Copyright & Information

Doctor On The Ball

 

First published in 1985

© Richard Gordon; House of Stratus 1985-2012

 

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

 

The right of Richard Gordon to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

 

This edition published in 2012 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

 

Typeset by House of Stratus.

 

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

 

 

This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.

Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

 

 

www.houseofstratus.com

About the Author

 

Richard Gordon, real name Dr. Gordon Stanley Ostlere, was born in England on 15 September 1921. He is best-known for his hilarious ‘Doctor’ books. Himself a qualified doctor, he worked as an anaesthetist at the famous St. Bartholomew’s Hospital (where he was also a medical student) and later as a ship’s surgeon, before leaving medical practice in 1952 to take up writing full time. Many of his books are based on his own true experiences in the medical profession and are all told with the wry wit and candid humour that have become his hallmark.

In all, there are eighteen titles in the Doctor Series, with further comic writings in another seven volumes, including ‘Great Medical Disasters’ and ‘Great Medical Mysteries’, plus more serious works concerning the lives of medical practitioners.

He has also published several technical books under his own name, mainly concerned with anaesthetics for both students and patients. Additionally, he has written on gardening, fishing and cricket and was also a regular contributor to Punch magazine. His ‘Private Lives’ series, taking in Dr. Crippen, Jack the Ripper and Florence Nightingale, has been widely acclaimed.

The enormous success of Doctor in the House, first published in the 1950’s, startled its author. It was written whilst he was a surgeon aboard a cargo ship, prior to a spell as an academic anaesthetist at Oxford. His only previous literary experience had been confined to work as an assistant editor of the British Medical Journal. There was, perhaps, a foretaste of things to come whilst working on the Journal as the then editor, finding Gordon somewhat jokey, put him in charge of the obituaries!

The film of Doctor in the House uniquely recovered its production costs whilst still showing at the cinema in London’s West End where it had been premiered. This endeared him to the powerful Rank Organisation who made eight films altogether of his works, which were followed by a then record-breaking TV series, and further stage productions.

Richard Gordon’s books have been translated into twenty languages.

He married a doctor and they had four children, two of whom became house surgeons. He now lives in London.

 

1

For twenty-five years have I practised in Churchford, a pleasant and prosperous old market town in Kent, now populated largely by middle-class commuters obsessed with their weight. I have steadfastly observed them in the nude, wrestled with their indigestion, insomnia, allergies, phobias, depressions, bronchitis, sexual fantasies and aversion to relatives. I have prescribed sufficient tranquillizers to soothe the tormented devils of Hell, enough laxatives to move the bowels of the earth, and have spread with the pill more carefree enjoyment than Horizon Holidays.

I started single-handed from the Victorian villa where we live, the medical equivalent of the corner shopkeeper or jobbing builder. Now I have an architect-designed surgery and three partners to share the pains of my profession, which grotesquely combines the servitude of a lackey with the authority of a saint, the tenderness of a bride with the steeliness of an assassin, scholarship with squalor, sorcery with science, and handicraft with hocus-pocus.

After a quarter of a century, I am often bored with it. Patients are puzzled or shocked by this admission. But any customer, criminal, case, or confessor becomes much like another to the man who makes his livelihood disposing of him.

Luckily, the doctor enjoys one daily stimulant. What fascinating human conundrum might sit itself next on the consulting-room chair?

I have encountered some amazing cases, which I meant to write up for the education of my fellow-doctors in the learned journals, if only a lifetime of general practice had left me the time to do anything…

One bright, frosty January morning, spryly stepped into my custard-coloured consulting room Ernie Partridge, from Mann’s Estate.

Or rather, Nigel Vaughan, the middle-aged actor who plays him in the TV serial about an estate created on the splendid principles of social engineering, which means the poor being obliged to live in unhomely flats tolerable only with the luxuries of the rich. The social mixture, polarizing like iron filings under a magnet, is irresistible to the class-obsessed British, who watch each week by countless millions.

