The Fate of Felicity Fark in the Land of the Media

FELICITY FARK, an Innocent.

CAROL CLUNT, her mother: an artiste.
RAYMOND FARK, her father: a film director and vagrant.
MICHAEL LAPSE and DAVID VILE, two B.B.C. commentators.
KATIE WART, a beautiful chatelaine.
STUART GALL and WEARING EDDIE, two more B.B.C. commentators.
HARRY SEASLUG, a rotund tenor.
JESS FFOLKES, host of Sunday Stars: a man of God.
ARCHIE CANT (real name Michael Ramsey), variety artist
FRANK PAKAMAC, LORD FRUITCAKE, a humble Peer.
FREESIA, his daughter: a biographer.
HUGHIE CREEP, host of This Is Your Break.
SIR HUMPHREY HIGHRISE, a developer.
STANLEY STORKINS, a Northern playwright.
LORD POLAROID (‘Larry’), tragedian and camera salesman.
CHIEF CLERK, an aesthete.
HAROLD HYPE, drama critic of the Sunday Times.
DAVID DROSS, a television personality.
PATRICK LOON, a crazed astronomer.
GREER GARSTLEIGH, an Australian feminist.
MICHAEL LIKEABLE and RUSSELL HUSTLE, two television interviewers.
HUGE WELSHMAN, B.B.C. Director-General and stand-up comic.
DICK JIGGLE, leader of the Bleeding Gits: a pop idol.
RUSS KENNEL, a controversial film-director.
BERNARD BEAVER, a music-loving journalist.
LORD TEDDYBEAR, the Poet Laureate.
LORD ARNOLD FATMAN, a sage.
PETER BERK, a controversial man of the theatre.
PETER BALLS, another controversial man of the theatre.
DOCTOR FRINGE (‘Jonathan’), a prodigy.
ALAN WHANKER, a globe-trotting investigator.
PAULINE PLANK, a member of the public.
BRUCE HORSTEETH and BOB SKUNKHOUSE, two hosts of television quiz-shows.
MARY QUIM, a dressmaker.
YURI SPURI, a mountebank.
JOLLY MOLLY and JILLY SILLY, two fashionable scribblers.
ERIC MORE and ERNIE LESS, a comedy duo.
JELLY-ROLL BELLY (‘Jelly’), jazz-singer and television-personality.
HAROLD HALF-PINT, an elliptical playwright.
LORD BUTCHFIELD, photographer and motorcyclist.
ANDRÉ PREVALENT, a boy musician.
SIR GEOFFREY RIPOFF, Minister of the Environment.
SIR BASIL SPENDTHRIFT, a speculative builder.
MARVIN GRABB and BUMPHREY QUARIUS, two cultural moderators.
KEN ONAN, sometime critic: a libertine.

BOOK ONE

OF erstwhile glories and the coming dark
I sing, and of the Innocent, FLICK FARK.
Of Flick — a name contracted from Felicity —
Who energized our Age like electricity
And finally, like nuclei in fission,
Sublimely altered out of recognition.
Lament! The Sweetling of Her Time is fled!
The fair name Fark no more on that fair head!
The girl we loved, sucked upward by osmosis,
Is lost inside her own Apotheosis!
But more of that stuff later. First, her Birth —
And straight away I must bemoan my dearth
Of skill to make the circumstances vivid
In which the babe was joyfully delivered.
It’s not that ecstasy was on the cards.
The marriage was in fragments, ruins, shards —
In fact the bond had never reached the church,
Flick’s mother having been left in the lurch
By RAYMOND FARK, a hack Yank movie-maker
Whose lust made Errol Flynn look like a Quaker.
The scene was London, 1948:
Just passing through, unfurnished with a date,
He lurched off to the Windmill on his tod,
Saw Flick’s mum in the chorus, mentioned God,
Impressed her with his silk sheets at the Ritz
And whispered words of love:
She stayed a month, but then Ray had to go,
And back went CAROL CLUNT to Pimlico,
A stripper from the great days of her Art
When stately nudes who moved the aesthete’s heart
Moved nothing of their own, but froze bare-breasted,
And if they scratched an itch they got arrested.
An honest trade — now lost, alas, to Carol,
A girl across (and looking like) a barrel,
Who met the day of her Confinement sadly:
No way could things turn out, it seemed, but badly.
With England short of everything but gloom,
The strained cries from that lonely basement room
Below a pastry shop behind Victoria
Could offer little prospect of euphoria —
And yet, when it, when she ... sheer revelation!
She lay there, cutest thing in all Creation!
A bagatelle who bleated like a lamb,
The birth-blood on her scalp like raspberry jam,
The cradle-cap like flakes of candied honey,
And, larger than half-crowns in the old money,
A pair of eyes you shivered to come near —
As blue and cloudless as the Stratosphere.
Let’s say it was of joy that Carol died,
Transported by the Vision at her side:
And lest you mock so casual a fatality
Do please recall my purpose is Morality.
‘I name my child Felicity,’
And well-contented she rolled over dead,
But then rolled back to add a codicil:
‘And make it Fark, not Clunt;
Her final, and not smallest, claim to fame
Was thus to give her girl a magic Name,
A neat mnemonic whose alliteration
Would aid the kid in conquering the Nation,
And speed the day when Pimlico’s Flick Fark
Meant London like the Dame of Sark meant Sark.
At this point almost twenty years of time
Are cut away and tied off with a rhyme:
The tender tale’s beyond my brittle Muse
Of how Flick; climbed her ladder of new shoes
Beginning in the grim Age of Austerity—
Towards the heady Era of Prosperity;
Of how the neighbours all mucked in and mothered her
And hugged the mite until they nearly smothered her
Of how that doting district raised her up
As if they lifted the Lycergus Cup.
Had time allowed, it must have been my duty
To outline how she burgeoned into Beauty,
And grew from being merely twice as pretty
As any tot in that part of the city
To utter loveliness beyond comparison —
Unchallenged as the sword’s-edge of the Saracen.
Time didn’t, though, so why not cut the cackle?
Let’s haul the plot along by block and tackle
Abruptly to the moment when Flick Fark,
As yet unknown, light-hearted as a lark,
Was working in a chic King’s Road boutique
Whose catchy name was Granny Takes a Leak —
An airless cardboard kiosk flogging minis
At half a yard of cloth for fifty guineas.
One Saturday at noon, to get some air,
She popped out — and the world flamed like a flare
As purposeful technicians swarmed in hordes
With Sun-guns, floodlights and reflector boards.
A disembodied throat cried:
Turn over, camera. O.K., cue the boys,’
And two black ties, each topped off with a smile,
Bore down on her: MIKE LAPSE and DAVID VILE!
‘And here she is, the girl they all call Flick,’
Exulted Vile,
From alla London’s bride young things to hold
The tidal of “Miss Knockout”!’
Yet well-brushed tones of Lapse took up the theme:
‘Felicity, perhaps today your dream
Comes true. Of all the girls left in the running
You are the least affected and most stunning.
Our judges have been cruising around town
In secret now for weeks. They’ve whittled down
A great long list to you, you gorgeous thing.
But first, some tricky questions. Can you sing?’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Lapse,’
Said Lapse: ‘Then can you dance, embroider, sew?
Does music take your interest? Pictures? Books?
Is all you’ve got to give the world your looks?’
‘I’m sorry,’
‘I name you, then, “Miss Knockout” — Queen of Youth!
Cried Lapse, at which point judges from all nations
Arranged on rostra roared congratulations
While hoisting skyward an unbroken line
Of coloured score-cards all marked 9.9.
The cheering Chelsea dwellers choked King’s Road:
They swelled and surged and raged and ebbed and flowed,
Until — a great Cunarder from its jetty
Superbly trailing streamers and confetti —
The stately KATIE WART ploughed through, to set
Upon Flick’s head a diamond coronet,
So brilliant on its cushion of mock mink
It well-nigh fused the Eurovision Link.
‘And there she is, she’s crowned at last,’
‘The girl who, whom, that, no one could of guessed
Would one day be — this unknown orphan girl
Who grew up lonely like a ... like a pearl,
This girl they call the Pearl of Pimlico —
Would be the “Knockout” Score-Girl! Now we know.’
Like General Custer Flick Fark was surrounded:
She stood her ground less steadfast than astounded,
And might have turned to flee had not the matey
Mature and motherly support of Katie
Been radiating comfort at her shoulder —
As warm as toast, yet solid as a boulder.
‘Es ist,’
And molto gloire lies in your avvenir.’
For Katie spoke a Euro-Esperanto
Which sounded like a souped-up Pisan canto.
In Stockport, Stockholm, Split and Salamanca
The viewers loved her fluent lingua franca.
Relaxed and regal, poised and polyglot
La Wart knew chi was who and quoi was what.
From cuticle to coiffe, from skin to core,
She could have outclassed Madame Pompadour
And made Récamier or Montespan
Seem something tasteless served up from a can.
The Age of Gold saw nothing like such grooming:
She would have left those Frog slags fairly fuming.
A head-and-shoulder shot zoomed tight on Flick.
The titles rolled. The monitors went click.
‘Finito!’
Ma voiture is close by. Wir müssen run.
You’ve got un altro job to do today.
Tu peux changer your schmutter on the way.’

