New

That cakeybiscuit thing really shook me up, I can tell you. It was on the way back from seeing Marty. I can't believe what happened there, either. I decided to tell him straight - no compromise on Eleanor Tight - she's an integral part of the whole Badge world and it would ruin the whole show to have Gargantua play her through completely unmerited nepotism. I'd really wound myself up for it - by the time I'd finished I was actually standing up and shaking from the impassioned delivery. Well, I have to say, Marty's response shocked me. He just calmly leaned forward in his chair and beckoned me to sit down again with his pudgy little girly hands and softly started talking about how hard it must be for me - how here he was with everything - a successful production business, critical acclaim, the 'perfect dame'. Then, sure, as soon as he started thinking about his mammoth Ukrainian moll again, his gaze drifted off wistfully into the distance and he started telling me about this thing where she inserts and apple but an orange comes out. "I mean, where does the apple go..?" he muttered dreamily to himself, staring with absent eyes out the window. I actually had to clap my hands together to bring back his attention.

Anyway, upshot was, he said that he'd tell his girlfriend that it was no dice and that we'd get a proper actress in and I'd have a material artistic contribution to the whole casting process. I couldn't believe it - it was like having the old Marty back again - he just seemed so human and accessible again. Limply, he held out a little white hand for me to shake and just as I reached forward he whipped it back, placing his thumb on his nose and wiggling his feminine fingers in the air in a silly insulting gesture. "Gotcha!" he said and immediately the closet doors opened and a camera and sound crew came spilling out.

They'd recorded the whole event. He was trialling a brand-new format for one of his shows. Can you believe that!? He stood there telling me how today's audience is just not interested in physical humiliation any more - they want mental anguish. He's just putting together a new format called 'Hurt Your Friend' where members of the public get to engage in long and elaborate (sometimes lasting months) psychological torture of their best friends in exchange for cash prizes.

Not only that, but the whole thing is structured to benefit from the new subsidies the government is offering for creating new jobs. He said that the way they'd done it was for each contestant to be technically 'employed' by a subsidiary of Parmesan Productions. There were some complications - in order to benefit from favourable tax treatment, each contestant-employee had to demonstrate that they had their clearly delineated work space. To do this, they were all getting a little rectangle of carpet which they could stand on while signing contracts. Marty was pretty excited about it all. He whipped out his own rectangle of carpet material and slapped it on his desk. Then he started banging it with his soft little fists and started saying that he was "making investments now and for the future and failure to do so would make it harder for us all in years to come."

"I will not stand idly by," he continued, "and let that happen," and with a final thump of his little square of carpet, "not on my swatch."