Everyone is fascinated to see a famous actor close to, though they are generally as unremarkable out of action as performing seals. Nigel Vaughan was short, pink, plump, neatly prosperous in tweed jacket, canary pullover and suede boots. He differed from any commuting stockbroker at a weekend only by the lovely hair-do.

He was suffering from bellyache.

I began the well-worn clinical catechism. Where was the pain? Under the ribs, doctor. Severe? Oh, like a vice! Related to meals? Difficult to say, doctor, meals were irregular, the show’s running through a bad patch. You see, we have rehearsals all week, shooting before a studio audience on Saturday night, and it goes out the next Tuesday. I asked, Had he any personal worries? He burst into tears.

‘Dr Gordon,’ he exclaimed, ‘I am going to die.’

‘Oh, tut tut,’ I murmured soothingly. ‘Oh, come, come. We mustn’t jump to gloomy conclusions, must we?’

‘But I am, doctor,’ he insisted miserably. ‘On January the thirty-first, to be exact.’

I wondered how the hell he knew, but said comfortingly, ‘We haven’t even made the diagnosis yet, have we? Lots of people suffer digestive trouble and live for years and years. It’s the fifth commonest complaint family doctors see,’ I consoled him. ‘It comes between wax in the ears and backache. There’s statistics to prove it.’

‘But it’s in the script, doctor,’ he explained despairingly. ‘They’re writing me out. I’ve already been taken poorly. It was taped last Saturday, and it’s on the air at seven thirty tonight. Next week, I’m worse. The week after I’m terrible. I haven’t a chance. I’ve read the lines. I have only four more episodes to live.’ He blew his nose on a tissue.

I frowned.

I have reached the age when my hairline can recede no farther, if my waistline enjoys infinite possibilities of advancement. My wife Sandra tuts as she untucks the seams of my favourite brown tweed suit, which she claims is more appropriate for the butts than the bedside. The cells of my brain have meanwhile been steadily degenerating at the rate of a million a week. Or perhaps day. Or possibly hour. So many have gone, I cannot remember. Its grip has lost its forceps’ precision.

I slid my half-moons down my nose and stared at Nigel Vaughan. He stared back with the touching expression of patients towards their government-sponsored ministering angel – I am said by the more imaginative ones to resemble a cherub gone to seed.

‘Now, wait a minute–’ I sieved my thoughts. ‘Let’s get this straight. Look, Ernie Partridge is a terminal case, OK? And rotten luck to the poor fellow. But there is absolutely no reason for Nigel Vaughan to follow Ernie Partridge into an early grave,’ I indicated, ‘unless you are taking your profession with undue seriousness.’

He sat slowly shaking his head. ‘It’s all very well, you putting it like that, doctor. But I’ve been having these nasty pains and feeling utterly wretched since Hal Tibbs – that’s our producer – revealed last month that Ernie was suffering from a fatal illness. Of course, Hal broke the news gently,’ he conceded. ‘He’s a lovely man really. Pity he’s such a bastard over the money.’

‘But that’s Ernie–’

Nigel Vaughan gulped. ‘Hal took me out to lunch. He said he’d hardly the heart to tell me. They were all going to miss me terribly, it was just as if one of his own family had the skids on. I’ll never forget it, as long as I live.’

‘But you are Mr Vaughan–’

Suddenly he squared his shoulders, looked like the man between the wall and the firing squad. Actors can change their personality as easily as shuffling cards. ‘I took the terrible news on the chin. I just said, If it’s to be, Hal me old darling, it’s to be. None of us can go on for ever. One day the very show itself may come to an end.’

‘The patient is Mr Partridge–’

‘Though God knows how I shall break it to the wife, I told him. Then Hal put down his balloon glass of brandy and took both my hands in his. It was a lovely gesture. As I often say, it takes a personal tragedy to show who your real friends are.’