BOOK TWO

THEY climbed into a drop-head Park Ward Bentley
Which Wart seemed indisposed to handle gently.
She steamed along at seldom less than eighty
(Waved on by policemen calling
While Flick made shift to don some type of track-suit —
A sort of spray-on rayon Union Jack-suit.
Through zebra-crossing, roundabout and stoplight
Wart carved a bloody pathway like a hoplite,
Yet never did the fury of her charge
So much as dent her famous maquillage,
Which glittered as if forged from chrome-vanadium
When through the gateway of a looming stadium
They sped to find a numberless assembly
Of shrieking ‘Knockout’ fans.
It’s Britain versus Europe. Can we do it?
We can!’
And here’s a lass who no one’s seen before
To lend us heart by helping to keep score!
Where France had Helen, Troy had Joan of Arc,
Great Britain’s ‘Knockout’ Squad have got Flick Fark!’
As Flick was led away to man the score-board —
An all-decked-out-with-flashing-lights-galore-board —
The gun went off. The first game was beginning!
And straight away the Germans started winning.
Down giant slides made slick with mud they slipped
And in their fists great swords and shields they gripped.
Like Heinkel pilots through the air they flew
And flocks of vampire bats they bravely slew,
Before, like bombs, they plunged into a brimming
Aquarium stocked full of slowly swimming
Electric rays and hungry crocodiles —
And always their square heads were wreathed in smiles,
While Stuart bellowed:
You must win this or else we’re in a mess!
Oh yes! Oh YES! Oh no! Oh dear! Oh Hell.
We really should have won that one. Oh well,
These Krauts are all pro athletes in disguise —
And anyway, the sun was in our eyes.’
The Jerries scored full marks in every game.
Their total soared, the U.K.’s stayed the same.
The sole thing Flick could do to aid our heroes
Was grin a plucky grin and mark up zeroes.
And yet, against all odds, she felt fulfilled:
Her blithe young being weirdly throbbed and thrilled.
She strangely became more and more elated
The more the home team’s hopes became deflated.
As Britain trailed the Swedes and then the Swiss
She first knew perfect pleasure, then sheer bliss.
But wait! For Britain’s chance was not yet gone.
There yet remained the Mini-Marathon,
In which the fattest man from each contingent
Was handcuffed in a manner firm and stringent
And hung up blindfold from a high trapeze.
Attached to it by nothing but his knees,
He dodged hot custard pies above a pit
Containing fifty tons of steaming ...
Ah looks, ee-ooh, like our-ah, ooh-ee, chap
Might ooh, just keep, ee-ah, out of the crap,’
Laughed B.B.C. reporter WEARING EDDIE,
With diction lucid as his stance was steady.
“E’s swervin’ well, e’s ooh, as keen as mustard.
A brave lad, this. ‘Is ’ed is drippin’ custard.’
But then the boy dropped out of the event
And disappeared into the excrement.
With voice cacophonous and manners callous
The German fans sang “Deutschland über alles”
And clapped hands as their team marched off upon a
Mechanically delighted lap of honour,
At which the beaten British crew, poor wretches,
Were bandaged up and bundled on to stretchers
While Stuart, Eddie, Lapse and Vile, Frank Bough,
Don Revie, Jimmy Hill and Brian Clough
Discussed, downcast, the U.K.’s lack of flair
With Basil Brush, Jack Jones and A. J. Ayer.
The heart of Flick Fark, on the other hand,
Was high, and thumping fit to beat the band.
Throughout the match she’d felt as if caressed
By ghostly fingertips touched to her breast
Which traced with practised ease a killing ripple
Of little chills around each aching nipple.
Another bunch of fairy digits based
Their efforts on the sweet skin round her waist,
While yet another searched between her thighs
In ways that filled her eyes with wild surmise.
Inducing groans that bordered on satiety
The phantom force groped onward like a deity
Priapic as those Gods who hotly hovered
Above the clueless heroines of Ovid:
Its mitts were many as the Empress Kali’s
And travelled faster than Muhammad Ali’s.
It was the Lens that stroked her and unloosed her:
The Camera was the satyr that seduced her.
It was the Cathode Tube that laved her features
As wet tongues lick the fuzz from skins of peaches.
The insubstantial swain was Electronic
Who made Flick’s haemoglobin fizz like tonic.
A lover both importunate and prurient
As well as inexhaustibly esurient,
The suitor for Flick’s favours was THE MEDIA —
Who, greedy now, would soon be even greedier.
The Virgin had consumed the Magic Potion:
Her metamorphosis was now in motion.
Already she’d half left the mortal scrimmage
And part-way started to become an Image.
Small wonder that the fair face of Flick Fark
Seemed made of light alone, a living spark,
As half a hundred million British viewers
Who hadn’t seen a thing they liked since Suez
Sat clucking with unbounded satisfaction
At Flick’s undoubted powers of attraction,
While like an avalanche or even faster
Their ‘Knockout’ Squad went screaming to disaster.
‘Ma chère, you were sehr hübsch,’
‘Mais now you must outgrow die Welt of Sport.
Tomorrow notte you’re on “Sunday Stars”.
Vamos a casa mia to change cars.
We’ll drive to Leeds und da rehearse your Dance.
Allons-y, cara. Snap aus of your trance.’
And once again the maid Flick Fark fared forth —
And through the falling night rode to the North.

