I’m afraid they do. Not the sort of bucks that you and Dawn are into, but decent enough for humble people like Prim and me.’

  A sudden spluttering exploded on my right; the sound of a man choking on a mouthful of lager. Detective Inspector Mike Dylan and his girlfriend, Susie Gantry, had joined us for a drink before dinner at Rogano. ‘Humble!’ he squawked, when he could. ‘You two? Brigands, the pair of you, lunatics and now, bloody millionaires, God help me.’

  I smiled at him, as he wiped a trickle of beer from his chin. ‘Have you ever thought that God might be helping all of the rest of us here, Michael, but that he might have a different agenda for you? Let’s face it, you’re the only person in this room who isn’t nouveau fucking riche.’

  I stopped sparing Mike’s feelings on the very day I met him. It was true, though, Susie had surprised the world by steering her late father’s property and construction group though a major crisis, and securing in the process her own very healthy financial position. (Actually Susie’s Dad, the legendary Jack Gantry, Lord Provost of Glasgow, wasn’t late, not in the deceased sense of the word. It was just that he hadn’t shown up anywhere for a while.) However it was true also that Dylan would have walked out on her before he would have lived off her. He was fiercely independent and insisted on paying her rent, and on chipping in his half of their holiday bookings.

  He and I had survived a couple of adventures, as colleagues and as adversaries; in spite of it all, he had become, after Prim, my best friend. He grinned at me, over the top of his Carlsberg can, and began to sing, very badly, ‘He was poor but he was honest . . .’

  ‘And your Master of Ceremonies gig?’ Dawn asked me, chuckling at the same time at the man who had wanted, once upon a time, to lock her up for murder. ‘That’s an earner too?’

  ‘Oh yes, my dear; and the seed from which all the other earners have grown. I’ve had offers there too. A big boxing promoter asked me a few months back if I would announce his shows. I turned him down, though. It just didn’t sound right.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I didn’t like the feel of things. I had nothing against the man himself, but some of the people around him made my flesh creep. Anyway, I decided that my first loyalty as a sports announcer will always lie with Everett Davis and the GWA.’

  ‘Do you think we could find a part for Everett in a movie, Miles?’ Dawn suggested. ‘He sounds larger than life.’

  I had to laugh at that. ‘He is larger than life . . . life as we know it, Captain, that is. You write a part for a seven foot, two inch black man, and he’ll be right for it . . . but no one would ever believe it.’

  Miles surprised me by nodding, vehemently. ‘Oz is right. There are a few cast-iron truths in our business, and one is that wrestlers, as actors, invariably suck.’ He paused, then looked at me, unsmiling. ‘On the other hand, it would be pretty easy to write a part for a six foot, thirtyish Scotsman. Dawn and I are pretty well down the road in planning a project; it’s going to be set in Scotland. In fact, we’ve started shooting some of the preliminary scenes already.

  ‘I’m directing and leading as usual, and Dawn’s co-starring; we’re pretty well all cast, but there’s one part that’s been giving us trouble; you fit the profile pretty well. Since you are Equity-entitled, would you like to read for it?’

  I’m pretty good at sussing out when my chain’s being pulled. I grinned back at him. ‘No way am I wrapping myself in scabby tartan and painting my arse blue . . . not for you, not for no one.’

  Miles shook his head; he still didn’t smile. ‘Don’t worry, it isn’t costume, it’s a contemporary thriller. The part we’re trying to fill doesn’t have much on-camera dialogue, but the story’s told in flashback, and he’s the narrator. I like your voice, Oz. It’s distinctively Scottish, but it’s very clear; American audiences will understand what you’re saying.

  ‘I’m serious, mate.’

  I looked at Prim; a wide, incredulous grin was fixed on her face.

  ‘Tell you what, Miles,’ I said, deadpan.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sp
eak to my agent.’

  Chapter 4

  He did. Two days later we shot a screen test in a private studio in Edinburgh, hired in Prim’s name to avoid any possibility of a premature leak to the Evening News or anyone else.

  Next day, Sly agreed terms; I had warned him not to haggle, but he did anyway. He can’t help himself; it’s a cultural thing. Three days afterwards, a press release on my signing hit some of the Scottish tabloid press. ‘Christ,’ I exclaimed to Prim across the breakfast bar, ‘they’re saying I’m a bloody movie star.’

  Filming my scenes was still weeks away, so Prim and I decided to put any thought of it from our minds, and carry on in the meantime with what passed for us as a normal life. Our earlier experience of eating lotuses in Spain had taught us that we are not good at sitting on our backsides watching the world go by, so when the Lottery pointed its great big finger at us, we decided straight away that it would not affect our working routines.

  In truth, my weekend job, and my growing Sly Burr business were making it increasingly difficult for me to concentrate on interviewing punters in their offices, homes, and occasionally in their police cells. They were also making it increasingly boring. However that was what Prim and I had chosen, together, to do, so I felt that I had to pull my weight, that I could hardly back out and leave it all to her.

  Nevertheless, I felt my ticker give a small jump of pleasure when Mike Dylan called me one Tuesday morning as I was grafting away in Mitchell Lane. ‘Have you still got your deer-stalker hat and your pipe?’ he asked. He was trying to sound conspiratorially casual, but I thought that I picked up a nervous undercurrent in his voice.

  ‘My Sherlock Holmes kit, you mean? Aye, it’s still around somewhere. I’m a bit rusty on the violin though.’ Prim was out, or I might have been a bit more guarded. I wasn’t sure that she would have been too happy about Mike’s call.

  ‘Don’t bring that, for Christ’s sake. Far too arty for the Horseshoe. There’s something I need to talk to you about. Can you meet me there at lunchtime, say one o’clock?’