‘Who–’

‘Hal advised me to set my affairs in order. No point in jibbing at the inevitable, is there? I phoned my agent that very afternoon. It’s nice to know I’m leaving behind such wonderful people.’

He jumped. I had banged the desk.

‘Who does not exist!’

‘I know, I know,’ he admitted wearily. ‘But Ernie and Nigel have been one and the same bloke over ten years. When I go opening fêtes and that, I’m invited as Ernie Partridge. Everyone wants Ernie Partridge’s autograph, not mine. It’s not me nabbed for speeding in the papers, it’s Ernie Partridge. This wasn’t my Life, it was Ernie Partridge’s. At that garden party in Buckingham Palace, the Queen was being gracious to Ernie Partridge. In pubs, people call me Ernie and ask after everyone in the show – not the cast, the real people, but the characters they’re paid to perform. When the wife goes shopping, they call her Mrs Partridge and say how wonderful it must be having such a steady, loving hubby.’

He fell silent. I murmured something about the mysterious effect of mind on body. He asked sombrely, ‘Do you know what a Doppelgänger is, doctor?’

‘Yes, the ghost of someone who’s still living.’

He nodded disconsolately. ‘It can appear to other people while you’re still walking about. Creepy. My trouble is not knowing exactly who’s the spook – me or Ernie.’

‘If you’ll take off your jacket,’ I directed, ‘I’ll examine both of you.’

Nothing abnormal.

Buttoning up his check shirt, Nigel Vaughan observed whimsically, ‘You know, doctor, I’ve always had a longing to play Hamlet. I suppose most of us have in the profession, at one time or another. But I’ve had to take the parts that come along – “For we that live to please, must please to live,” eh? Maybe you think I’m a bit past it? But the great Beerbohm Tree played Hamlet at the Haymarket when he was over forty.’ He sighed. ‘Well, that’s another ambition I’ve got to forget.’

I pointed out, ‘But once you’ve escaped from the thespian treadmill of Mann’s Estate, you’ll be free to play Hamlet or Peter Pan or Charley’s Aunt or whoever you feel like.’

His face lightened. ‘So I will! It’s somehow difficult to believe in life after Ernie’s death.’

‘Though I expect you’d run into the same trouble playing the Bard,’ I pointed out. ‘Most of his characters seem to exit on the point of a sword.’

I prescribed an antacid and warned him off chips and booze.

I could not observe the onset of Ernie Partridge’s fatal illness that evening, through a meeting on GP–hospital relations at the Churchford General. I have complained for years that the consultants’ gloriously trailed clouds of registrars and housemen only befog the GP about who is treating his patient. The surgery is efficient, but anonymous, like supermarket butchery. Perhaps communications will improve now my daughter Jilly is a surgical registrar there. (Against my advice. Hers is a forlorn career, poor dear. Despite the feminist explosion in the medical profession, surgery in the late twentieth century remains as predominantly a male activity as duelling in the early nineteenth.) She seems welcome at the General. Jilly is like her mother was, tall, blonde, with crisp features, and inclined to be bossy.

I thought deeply all week of Nigel Vaughan’s case. Actors’ emotions are their stock-in-trade, like the sportsman’s eye or the athlete’s wind. It is a strange job which demands a man memorize a conversation then deliver it in funny clothes as though passionate in every word. The actor who plays Othello must feel sulphurously jealous, Henry V enviably brave and Romeo dreadfully randy. (Though my friend Dr Lonelyhearts, who writes medical articles for the papers and moves in artistic circles, says that the greatest actors can deliver Caesar’s funeral oration while working out their income tax.)

I decided that Nigel Vaughan’s role was affecting his psychology as powerfully as vice versa. My diagnosis was the famous mental disease of folie à deux.

Let me explain this fascinating condition of second-hand madness, discovered by two French psychiatrists in 1873.