BOOK THREE

I SWEAR that ‘Sunday Stars’ was, at this time,
As close as TV gets to the Sublime.
Its cast of Showbiz Big Names gave the Nation
A whole new Sacrament — COMMUNICATION.
When HARRY SEASLUG sang
God rated like Dave Allen or Ken Dodd.
The Format gave the Gospels Credibility
And Christ the thing he needed most — Virility.
It lent the Holy Ghost a new Humanity
And put Charisma into Christianity.
The show’s M.C. was that most blest of blokes —
Your friend and mine, God’s right-hand man, JESS FFOLKES.
Of opalescent cheek and bubble forehead
In which a holy radiance flared florid,
Jess Ffolkes’s face was puckered at the lips
To drink the Sacred Word in tiny sips
While smiling as though stricken by the Gorgon
Perpetually behind his trembling Organ.
Some saw in the facade of Jess’s cranium
A poppy pushed into a pink geranium.
We married men were mostly put in mind
Of underneath a baby girl’s behind,
While others found — I think this somewhat coarse —
The aft of an albino Arab horse.
‘Well, here we are again to praise Our Lord,’
Said Jess, and from his Organ dripped a chord,
‘And here’s a lovely letter I’ve been sent
By Pauline Plank of Cretinthorpe in Kent.
It says: “Dear Mr Ffolkes, do please convey
My thanks to God in your distinguished way
For watching over me. The house next door
Collapsed last night with an almighty roar
And wiped out a whole family, plus their dog.
But I slept through the hubbub like a log
And woke up warm and snug and safe and sound.
Sincerely, Pauline Plank.” You too have found,
I’m sure, Our Lord has kept you free from harm.
We send up prayers, He sends down peace and calm.’
Transfigured by sustaining faith, Jess Ffolkes
Caressed his Instrument with gentle strokes,
And all at once that sacred studio
Was rich with diorama and tableau,
And cowboys with their cowgirls joined in song
And then the cows joined in and sang along,
And leprechauns leapt gleaming through the gloaming
In which a dry-ice rivulet lay foaming.
‘So take Him,’
And choirs of policemen hummed ‘How Great Thou Art’,
‘For only God,’
And dancing doctors found the cure for cancer.
Received by massive Audience Reaction,
On came the Church of England’s top attraction.
Though bald and bowed to look at, ARCHIE CANT
Was lighter on his feet than Cary Grant.
Inside his breast a young heart beat unaltered:
He played three gigs a night and never faltered.
To prove a Primate need not be a bore
Old Archie was a trouper to the core.
Should script considerations so require,
He’d preach a sermon with his shoes on fire —
And if the show was going out by satellite
He’d soak his hat in petrol and set that alight.
Tonight he read a slice of Lamentations
With broad grimaces and gesticulations.
‘I say I say I say I say I say
How up-to-date these words still seem today:
“From Zion’s daughter beauty is departed,” ’
Sang Archie Cant, but, far from broken-hearted,
Seemed thrilled by every sentence of his text.
He cycled off, while Jess Ffolkes simpered:
We give you that extremely pious Peer —
The Paragon permissive people fear —
That neo-Nazarene of the Nobility,
FRANK PAKAMAC, LORD FRUITCAKE, on Humility.’
From where Flick Fark stood waiting to go on
Lord Fruitcake’s skull seemed polished till it shone.
His skin looked famished as the Hindu Kush
Yet blazed with splendour like the Burning Bush.
The hardest-bitten Cynic’s heart would crumble
To gaze upon a countenance so Humble.
It seemed to Flick that this man hated Fame:
He scorned it as St Lawrence scorned the flame.
A sad St Catherine broken on the Wheel,
With diffidence he launched into his Spiel.
It rolled before his eyes on Autocue
And yet he made it all sound new and true.
‘For me — I think I have to say “for me”
(I say “I think”, of course, advisedly) —
Humility is what my poor soul craves.
I think it’s what was meant by Jesus Saves.
Myself, I think that I — and I say “I” ... ’
And so he nattered on, and by and by
The subject of his piece became Pornography.
His daughter Freesia deals in Biography.
Of every age and epoch, creed and party,
She hymns the salient illuminati:
Though more than all those Lives (the thought occurs)
The Life most stuffed with incident is hers,
Whose binding remains singularly fine
Considering the pressure on the spine.
Lord Fruitcake’s second daughter scribbles fiction.
His wife, too, shares the scrivening addiction.
Throughout the Kingdom inky quills are flailing:
The whole damned bloodline shares the Family Failing.
In all the lighter literary forms
The Pakamacs are on the job in swarms,
And just to sketch that dynasty’s daft saga
Would swiftly drive me absolutely ga-ga —
So let’s get back as quickly as we can
To concentrating on the clan’s top man.
‘I think of my Humility — and I
Am conscious, naturally, that saying “my”
Obliges me — and I say “me”, of course ... ’
But here his drone seemed somehow’ drained of force,
For even as he savoured his own prose
The beady orbs on each side of his nose
Distractedly were focusing in common on
A gratifying optical phenomenon
Whose powers to enchant outstripped the pen’s:
He saw his face reflected in the lens.
While everybody waited with breath bated
He stood there fascinated and fixated.
He imitated Lot’s Wife turned to salt
While all around the Show ground to a halt.
Subjecting his sweet self to stunned inspection —
A Humble witness at the Resurrection —
Lord Fruitcake looked as love-sick as Narcissus
In vain upon the water raining kisses.
As men in white coats led the poor oaf off
Jess Ffolkes’s Organ gave a little cough.
Its master was quite used to these disasters
And suavely burbled on as if on casters.
‘Tonight on “Sunday Stars” we have the pleasure
Of showing off a brand-new National Treasure.
Flick Fark, a lass as pure as she is pretty,
Will do a Dance to that majestic ditty
We cling to when all other Hope has flown —
The lovely hymn, “You’ll Never Walk Alone”.’
So saying, Jess manipulated knobs.
His trusty Organ heaved with sobs and throbs,
While eerily across the floor there hissed
Infinitudes of filmy, flimsy mist —
As soft and faery-white as when
Those cloudy shrouds of liquid oxygen
Submerge the launch-pad in a cold lagoon
Before Apollo lifts off for the Moon.
You couldn’t see for looking, look for seeing,
As through that Sea of Dreams Flick Fark came fleeing,
A footloose firefly like Tinkerbell —
Yet wispy as a Willi from ‘Giselle’.
Her movements both unstudied and unfettered,
She pranced, she paused, she posed, she pirouetted —
Her poise God-given like the Dalai Lama’s —
In pastel turquoise Baby-Doll pyjamas.
Ingested at her local Comprehensive,
Flick’s repertoire of steps was not extensive.
No critic of the Dance would, in Flick Fark,
See any threat to Fonteyn or Merle Park.
An infinitely sensual simplicity
Was all that you could credit to Felicity.
But it sufficed: a shy though sprightly doe,
She sprang from toe to light fantastic toe.
Egged on by Jess’s eager Implement
She seemed by wave upborne, by tradewind sent,
A figment of the blue Aegean day —
A sunlight ghost, a spectre in the spray.
She danced, and lo! Her minuscule chemise
Looked not much more substantial than a breeze.
With air puffed out and here and there sucked in
Her gauzy garb did great things for her skin.
To how and where that fragile fabric floated
The camera-eye unswervingly devoted
A penetrating, probing, sub-cutaneous
Regard that found all other views extraneous.
The Show’s entire staff joined in the scrutiny.
The camera crews were on the verge of mutiny:
They twisted their controls as if convulsed.
And through it all Jess Ffolkes’s Organ pulsed —
It twitched and lurched towards a Major Crisis
As though it were attached to Dionysus.
And now the whole of Britain fell full length
For Flick with all its Heart and Soul and Strength.
And now the Faith which once made Blighty mighty
Was lavished on a nymphette in a nightie.
And now, as Flick Fark’s features filled the screen,
The spasms of Jess Ffolkes’s great Machine
Were surging with a turgid urge to merge
And mingle in one potent, purging splurge—
An overwhelming flood of sonic spume
That swept Flick off into the dressing-room.
‘Cherie, es war ein cosa fantastique:
Je suis so froh che I can hardly speak!’
Cried Katie as Flick fell into her arms,
Thus calming the poor darling’s fears and qualms.
For Flick was ironed flat by her endeavour:
She thought that she could go to sleep forever.
She lolled like a Slow Loris on Largactil
And felt as wiped out as the Pterodactyl.
Tremendous as a tantrum from the Führer
La Wart’s barbaric Lamborghini Miura
Went belting through the dark down the M1
At many miles per hour above the Ton.
As Katie drove (and what uncanny grace
The dashboard glow conferred upon her face!)
She prattled about all the marvellous things
That Flick would find were waiting in the wings.
And through Flick’s drowsy mind the Future flowed,
And all along that magic midnight road
The to-ing tail-lights and the fro-ing headlights
Seemed not just large white lights and little red lights
But stones so precious Kings could not afford them.
Great pearls in golden cobwebs flew toward them.
A cataract of rubies raged ahead.
While Flick, fagged out, lay back as though in bed
And closed her eyes against the hail of jewels,
Her coach of glass, propelled by precious fuels,
Ran Southward like a clap of rolling thunder
To seek the City lying ripe for plunder.

