Slant

Yo, ma' cru,

Word up.

It's becoming clear that I just don't seem to be getting anywhere with Marty on 'Terry Badge, PI' and all I came away with from Channel 4 was the ridiculous concept of 'Tina Flange, Lady Lawyer', a few Custard Creams and a chocolate Hobnob.

So, I submitted 'Badge' to the BBC via their Radio 4 script competition - and got a letter back saying they were interested. I phoned the number they supplied and was put through to a lovely woman named Rosie Hoal-Riemer. I must admit I thought I'd dialled the wrong number when she cheerily announced her name at the other end, thinking it was some kind of personal services business I'd got.

Aaaanyway, she was very nice and friendly and enthusiastic - and had a terribly posh accent and kept quoting Latin. She told me she loved the whole 'Badge' concept - she loved the energy and verve - she loved the sweeping eclectic allegory, she loved the idea of the humble-rooted hero...

"Aahh... potest ex casa magnus vir exire," she said.

"What?" I said.

"Ooh! Denuone latine loquebar? Me ineptum. Interdum modo elabitur," she tinkled.

Well, just when things were going so swimmingly, she suggested making a couple of "teensy-weensy changelets". First of all, Terry becomes Thomas Bufheiney - an uneducated but sensitive fine furniture restorer and Eleanor Tight becomes Lady Edwina Chafingly-Drighchuff, Thomas' landed landlady. Yeah, I know! But - get this - the worst of it is that Terry, or rather Thomas, doesn't do any crime solving at all - with or without complex nonlinear mathematics. Lady Edwina does all the sleuthing, cracking the crimes by referencing precedent analogs in the worlds of classical Greek and Latin literature! All that's left for Thomas is to come to the aid of the scholarly Lady Edwina in her lapses of peril with his "strong artisanal arms" - to rescue her delicate porcelain self "roughly and with vigour", in fact.

"Achally, maybe we should call her Wosie," Ms. Hoal-Riemer then mused, "but the important thing is wuffly and vigorwussly, yah?"

Well, by this time old Rosie Hoal sounded somewhat distracted and started breathing heavily and muttering to herself excitedly something about masterful grasping and tool-belts, so I thanked her for her time and hung up. I mean - can't they see it's the perfect formula already? Why do they want to muss up the artistic integrity of it? I don't know - it seems crazy sometimes. You'd have to make it up if it weren't true. Oh well, keep trying, I guess.

Lung tahm respec', yeah,
Lay'uhz