We all have days imagining that every policeman is watching us, every driver trying to murder us, and all the girls laughing behind our backs. Some people suffer permanent delusions of persecution – the neighbours, the Jesuits and Jews, the BBC are common culprits. These are trying to poison them, or accusing them of incest and murder, or bugging their homes and spying through the TV. Some sufferers in desperation move house, inevitably to find more persecutors awaiting. The mad ideas can spread to one, two or three perfectly sane relatives or friends, who believe as honestly as they that the Pope or the Editor of The Times is nightly pumping lethal gas through the bedroom curtains. The record for psychopathic fallout is twelve, a family in Taiwan, so deluded over non-existent mites crawling through their skins the poor things scratched themselves raw. The only oddity of Nigel Vaughan’s condition was the two sufferers living inside his head like landlord and lodger.

A week later, I determined to join the countless millions watching Mann’s Estate. I never do my share of the nation’s television-watching (twenty hours a week, long enough to read aloud a quarter of the Bible). I switched on and settled down with my wife Sandra. She frequently supplies a clear, common-sense second opinion to my cases. She was once a staff nurse at my hospital of St Swithin’s in the East End of London. Her tall figure remains amazingly slim, if the long fair hair once twined bewitchingly under her white cap has faded like the gold of a cornfield in the sunset. She is an incomparable helpmeet, though I sometimes allow myself the shameful fantasy of being a consultant neurosurgeon instead of a downtrodden GP had she come to me thirty years ago with more than two Liberty lawn dresses, a shelf of Penguins, a Teasmade and £26 4s 6d in the Post Office. As I advise our son Andy (in medical research), the best prescription for success in a medical career, as in all others, is to marry money.

The television scene was a tasteful lounge. My patient was staggering against the Parker-Knoll sofa and stumbling over the Habitat coffee table before clutching the Sanderson curtains lining the picture window. As he seized his belly and groaned like the creak of a graveyard gate, I observed with concern, ‘You know, he really is a sick man.’

‘A symptomatic spectacular,’ Sandra agreed admiringly.

He retched noisily, endangering the white fitted carpet. I continued anxiously, ‘I hope I haven’t missed anything.’

‘But it’s only just started, Richard.’

‘I mean, when I saw him last week,’ I elucidated, as the poor fellow gripped his throat and howled like a dyspeptic dog. ‘Supposing it wasn’t simple indigestion? Suppose he’s got a peptic ulcer, an acute gallbladder, cancer of the stomach? Any would fit his present state.’ I felt sweat in my palms. ‘Apart from the tragedy of unnecessary human suffering, I could have exposed myself to enormous damages for malpractice. You know what patients are like these days – get a diagnosis wrong, and you’re in court quicker than going through a red light. Look at that!’ I exclaimed in horror, as he tottered to a repro-Jacobean cocktail cabinet, grabbed a bottle of Scotch, upended it and gulped like a soccer player at half-time.

‘Straight out of the bottle!’ I complained crossly. ‘When I strictly told him to knock it off. It’s no wonder some patients take the short cut to the tomb, not following their doctor’s advice. Frankly, I’m surprised and disappointed. He seemed such a responsible and stolid type.’

Sandra was staring at me. ‘Are you mad?’

‘What’s the matter?’ I asked shortly.

‘You are looking at Ernie Partridge,’ she pronounced slowly, nodding towards the screen. ‘Who is an item of fiction, like King Kong.’

‘Ah!’

‘Your patient Nigel Vaughan,’ she continued evenly, ‘is traumatizing his stomach with nothing more horrible than cold tea.’

I gave a weak smile. ‘How easy to get carried away by these soap operas,’ I conceded. ‘Don’t you think the sinister quality of television is making fact and fiction indistinguishable? Nobody knows if they’ve really just watched the Bomb go off, or if it’s special effects. The only difference in the fictional world is the acting being more lifelike.’

‘I think you should fix with one of the partners and take a few days off,’ said Sandra.