BOOK FOUR

BY rough arithmetic it seems I’ve penned
Three books of verse describing one weekend.
At that rate, if I’ve moved the proper decimal,
The Iliad will look infinitesimal
When judged for length beside my finished libel,
Which could outweigh both Beowulf and the Bible
Combined with Dante, Virgil and Lucretius —
But harping on this theme would sound facetious.
Be brief! To speed your couplets through the weeks
And catch the Vital Moment when it speaks!
To strip the silent seasons from the year
And seize the day advancing Flick’s career!
Let Aprils bloom, leave brown Novembers burning,
And leap through Time to watch the Decade turning!
For only swift and pitiless elision
Can sum up Flick’s Success on Television.
Our sweetheart was a fixture on the Box
The way Andromeda was on the rocks:
She was, without a whisper of dissension,
The captive Queen of Logie Baird’s invention.
By morning, noon and night and all next day
She creamed herself with lather of Camay,
While voices on the sound-track called it
A savoury burst of fragrant adman’s blarther.
She primped herself with This, she preened with That,
She fed ten tons of protein to the Cat:
She chose a tube of These instead of Those
And confidently crammed them up her nose.
She said that
And added
She claimed
And
       ‘Ajax Shines My Baby Ultrabrite!
She warned against the dreaded Understains
And showed how Dynorods did out her drains.
And so, in scads (nay, myriads) of ads
She flogged the fads to doting mums and dads —
Which meant she almost never left the screen,
Since she was also in the shows between.
BRUCE HORSTEETH and BOB SKUNKHOUSE both used Flick
To help contestants sort out what to pick
From pyramids of garbage in all guises
They had the hide to give away as prizes.
For HUGHIE CREEP, Flick jumped out of a cake
And told the winner on
How glad she was to see him/her/them win,
Kissed him/her/them, and deftly jumped back in.
In short, on telly Flick was so ubiquitous
Her omnipresence seemed almost iniquitous:
She tended at that stage, although adorable,
To strike the higher-minded as deplorable.
But Pimlico saw stature in its pin-up:
Flick was the girl who helped it keep its chin up.
The place had lost that Safe-as-Houses feeling:
The Boom in Property had set it reeling.
The trumpets for the Dance of Death were blowing
And ancient Ways of Life were quickly going —
Since every blessed thing not to their taste
DEVELOPERS were swiftly laying waste.
At negligible risk, with aim unerring,
They pulverized more real estate than Goering,
And on each dwelling’s ruin raised a Tower —
To Maximize a Prime Site’s Earning-Power.
Of all God’s greedy creatures on two legs
Developers must surely be the dregs.
The cut-throats even cause LORD TEDDYBEAR,
Our child-like Laureate, to tear his hair.
These were the Get Rich Quick years of a gang
Who should, by rights, have been condemned to hang,
Or else to burn, or — no, not or: and — freeze.
Instead, the bastards all got K.B.E.s.
A vandal who, by general estimation,
Outdid did them all in total devastation
And knocked down swathes of London just for fun,
SIR HUMPHREY HIGHRISE was their Number One.
His Aspect was Unknown: he Shunned Society.
His Name, however, dripped with notoriety.
In Pimlico his hoardings filled the skies:

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Such castles stood cold shoulder to cold shoulder
And in between fell shadows even colder.
The Mews where Flick was born, though, still survived,
And there she stayed no matter how she thrived,
Her basement room below the pastry shop
Persisting as if Time had had a Stop.
And still the local swains were sick with longing,
Though now a more exotic breed came thronging
To take her to the places and the parties
Where people ate Amphetamines like Smarties
And coughed their callow lives away like Keats —
The other London underneath the streets.
She stunned a crowded room like the Medusa
When lunching at Trattoo or Arethusa.
Among the languid diners at Chez Victor
She lounged about as if a mule had kicked her.
Her pubic hair designed by Mary Quim,
She danced (in army boots from Hung Like Him)
The whole night long at Annabel’s or Tramp —
A naiad of the darkly rising damp.
Eurydice was in the Underworld —
But let me hear no sniff, see no lip curled:
I grant Flick lived the Life-Style of the Young
In ecstasies that verged on the unstrung,
But still must hasten here to treat dismissively
Contentions that she led that life Permissively.
Far from it. The unfashionable fact
Was this: the Golden Girl remained intact.
Her attitudes may not have looked strait-laced,
But underneath it all, Flick Fark was Chaste.
Our Heroine repressed all thoughts of Sex
The way the Russian army crushed the Czechs.
Tenaciously retaining her good humour
At how the gossip columns seethed with rumour
And linked her name with everybody eligible
In dithyrambs both trite and unintelligible,
She held herself in patient readiness
For Holy Matrimony, nothing less.
I don’t suggest our Darling was a schemer:
I simply mean she dreamed of a Redeemer.
She conjured up some clean-cut Galahad
Whom Fate decreed should be the lucky lad:
She saw a scene where Lohengrin came on
In shining armour standing on a swan
And clamorously sprang ashore to settle
Her doubts in his embrace of heavy metal.
Assessing pros and cons there’d be no call for:
She knew her Heart would tell her who to fall for.
But though the girl had strength, her name lacked weight
And then one night the phone rang, very late.
‘Ah, da you are, you kleine gadabout!
How strange trouver you in, instead of out.’
The earpiece squawked in tones of fond reproof —
Which were, Flick feared, a teensy bit aloof.
‘You’ve earned some cash, but jetzt you need cachet.
Je pense it’s time you did ein West End play.
Report domani at le Royal Court.
Bonne nuit, tesoro. Ciao!’
The Northern Playwright STANLEY STORKINS greeted
Our favourite while remaining firmly seated.
Before them stretched the empty auditorium
As plush as a Victorian emporium.
Stan Storkins looked as North as you can get
Before the land runs out and you get wet;
As Northern as the boatswain of a lugger
In difficulties North of Muckle Flugga;
As Northern as the grave of Fridtjof Nansen —
With pointed spiral eyeballs like Charles Manson.
‘The play,’
Were you at R A D A? ’
‘I’m sorry,’
‘Don’t worry, love. You won’t find me complaining.
With “Roll on Death” I probe my deep anxieties
And correlate my anguish with Society’s
In Confrontations which, though not simplistic,
Are always resolutely Realistic.
No play I’ve written’s caused me so much grief:
The way I’ve spilled my guts defies belief.’
Thus Storkins spake, and thus he spake much more,
And more and more Flick Fark was numb with awe.
In plays by Stanley Storkins, she now learned,
The genius of Bertolt Brecht returned.
Compared with Storkins, Ibsen, Shaw and Jarry
Were bourgeois liberal hacks like J. M. Barrie.
The Western World, to this updated Zola,
Was just a molar soaked in Coca-Cola.
You might call “Roll on Death” a post-Hegelian
Uncompromising Version of “Pygmalion” —
A Social Structure flayed to the last layer
In which you play a naked Galatea.’
Disturbed at this, Flick still was overjoyed:
Her leading man would be LORD POLAROID!
Lord Polaroid, the show-piece of the Peerage,
Has never been inclined to travel Steerage.
He’s always been a thespian Equestrian
Who looks on walking as a bit pedestrian.
Unbending as befits a veteran Titan,
He dwells in the Pavilion down at Brighton.
Most rarely is he tempted up to town,
But when he is, he puts on robes and crown
And rides in his own train, the Brighton Belle —
The rails are laid direct to his hotel.
For Polaroid to play in Stan’s confection
Was not, however, that strange a connection:
For years the Peer had maintained his ascendancy
By clambering aboard the latest tendency —
Though truth to tell he’d signed for ‘Roll on Death’
Believing he’d been asked to do ‘Macbeth’.
The Noble made his entry incognito,
As tentative as Emperor Hirohito.
Two gentlemen-in-waiting and one page
Sufficed to keep his robes clear of the stage.
In front of him a flunkey knelt and gripped
A calf-bound, gold-tooled copy of the script,
Through which the stern praetorian leafed pensively,
Blue-pencilling the minor parts extensively.
In time the pencil’s point got blunt, then broke.
He looked at it, looked peeved, looked up, and spoke.
‘My first line, here: I’d like to take that out
And put in something better. What about
“A horse, a horse, my something for a horse”?
Not that I want to interfere, of course.’
‘I’m sure you’re right,’
If you could take your clothes off, find your mark,
And sort of, you know, more or less just stand
(While doing kind of this with your left hand),
We’ll block it from the top speech on page one.’
Their monumental labour had begun.

