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Spot
‘Hello George, thanks for coming along.
Please, take a seat.’
‘Always pleased to see you, John. You
and I go back to the start of the ‘Walters’.’
‘We certainly do. Twenty-five years on
the same radio soap. Who’d have thought we’d still be
broadcasting the same daily, radio drama serial after all these
years?’
‘What is it that you wanted to see me
about?’
‘It’s a bit of bad news, George.
We will have to write your part out of the show.’
‘But, you can’t...’
‘I’m sorry, George. You’ve
played Spot the dog brilliantly all these years. It’s just
that Jack Russells don’t live to be twenty-five. By rights
he should have passed-on ten years ago.’
‘But I’ll never be able to get
another job.’
‘There are lots of theatre companies
and ... there’s television.’
‘I’ve got no experience. I’ve
only said ‘Woof’, ‘Howl’, and ‘Grrrr’
all these years. I don’t think I could cope with a more
complex script.’
‘They need dogs on TV?’
‘I’m not a dog, John.’
‘Oh, of course.…sorry. After all
this time as director, listening to the recordings, I’ve
come to think of the characters in their roles.’
‘Couldn’t you bring another dog
into the plot? I could do a puppy...yip, yip, woof, woof, woof.’
‘Get up off the floor, George. Dogs
aren’t so popular among listeners these days.’
‘What about another pet?’
‘Like what?’
‘Meow?’
‘With the cut-backs at the BBC, I
might not be able to justify your £35,000 a year salary for
going ‘Meow’ once or twice every five or six episodes.’
‘What about the farm animals.....Mooooo.......Cluck,
Cluck.....Baaaaaaaa?’
‘You know that Eric does those, and,
anyway, Equity have strict rules about domestic animal
impersonators not mimicking livestock.’
‘Oh God...What am I going to do...?’
‘I’ve just had an idea.’
‘Yes?’
‘You know the village protest about
the new airport won’t succeed, and a runway will be built
across Oatfield Farm.’
‘Yes.’
‘Can you do a Jumbo Jet?’
‘Vrooooooomneeeeoooowwwwwscwooooofff.’
‘That’s pretty impressive, George.
And, with the grounding of Concorde, there won’t be any
pressure on you to do a sonic boom. What about smaller, propeller
driven aircraft?’
‘BrBrBrooooooomooomooommoommooommmoommoomm.’
‘Incredible, George. I was looking for
my seatbelt there for a minute.’
‘Can I be an aeroplane then, when Spot
dies?’
‘Why not? And that gives me another
idea.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Well, Spot has been a part of the
show for so long that death by natural causes seems a bit of an
anticlimax.’
‘What have you got in mind?’
‘Suppose that on the opening day of
the airport he ran onto the runway and was sucked into the air
intake of a jet engine?’
‘Millions would tune in for that. It
would be more emotional than Brian Aldridge’s baby.’
‘Are you up to it, George?’
‘Grrr..Hoowl..Woofwooff...Vrooooooomneeeeoooo..Wooff..Veromm.Sccchhhooff..HOWWWELLLL?OWWWELLLLLLlHOWWWWWWELLLLLLLLLL...Vooommmmmm......................’
‘Brilliant, George. Here’s to the
next twenty-five years.’
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