The programme ended with Ernie Partridge subsiding on the sofa, blood trickling from his mouth over his wife’s new dress.

‘Well, they’re certainly making the point that he’s rather off colour,’ observed Sandra.

I was no longer concentrating. An icy flood of fear numbed my brain. Was this the first sign of presenile dementia?

2

Sandra had the right prescription. I needed a winter break.

Next lunchtime I visited our High Street travel agent’s to flick through the brochures. As I leaned against the counter, entranced by near-naked girls lying in ecstasy on the rocks, a soft voice asked, ‘Going somewhere?’

It was Dr Quaggy. Tall, spare and handsome, with smooth dark hair, steely moustache and expression of amiable authority, he resembled doctors in the pretty BUPA advertisements which make illness look like another of life’s pleasures. He was Churchford’s most successful GP, and like successful people everywhere was better at the politics of his occupation than its performance.

I mentioned a snatched weekend.

‘I’d take a month.’

‘A GP in midwinter? Impossible!’

‘Don’t you owe it to yourself, Richard?’ he suggested in his quiet way. ‘Your punishing workload is a byword in Churchford. We all marvel how you keep it up. Absolute martyrdom. Why not take a clear three months while you’re at it, on one of these fascinating luxury cruises?’

I told him shortly, ‘My partners wouldn’t hear of it.’

He sighed. ‘Neither would Bill Topping’s. And look what happened. Fatal coronary only last Monday. Wasn’t it the Frenchman Clemenceau who said, “Cemeteries are full of indispensable men”? Or you could go the whole hog and opt for early retirement.’

I said indignantly, ‘The idea of retirement’s never entered my head.’

He continued calmly, ‘Perhaps, Richard, you’ll thank me one day for installing it.’ He leafed the seductive pages. ‘There’s some lovely places, just look – Marbella, Majorca, Malta. Pleasant, relaxed British people, plenty of parties, golf. Sandra could make a delightful home in one of those charming villas, which strike me as very reasonably priced. She loves the sun, doesn’t she? After all, our pension’s not to be sneezed at, and I’m sure you’ve done as well as me out of private practice; everyone calls you Churchford’s most popular doctor.’

I changed the subject. ‘Where are you off to?’

I’m after some ski brochures for my son Arnold. How’s your own lad getting on?’

‘Andy’s landed a research job in the cardiac unit at St Swithin’s,’ I told him proudly.

‘What splendid news! I’m sure he’ll do wonderfully well. Even when they were students, Arnold reported him a high-flyer. Did you know that Arnold’s doing his GP training? I must confess a sentimental wish that he could eventually practise here in Churchford. But of course, no immediate vacancies. Unless we have another premature death. Or a premature retirement? Much preferable!’

He gave a little laugh, like the whinny of the Trojan horse.

That week the flu epidemic hit Churchford. I had barely time to think of a rest. Nor of Nigel Vaughan, until he reappeared at the following Monday morning’s surgery. I suspected queue-jumping, but Mrs Jenkins, our receptionist, smilingly assured me of everyone in the waiting room willingly postponing their appointments for so beloved a national invalid as Ernie Partridge.

He came sustained by Mrs Sophie Vaughan. She too was middle-aged and overweight, fair-haired and gold-braceleted, like any other prosperous local housewife chic from Robbins Modes (our fashionable High Street couturière).

‘Why, you’re looking much better,’ I greeted him cheerfully, seating them facing the consulting-room desk. ‘Much, much better! I’d say a complete transformation from the way you looked when I saw you last week. Yes, a different man,’ I continued happily. ‘I’m sure you think the same?’ I invited from Sophie.

Nigel Vaughan was puzzled. ‘But Dr Gordon, I haven’t consulted you for nearly a fortnight. When you put me on the white pills, remember?’