BOOK FIVE

FLICK staggered home each night limp with fatigue,
Exalted to be in the Major League.
She found the concentration of rehearsal
More challenging by far than plugging Persil.
She studied books on Theory of Theatre
To try and understand Stan Storkins better.
She found herself sought out by the Posh Press
And asked if she had set aside Success.
‘I felt that it was high time to commit myself:
To pick up something angular and hit myself.
I needed to do something that would stretch me,
And that’s when Stan and Larry came to fetch me.
I love them both, though not the way you’ve heard:
They’re both grown men. I doubt the thought’s occurred.’
The frequency with which Stan would adjust
Flick’s pose did not arise, she knew, from Lust.
The reason Storkins failed to keep his distance
Was simply his desire to give assistance.
The same with Polaroid, who helped her doff
Her dressing-gown each time she took it off —
And, when the moment came for her to don
That garment, raced to help her put it on.
And in this wise the calendar lost leaves
With many whisperings of subtle sleeves,
Until at last the time was up for certain.
Flick stood there in the buff behind the curtain
And felt it race away. She faced a blur
Of half-seen people. They saw all of her.
Their blasé expectations took a battering.
Good God, this girl was positively shattering!
The galaxy of eyes made Flick feel hot —
Conspicuous as Jupiter’s Red Spot.
That aggregate of well-heeled culture-vultures —
The usual desperadoes and drygulchers —
For once in their indulgent lives were hushed,
As Flick’s unsullied epidermis blushed.
CHIEF CLERK’S great disquisition on ‘The Nude’
Must somewhere in its amplitude allude
To forms that matched Flick Fark’s in sheer sublimity.
But even he, for all his magnanimity,
That night would have pronounced her without equal —
A Beauty without harbinger or sequel.
She was a dream by Boucher or Watteau,
A raspberry ripple of the Rococo —
Yet also a Madonna by Bellini,
Or even St Teresa by Bernini.
A Magdalene by Fra Filippo Lippi
Beside Flick’s sweetness would have looked a cheapie:
She could have made the average Botticelli
Seem something published yearly by Pirelli.
But while I draw these parallels from painting,
Remember that the Audience was fainting.
They nodded as if strung out, stoned or sauced:
The Play worked like a motor-car’s exhaust.
Though buoyed up by the vision of Flick’s nudity
They yawned aloud at Stan’s dramatic crudity.
It was a war of drugs, if you can picture it —
With Flick the benzedrine, Stan the barbiturate.
The Play, like all of Stanley’s dramaturgy,
Outpointed a convention of the Clergy
For rhetoric wrapped up in solemn twaddle.
Our darling was supposed to be a Model
Who posed for Students learning Art, poor creature —
With Polaroid obliged to play their teacher.
To summarize the plot would be invidious,
Except to say its tedium was hideous.
Though Polaroid beefed up each dreary speech
(‘The King’s to blame! Once more into the breach!’),
From Stan the English Language got no lift:
To load a rift with ore he lacked the gift.
He fumbled words and clumsily dispensed them
As if he held their elegance against them.
His every play a turkey frozen frigid,
In point of fact he bored the public rigid:
Their secret view of Stanley’s stuff was The CRITICS, though, instructed them to love it.
The London Drama Critics worship thickness:
They view agility as simply slickness.
The London Drama Critics loathe the light touch:
They think a grizzly’s clutch might be the right touch.
The London Drama Critics, as a species,
Detect the smell of frankincense in faeces.
The London Drama Critics give indemnity
To dunderheads who sanctify solemnity:
They tie the tag Contemporary Playwright
On dolts who couldn’t get the time of day right.
They all were there to see Flick do her number:
They took notes while the audience fought slumber.
They all looked as anonymous as eels,
But one of them, Flick noticed, was on wheels.
His name was HAROLD HYPE. In perpetuity
Hype leads the holy war against acuity.
His judgement is unfailingly appalling:
He is, therefore, the Captain of his Calling.
For years Hype has adorned the Sunday Times
With stuff so overwrought it almost rhymes.
An oyster-shell and broken-glass mosaic,
In vain his prose strives not to be prosaic:
Secreting sugar like a diabetic
It well-nigh busts a gut to be poetic.
On Stanley’s Play at last the curtain fell
And everybody present ran pell-mell.
The fate of ‘Roll on Death’, it seemed, was sealed:
No sign of life save Flick had it revealed.
But Harold Hype hummed home on spokes of chromium
Composing in his head a wild encomium:
He hurried to his desk on hubs of nickel,
So urgent was his treacle’s need to trickle.
‘One is both pleased and terrified,’
(And instantly you taste the tang of tripe)
‘To see this playwright’s magnitude increase.
His new work is a Blazing Masterpiece!
The silent Royal Court seemed consecrated:
Within its walls true greatness was created.
When dedicated men attain beatitude
What other answer can we give but gratitude?
Lord Polaroid’s performance was a miracle ...
’(And here for several columns Hype waxed lyrical)
‘It should, however, ringingly be said ...
’(For Hype assumed the things he said got read)
‘That this play finds the fullness of its splendour
In one of a more tender age and gender:
I mean Miss Fark, who neither speaks nor stirs,
Yet permeates each action that occurs
With softer tendrils than the sea anemone —
As fraught with Fate as kisses in Gethsemane.
It may be perilous, but I shall gamble,
And call Miss Fark a Mrs Patrick Campbell.
Perhaps — nay, probably! — another Sarah.
I swear not even Florence Farr was fairer ...
’And so for ages Hype drooled on demented,
Besotted by the myth he had invented;
And when the piece appeared in print, Flick Fark
Was there on the same page with Braque and Bach;
Her picture, as it always did, raised eyebrows —
The eyebrows this time, though, belonged to highbrows.