‘Yes, when I first examined you,’ I agreed readily. ‘But the next time I saw you, I must confess a little concern. Particularly as you did not seem to be heeding my warning against drink. Alcohol is a severe irritant to the stomach lining, you know, specially when swallowed neat. Indeed, straight out of the bottle–’

‘But doctor! That was Ernie Partridge you were watching knocking back the booze.’

I aligned my thoughts.

‘Just my little joke,’ I said feebly. ‘TV can seriously damage your health.’

‘I’m still having the pangs, doctor,’ he declared, looking miserable again. ‘Real ones, not electronic. Even though Sophie’s making me special things like boiled fish and coddled eggs, aren’t you dear? As for the drink, I haven’t touched a drop. Not that I’ve ever indulged in much more than a sherry. Though it’s funny,’ he mused, ‘all doctors seem to think that all actors, whatever’s wrong with them, have also got cirrhosis of the liver as a matter of course.’

‘Come and see the show being recorded on Saturday,’ invited Sophie eagerly. ‘After all, the studios aren’t far away.’

Off the London to Churchford motorway stood a cluster of buildings like aircraft hangars, which once produced epics of the British cinema, largely starring Alec Guinness.

‘You might find the studio audience a bit dull, being busloads of OAPs,’ Nigel added doubtfully. ‘And maybe you’d think the warm-up man a bit basic.’

‘You should have watched last week’s show,’ Sophie continued enthusiastically. ‘Sensational!’

‘As you know, I’m a pillar of respectability on the Estate,’ Nigel explained more warmly. ‘The father figure, everyone turning to me with their problems, sex, drink, money, relatives, all that. I’m above all the little squabbles, deceits, disloyalties inevitable in any community.’

‘Like a good GP?’ I suggested.

He nodded. ‘That’s right. But we’re all human, aren’t we? And now it’s suddenly come out,’ he confessed solemnly. ‘I have put a flighty young secretary with child.’

‘Oh, dear,’ I muttered.

‘But I am standing by him, doctor,’ Sophie asserted quietly. ‘What is it but the lapse of any man recapturing his youth? No, it shall make no difference to our marriage,’ she said determinedly. ‘None whatever. That is something based on mutual affection and trust. And on understanding the little frailties of those who love us.’

‘Particularly,’ Nigel added, rubbing the canary pullover, ‘in view of my delicate state of health.’

‘I must say, I admire your tolerant attitude,’ I told her sympathetically. ‘As you can guess, this is a problem which comes before us doctors fairly regularly. How much more sensible you are than many other wives – particularly young, inexperienced ones, to whom marriage is ridiculously romantic.’

He declared firmly, ‘Marriage is as practical as any other job of work in your life.’

‘And our love burns as steadfastly as a lighthouse on a rock, whatever the storms and tides that battle against it,’ she confirmed.

‘Very nicely put, both of you.’

‘It’s in the script,’ said Nigel.

I drilled my thoughts. ‘Wait a minute!’ I exclaimed. ‘It’s not you, it’s Ernie having the little bastard.’

‘Oh, doctor!’ Sophie gave a slow smile. ‘It’s so confusing, really. As Nigel is Ernie to everyone, even the neighbours, even the vicar when he comes to call, so I’m Mrs Partridge. I mean, it stands to reason, doesn’t it? I’m his lawful wedded wife.’

‘Quite,’ I said confusedly. ‘Quite, quite.’

She sighed deeply. ‘Sometimes I wonder if we really live inside our lovely timbered home or inside everyone’s TV set.’

‘Keep on taking the tablets,’ I suggested hastily, deciding the problems of Nigel’s dyspepsia simpler than those of Ernie’s paternity. ‘Though if the pain persists, perhaps we’d better toddle along to the General for an X-ray.’

‘Any time you like, doctor, before January the thirty-first. I thought I’d take a short holiday once I’m dead.’