BOOK SIX

So yet again with scalpel and with suture
We slice and stitch a short-cut to the future.
A year went by and still the Play was running,
And every night Flick stood there looking stunning.
The Glossy Magazines had gone bananas:
They went for her like Anne goes for gymkhanas.
In Vogue there was a brilliant two-page spread
Consisting of the top bit of Flick’s head:
And then the bottom bit came out in Queen —
And Harper’s ran the bit left in between.
She looked much more prestigious, if less pally,
Than when she’d posed for Tit-Bits and Reveille.
In better-class photographers, Flick learned,
The gem-like flame of Inspiration burned.
They weren’t like those cheap pimps with dirty minds
And dark-rooms out the back with broken blinds
Who tried to get your bra off in the car:
Instead, they were True Artists like Renoir
Who owned converted monasteries in Spain —
And pulled your pants off in the aeroplane.
Flick now appeared in TV panel games
Where all the players boasted household names
And took their choice of looking either Brainy
Or, if they couldn’t manage Brainy, Zany.
A rarer course is just to look inscrutable.
Flick did that. Her Success was irrefutable.
She never guessed the answer even once
But no one dreamed of calling her a dunce.
They talked about her talent for repose,
Her singing stillness like a frozen rose,
Her Wisdom — unexpressed and yet supernal —
Ineffably attuned to the Eternal.
The Spring became the Summer, which in turn
Became the Autumn, you’ll be stunned to learn.
The Winter gathered over Pimlico
And through the shadows fell the whirling snow —
It fluttered past the Highrise precipices
And soothed the cobbled Mews with loving kisses.
When Flick stepped from a taxi late at night
Her black fur hat and coat were flecked with white:
Her shoulders were alight with silver rust,
Her cuffs and collar gleamed with crystal dust.
But recently the Winters grow too mild
For London snow to linger plumply piled:
By noon next day the streets were full of slush,
Through which a pink Rolls-Royce rushed with a gush.
A famous figure skipped down Flick’s front stairway
Sure-footed as Jack Nicklaus on the fairway.
The colour of a home-made caramel,
A kid-gloved index finger pushed Flick’s bell.
Flick stumbled to her door still in a daze
To hear a Breakthrough forecast in a phrase.
‘Vite, vite! Dobbiamo drive comme Stirling Moss.
Ce soir tu sei a guest of DAVID DROSS!’
La Wart helped Flick to dress, and with a swoosh
They pushed off in the Rolls to Shepherd’s Bush,
Where soon the guards were glad to let them enter
The hallowed gates of TELEVISION CENTRE.
So horrible it stands out like a chancre,
The place looks like a wrap-round Lubianka —
Its curving Corridors and Zones and Areas
Recalling some sadistic plan of Beria’s
In which, if you run long enough, you meet yourself
And beat yourself to death and try to eat yourself.
But Katie Wart knew every twisted nook
And cranny of that fortress like a book.
She dragged Flick up a groaning escalator
Emerging in a kind of solar crater,
A cave lit like the inside of the Sun —
The Hall of Flames that men call TC1.
The walls were hills of countless eager faces
As tall and full as grandstands at the races.
Above were hung a hundred thousand clamps
And fixed into the clamps were blazing lamps,
While on the floor the cameras crawled and crabbed
And makeup girls adroitly poked and dabbed
At David Dross, who now bade them begone.
The Title Sequence rolled. The Show was on!
‘Hello, good evening, fabulous, sensational,’
Dross wheedled. He seemed fully operational.
‘Fantastic, super, welcome to the show,
Good evening, welcome, fabulous, hello.
Good evening ... ’
But lithely into shot sprang his mechanic —
Who prised a panel open in his back
And whipped-out and replaced the power-pack.
Reactivated, Dross resumed.
Our topic for tonight is Scientific.
We want to probe the Nature of SUCCESS
And formulate an educated guess
At what makes some Successful People tick.
And here’s one now, Flick Fark. Good evening, Flick.’
‘Good evening, David,’
That followed fifteen minutes of applause.
‘Fantastic, super, wonderful to see you.’
Sang Dross,
Could you, I mean, could you, I mean, just now,
I mean, just briefly, briefly tell us how
It feels to be Successful as an actress?’
‘For that I have to thank my benefactress,
Miss Katie Wart,’
The crowd roared like a riot in the Forum.
‘Fantastic! What amazing self-effacement!’
Dross grovelled in the dust of self-abasement.
‘And what will be your next amazing role?’
Dross probed,
‘It all lies in the lap of Destiny.
I just don’t know,’
‘And speaking about what the Future brings,
Here’s PATRICK LOON!’
The B.B.C’s best-loved Mad Scientist
Lurched on like a gorilla round the twist.
‘You say you’ve come from Jupiter,’
‘How was your trip?’
‘Well David, yes. Yes David, yes. I’ve been there,
And many scientific things I’ve seen there.
I’m glad you asked me that. Yes yes indeed ...
‘And on he gabbled as if ripped on Speed,
While David introduced his next sensation,
GREER GARSTLEIGH, Queen of Women’s Liberation!
She towered nine feet seven in her clogs.
Her clogs were carved by Dayaks out of logs.
Her hair was something scalped from Tiny Tim.
Her hat had bobbing corks around the brim.
Her highly coloured language I’ve toned down
By ‘blipping’ words upon which you might frown.
‘Well (BLIP) me dead. It’s good to see yer, mate!’
Drawled Garstleigh,
I only just flew in from (BLIP)ing Rome.
That (BLIP) the Pope was throwing an At Home.
It sounded like a love scene from a Western:
I had to talk to (BLIP)ing Charlton Heston.
But anyway, (BLIP) that!’
‘And who’s the (BLIP)ing bitch with the blue eyes?’
Dross told her while the screen with flares and flickers
Absorbed the fact that Garstleigh wore no knickers.
‘Oh YOU’RE Flick Fark!’
But help me put my (BLIP)ing mind at rest.
Just tell me how you get your (BLIP)ing rocks off.
I bet you (BLIP)ing tease their (BLIP)ing cocks off.’
‘Fantastic, super, wonderful, tremendous,’
Dross drivelled,
And now all you at home are judge and jury
As once again we welcome Yuri Spuri,
The guru who’ll attempt to bend a spoon
While closely scrutinized by Patrick Loon —
And here’s the lass whose spoon might soon be bent.
It’s Pauline Plank from Cretinthorpe, in Kent.’
As Yuri Spuri went into his act
The screen was filling up till it was packed.
Celebrities came pouring on in streams —
The fabled faces of Flick’s fondest dreams.
Here came the tasteful writer Jolly Molly,
Her hair cerise, her cleavage full of holly.
Beside her strode her rival Jilly Silly,
And shrilly they swapped gossip willy-nilly.
And Eric More and Ernie Less ran in
And did their bit to swell the welling din:
Their guest was ‘Jelly’ Belly, jaunty jazz-man,
The raunchy, roly-poly razz-ma-tazz man,
Who sang a song and sniffed a strange white powder,
Looked blank, and sang the same song even louder.
And MICHAEL LIKEABLE and RUSSELL HUSTLE
Came rushing on with that important bustle
So long associated with those two
Exponents of the Gormless Interview.
They both sat down to Interview each other
And then they Interviewed each other’s mother.
‘I read some clippings just before the Show,’
Said Michael,
My father fairly well. Is that true, Mum?’
And here he writhed as if his bum was numb.
‘That isn’t your Mum,’
But through the fuss drilled Dross’s high-pitched whine:
‘Amazing, super, welcome, unbelievable,
Tremendous, great, fantastic, inconceivable.
Liz, Richard, Princess Grace, Maria, Ari,
Ted, Harold, Billie-Jean, Rod, Glenda, Larry:
Success, Success, Success ... ’
From Dross’s ears and whistled from his nose.
One eye popped out and dangled on a wire
And from the socket leapt a tongue of fire.
Depressed mechanics clustered all about him.
Too big to stop, the Show went on without him.
Flick found herself surrounded by the Jet Set,
The Just-how-rich-and-famous-can-you-get Set.
They pumped her hand and kissed her peachy cheek
And hugged and pummelled her till she was weak.
She finally discovered with a shock
That Yuri Spuri’s foot was up her frock,
But hadn’t thought of how she might protest
Before her chin was pressed against the chest
Of someone purring like a giant panda:
HUGE WELSHMAN, B.B.C. Supreme Commander!
‘Miss Fark, a marvellous evening, is it not?
Wuff wuff. Woof woof. Warf warf. Eh eh? What what?
My life-long friend, wuff wuff, and singing star
DICK JIGGLE has admired you from afar.
For far too long, what what? Warf warf? Eh eh?
Flick, Dick; Dick, Flick. Well Dick, what do you say?’
As Flick Fark turned to greet this great musician
Her azure eyes grew round with recognition.
She found it hard to quell a nervous giggle,
So fearsome were the features of Dick Jiggle.
Dick Jiggle’s hulking mouth was wet with drool,
A half-inflated children’s swimming-pool
Extending three feet wide below his nose.
It also seemed to Flick a length of hose
(Or some long nozzle like a petrol bowser’s)
Was prominent inside his satin trousers.
Dick Jiggle’s Band was called the Bleeding Gits.
Dick Jiggle was its voice:
Cough up yer number, swee’ar’, ’n’ I’ll call yer.
Tonigh’ I’m giggin’, uvverwise I’d ball yer.’
Our darling would have passed out with disgust,
But then a man whose bearing won her trust
Cracked Jiggle with a silver-headed cane
Across the bone that might contain his brain.
‘Let’s mind our manners, nit-wit. Now my dear —
My name’s RUSS KENNEL.’
She faced the bravest ever Film Director,
Beside whom Hector looked like a defector.
Russ Kennel was a synonym for Boldness:
His shamelessness exposed the age’s Coldness.
Compared to Kennel, Bunuel was baloney,
Antonioni trite, Fellini phoney.
But why should so committed an auteur,
Flick wondered, want to meet a girl like her?
‘The script of my next film is all prepared,’
Said Kennel,
The title? “WOLFGANG”. Subject? Mozart’s Life.
Young Dick is Mozart. You are Mozart’s wife.’
‘Oh dear,’
‘Mais certainement you ought!’

BOOK SEVEN

ACROSS the year that ’Wolfgang’ took to shoot
To draw a set of drapes would be astute.
It held the usual quota of frustrations
Attendant on Russ Kennel’s lucubrations,
But lacking space for giving you the low-down
On every crisis, trauma, brawl and show-down,
I’m bound to ask, alas, that you restrict your
Attention to one point — the finished picture.
The première was held in Leicester Square
And absolutely everyone was there.
I won’t enumerate the personalities:
So many of them came there were fatalities,
And who did what that evening and who with
Has long ago become the stuff of myth.
They say Marc Bolan sat with Ethel Merman
And Bolan wore chinchilla, Merman ermine.
They say Carl Foreman sat with Roger Corman.
They say that Martin Bormann was the doorman.
There isn’t any end to what they say.
The one thing certain — no one stayed away.
The place looked like the Mines of Solomon
Combined with Guy Fawkes Night in Babylon.
La Wart was Flick’s companion. The two ladies
Arrived in Katie’s midnight-blue Mercedes
Whose emerald piston-rings swept umpteen litres:
To park the thing you had to use three meters.
They took their places in the Royal Box —
Twin diamond-studded clouds of silver fox.
The best-dressed person in the place, however,
Was BERNARD BEAVER: also the most clever.
For Bernie is the wonder-boy of Fleet Street:
His wits are quick, his tiny feet are neat feet.
Of stature small, in height of brow immense,
He wears a pair of horn-rims like Clark Kent’s —
But doubtless would regard with utter loathing
The thought of using phone-booths to change clothing.
From Savile Row his suits come in three pieces:
They slice his valet’s fingers with their creases.
Pomaded, pampered, jewelled and watch-fob sized,
The Fourth Estate’s great past epitomized,
Young Bernie is Defoe, Shaw, Hazlitt, Swift
And Burke all caught together in a lift.
As London-looking as the old Old Bailey;
As brushed as Brummell, dapper as Disraeli;
A long Tradition’s final distillation,
He stands tall at the peak of his Vocation —
The star turn of the journalistic genus,
Big cheese, bee’s knees, ant’s pants and peacock’s penis.
But Bernie’s brain has one besetting vice:
A Pretty Face converts it to fried rice.
If Kiri te Kanawa did a jingle
For Tampax and released it as a single,
He’d say its greatness made his senses teeter
And made ‘Aïda’ sound like ‘Rio Rita’.
Tonight he’d come to pillory a mockery
And pelt it with bad fruit and broken crockery,
But when the lights went down he got excited —
And this is what, in darkness, he indited.
‘I’m at the very start bound to confess
That little else but agonized distress
Was what I felt prepared to undergo
While taking in at, as it were, a blow
The vivid Mr Kennel’s earthy vision
Of Mozart’s limpid, crystalline Precision.’
The prose of Bernard Beaver is Gibbonian,
Gymnastic, Euphuistic, Ciceronian.
His paragraphs most often aim at levity
By means of lengthiness instead of brevity.
Parentheses and clauses coil and wander
And slide around you like an anaconda.
‘The script, by Harold Half-Pint, raises doubts,
Since silences come spouting out in gouts
Too shorn of grist for the most seasoned tongue —
And all the tongues available are young,
So young! And, it appears, so unpropitious:
As Haydn it was surely injudicious
To seek the services of Tommy Steele,
And less wise still, one cannot help but feel,
To look for Mozart’s lyricist da Ponte
By dressing up the pugilist John Conteh.
As Colloredo, Mozart’s persecutor,
Cliff Richard must be (must he not?) too neuter,
Too bland no matter how hard he might strive.
And Mozart’s children are the Jackson Five.’
B. Beaver’s standard ploy, as you’ve just seen,
Is first to say how Wrong he might have been.
The second phase is when he Sees the Light
And very soon becomes completely Right —
Whereat he beats his breast with mock repentances,
While uttering long penitential Sentences.
‘The casting of the title role, supremely,
Unsettled me — depressed me most extremely —
For surely every gesture of Dick Jiggle’s
Must jar like Ronald Biggs portraying Biggles;
But even (or above all) his endeavours
Are shaped — and here my final heart-string severs —
By one (and in that “one” what Multiplicity!)
Fair happy soul — fair happy Name! — Felicity.
I hope she will not mind I so address her:
I wish that I were worthy to assess her.’
But Bernie didn’t mean those last few words:
His diffidence is strictly for the birds.
‘Costanze, Mozart’s wife and his tormentor,
As played by Miss Fark holds the picture’s centre.
She does not sing, she rarely speaks, she is —
And Warmth is hers as Genius is his.
By day she is the Artist’s Inspiration
Who opens up new vistas of sensation —
Audacities of wanton intercession
Which drive him to the heights of self-expression.
This emphasis is bold, indeed unheard-of,
Yet one which I would not have missed a word of.’
When Beaver blows his mind over a skirt
You have to duck the shrapnel or get hurt.
‘How shocking, and yet, somehow, how placating,
That Mozart, while engaged in copulating
With Schubert (finely played by Billy Fury)
And flagellating Chopin (Yuri Spuri),
Should shudder as his naked temptress licks
The crosspiece off a chocolate crucifix!
It is a phrase as warm as it is stark
That Mr Jiggle whispers to Miss Fark:
“No bullshi, baby, you’re the chick for me:
I fink I’ll go and write K. Four Five Free.” ’
Here Beaver’s style threw off the seventh veil,
Picked up a trumpet and began to wail.
‘By daylight in Vienna poor but buoyant,
At night the troubled Mozart is clairvoyant —
He hears the future Germany implicit
In what he writes and knows his Art illicit;
He dreams of being beaten up in alleys,
In Concentration Camps, at Party Rallies;
The general in command of the SS
Turns out to be (it is not hard to guess)
None other than his Light of Love, Costanze,
Who runs him over with a Mk IV Panzer
And does a goose-step jig on his remains
(While laughing at the stains that were his brains)
To themes excerpted from “The Magic Flute”:
And Miss Fark’s foot looks brilliant in a boot.
“Wake up, wake up, my Wolfgang,”
As drops of blood drip down her leather shorts.
He wakes to kiss her nightgown’s dainty hem,
Then rushes off to write his “Requiem” —
But Evil has forestalled the praise of God:
Some Nazi thugs (the German “Knockout” Squad)
With Wagner (Alice Cooper) at their head
Come back through time to fill him full of lead.
“Is this,”
The last shot is a lingering caress
That shows how Love and Art must come to this:
Miss Fark and Hitler (Gary Glitter) kiss.
The lights go up at last, and there you are —
To hail a Great New Cinematic Star.’
At this point Bernie blatantly let loose
A love-call like the cry of the Bull Moose.
‘Supposing that Miss Fark should touch my cheek,
I swear I should not wash it for a week.
Supposing that Miss Fark should kick my rear
I swear I should not wash it for a year.
Supposing ... ’ Had caused him to desist and look around.
He was alone. He climbed down from his seat
And scampered through the foyer to the street.
He taxied off toward the Barbican
To join the First Night Party. What a man!