I have really no need to buy newspapers. A glance round my waiting patients provides all Fleet Street’s headlines. That Wednesday, most declaimed ERNIE’S SHAME! After surgery, I opened a discarded tabloid and read its sentimental and scandalized story of the sensationally ill-conceived child. What will Mrs Ernie do? the paper asked agitatedly. Will she stand by him? Is Ernie really dying? In that unfortunate event, the article suggested, will she adopt the baby to perpetuate Ernie’s name for posterity, in episodes stretching into infinity?

I turned to Mrs Jenkins, tidying her desk. I said smugly, ‘She will stand by him.’

‘Doctor?’

I held up the newspaper. ‘Ernie’s wife. She won’t let this paternity business destroy their marriage, which is as sound as a lighthouse on a rock. She told me exactly that, here in the surgery last Monday.’

Mrs Jenkins pursed her lips and drummed them with her fingertips.

‘Doctor…I may be thick, but…wasn’t it the actor and his wife you were treating?’

I gave a little laugh. ‘Just pulling your leg,’ I pretended.

My case had become more serious than my patient’s. His folie à deux had spread like measles to folie à trois. Or was I just another case in an epidemic of folie à tous sweeping the country, worse than the itching Taiwanese?

Or was it just another illustration that all the world’s a stage? People took me for a doctor because I acted like a doctor. Judges, bishops and soccer hooligans all gave the performances expected by their public. The world picked its leaders because they looked statesmanlike on television, which is like buying the poke as well as the pig. If everyone thought of Nigel Vaughan as Ernie Partridge, who imagined Boris Karloff without rivets in his neck?

I sombrely determined on a word with Ollie Scuttle, the psychiatrist at Churchford General Hospital, if I saw him in the golf club on Sunday.

As I strolled into the club bar after my morning round, I found myself facing Hal Tibbs.

I had forgotten he was a member. He lived near the studios in a floodlit Elizabethan house with a swimming pool, and had an electric golf buggy. He played terrible golf, but our community cherished him as a curiosity. The Nottingham Miners’ Club probably thought the same about D H Lawrence.

I went straight to the point.

‘I say, it’s a bit hard, isn’t it? Suddenly sacking a fine actor like Nigel Vaughan. After ten years in your show, too.’

Hal Tibbs grinned over his Buck’s fizz. He was a large man with a complexion like smoked salmon and an eye always glancing over your shoulder for someone more interesting. ‘I’ve no complaints about the publicity, doc, and I don’t think he has.’

I demurred. ‘The publicity can’t be helped, but the judgement does seem a little severe on the poor fellow.’

Hal Tibbs looked wary. ‘What do you know that the papers don’t?’

‘Nothing,’ I admitted, ‘but losing your job these days seems a tough price for a little bit of scandal.’

His eyebrows rose. ‘Scandal?’

‘Putting your secretary in pod, of course. Happen to anyone in a moment’s aberration. Businessmen, MPs, Cabinet ministers, even doctors, always getting away with it. I’d have thought you were more broadminded in the world of entertainment. Oh, I know some tiresome people think television should be a branch of the Church of England, but I’m certain his millions of fans would be only too delighted if the girl ended up with quins.’

He stared. ‘You taking the mickey?’

‘No, but as an ordinary, decent, tolerant member of the public, I’d like to put in a good–’

I stopped.

He laughed. ‘You’ve been watching too much TV, doc. Bad for the eyes, isn’t it? Turns ’em square. Have a drink.’

I silently took a Glenfiddich in a numb grasp. My condition was becoming desperate.

Hal Tibbs explained amiably, ‘It’s hardly top secret in the business that we’re writing Nigel out because we’ve a big American actor coming in, and we can’t afford both. Simple as that. It’s all in the papers next week. But don’t cry for Nigel, some West End management’s putting him into a season of Hamlet. Can’t lose, can they? The viewers would queue to see him as the back legs of a pantomime horse. For a couple of months, until they forget all about him, of course,’ he ended casually.

I went home shaken to Sunday lunch. Sandra said I had better make it a week off.