BOOK EIGHT

THE epoch-making ‘Wolfgang’ First Night Thrash
Was thrown in the exotic rooftop stash
Of PETER BALLS, Theatre’s Uncrowned Prince —
The evening’s been a legend ever since.
The Barbican swarms up toward the Heavens
From Platforms all at sixes and at sevens —
Its windy Walkways hithering and thithering,
Its lonely plots of garden bravely withering.
The governing Conception is Confusion
Exalted to the level of Illusion,
A Shape-of-Things-to-Come that couldn’t wait —
Too much too soon, too little and too late.
But up where Balls hangs out, the life is sweeter.
There’s oodles more dolcezza in the vita.
His penthouse is a slice of Instant Karma,
And bigger than the Charterhouse of Parma.
The sheep-skin floor shuts out the world beneath.
The fancy drinks anaesthetize your teeth.
You gaze through walls of glass in proud elation
For miles across the brilliant conurbation
And everything you see looks hunky-dory —
There’s no one there to tell a different story.
The people who turned up that night to meet
Flick Fark were the élite of the élite.
They’d all met one another long before
Which made them want to meet her even more.
While Balls, attired in apron and chef’s hat,
Was busy barbecueing this and that,
Attentive Katie did the introductions —
But first she gave her charge discreet instructions.
‘Ce soir, carina, ogni Star on Earth
Is mad to meet you. Think von what that’s worth:
Artisti grandi begging you to do things.
But now, je pense, you should do mucho few things.
Let klugheit reign. Improve the shining hour.
Les hommes che hanno Talent may lack Power.’
The International Set milled all around,
All Beautiful, and all of them renowned.
The Celebrated bored the Celebrated
With old familiar scandal while they waited
To greet the new addition to their ranks:
They talked about their nest-eggs in Swiss Banks
And filled the air with well-connected malice.
Chief Clerk stood talking to Maria Callas,
Who’d recently been heard, when feeling mellow,
To sing the ‘Willow’ solo from ‘Otello’
While gazing at a piece of Aristotle
Onassis she kept with her in a bottle.
But now Chief Clerk urbanely turned to Flick
With manners that made Chopin look a hick.
‘Ah, what could be more pleasant,’
‘Than closely contemplating fair Miss Fark?
My dear, the sweet proportions of your head
Remind me of what Berenson once said —
That Raphael is the Classic of our Yearning.
Of lovely things there is no end to learning.’
The herd of supplicants in the vicinity
Concurred in thus assessing Flick’s Divinity,
But other words of love were soon to follow
So heartfelt they would make Chief Clerk’s sound hollow,
For now there gravitated to Flick’s chair
The Poet Laureate, Lord Teddybear.
A silence fell. Uncertain and short-sighted,
He fumbled, focused, fizzed, and then ignited.


‘Tonight all hail young Flick, whose eyes celestial
Arouse solicitude in the most bestial.
All hail her well-developed upper arms
That crush us uncomplaining ’gainst her charms.
Felicitous and sturdy village steeple!
And moss-grown at her feet lie we her people.

‘Tonight all hail young Flick with gestures votive:
Our last and dearest branch-line locomotive.
All hail her taut and vibrant racket-strings
While envying her lucky underthings!
Felicitous and scrumptious toasted tea-cake!
I’d like to know why no one’s giving me cake.

‘All hail the frou-frou of her farthingale!
Flick Fark, farouche fritillary, all hail!’


Applause, and then the brouhaha revived,
And still the well-known worshippers arrived
At Flick Fark’s pretty feet to offer praise,
Though few possessed the Poet’s gift of phrase.
For instance, here came large LORD ARNOLD FATMAN
A mandarin inscrutable as Batman,
Pronouncing Words of Wisdom in a mumble
That might have been a duodenal rumble.
‘But let me just say this much, if I may —
I think there is just one thing I should say —
I’m very pleased to meet you here tonight:
I’d like to say just that much, if I might.
And if I may, I’d just like to say this ... ’
And so the blubber brought forth ambergris.
Around they came and on and on they went:
Lord Butchfield talked to Andre Prevalent,
And there was Perry Prykke with Anna Pest,
And Mary Quim was promising George Best
His urine would do well as a cosmetic
For making trendy males smell more athletic.
(She’d done the same with David Hockney’s semen
But those who bought it weren’t exactly he-men.)
And over there the singularly sinister
Sir Geoffrey Ripoff, wetly smiling Minister
Responsible for guarding the Environment
(The very kind of fool-factotum Byron meant
When calling Castlereagh a vulgar eunuch),
Looked pleased as Chamberlain just back from Munich
To hear Sir Basil Spendthrift, Architect
(With stars and ribbons heavily bedecked),
Requesting leave to build a Top Rank Sauna
By moving Fingal’s Cave to Hyde Park Corner.
Sir Geoffrey gave his full permission willingly —
Uncovering his foul dentition chillingly.
And there were Marvin Grabb and Bumphrey Quarius,
Eclectic impresarios of various
Attempts mellifluous as warm molasses
To educate the clueless Viewing Masses —
And even now they both were hard at work
Persuading Balls’s rival PETER BERK
To let them screen his soon-forthcoming version
Of Goethe’s ‘Faust’ translated into Persian.
‘The actors,’
The audience stands in a lake on stilts.
The play will run for forty days and nights
And use a natural set — the Golan Heights.
About the cast I’ll have to tell you later —
But yes, I’ll want Flick Fark for Margarete.’
All wanted her, all courted her, save one —
And here dejection counterpoints the fun,
For someone sits unmoving in a corner
As if for his own death he were a mourner.
Ken Onan’s face is grey-blue like a clinker
And in his lap his boneless fingers tinker
Dispassionately with his wilting quill.
He has the Gift. Alas, he lacks the Will.
The Spirit of Right Reason cries, ‘Come Back,
The Dunces Reign! Return to the Attack!
Unseat triumphant Dullness from her saddle
And put the Fear of Wit in Fiddle-Faddle!’
But nothing takes his eye or primes his pen.
Most self-delighting and self-damned of men!
Since Onan, of all people, knows full well
The deepest hole and hottest seat in Hell
Are set aside specifically to cater
For him who to his Talent plays the traitor.
But that’s enough of that. The cheery Host,
While doing nameless things to Melba toast,
Expressed a wish our Darling should draw near him:
Balls knew that when he spoke folk liked to hear him.
He ladled ice-cream swans full of Beluga
And fantasized titanic plans like Kruger.
He conjured up a vision of a Playhouse
To make the Roundhouse look like a half-way house —
A Central Drama Complex of the Nation
Ten times as big as King’s Cross Railway Station!
‘I see a hundred golden domes and walls
And grateful people call them Ball’s Halls,’
Crooned Balls while soaking strawberries in champagne —
And Flick was scared he might have gone insane.
‘One concept will unite the whole Facility
In all Configurations — FLEXIBILITY.
For Play, for Panto, Opera, Costume Ball,
In Balls’s Halls there’ll be a hall for all.
The stages will go in and out and round
And swivel up and down without a sound —
A fluency whose actuating factor
Will be our own Plutonium Reactor.
The cost? Less than a thousand pounds a minute.
And every seat will have a toilet in it,
So nobody need leave for any reason.
We’ll make the sods stay put for the whole season.’
Flick Fark and everyone in the locality
Stood dumbstruck at the man’s originality.
‘My Halls will not just leave the world agog,’
Balls boasted,
A meeting-place to serve an Age of Doubt.
If they do not, for God’s sake kick me out.’
(Balls knew that to accomplish such a feat
Would need at least the U.S. Seventh Fleet.)
‘The rule applies with undiminished force
That Shakespeare will remain our primary source.
Our Policy is clear. We mean to be
Both fresh and loyal, faithful and yet free.
“King Lear”’s the play with which we will begin.
Which is, of course, where JONATHAN comes in.’
With difficulty Flick forbore to cringe
In terror at the sight of DOCTOR FRINGE.
He loomed before her like a basketballer
Who if unwound might well be even taller,
And in his bulging optics blazed unchecked
The flames of his amazing Intellect.
Imagine, if you will, the Brothers Mayo
Combined in partnership with Galileo;
Imagine, if you can, the mind of Plato
Combined with every I.B.M. in N A T O;
Imagine, if you dare, that Leonardo
Wore elevator shoes like the Mikado:
There might be just a chance that you’d be seeing
The altogether marvellous human being
Who held Flick’s hand and hauled her through the throng —
Expatiating as he loped along.
‘The matriarchal structures in “King Lear”
Aren’t really what at first sight they appear,’
Said Dr Fringe when nothing but the glazing
Was there before Flick’s eyes to stop her gazing
In wonder at the stunning midnight vista.
‘It’s obvious that Gloucester is Lear’s sister,
But what’s less evident, although essential —
The whole foundation of the play’s potential —
Is simply Edmund being a transvestite.’
Flick Fark stood next to Dr Fringe at chest-height
And strove to heed his message while her eyeline
Was ravished by the grandeur of the skyline:
The coruscating palisade of gems
That sweeps without a break beside the Thames
From Chelsea in the West East to the Docks —
A mountain-range of blazing tower-blocks.
‘The Oedipal cathexis,’ ‘Demands the gender-pattern be inverted.
I’m getting Larry to do Goneril,
And if John won’t do Regan, Alec will —
With Glenda or Diana as the Fool.
Well, will you join us? You seem rather cool.’
Flick smiled a puzzled smile.
If all the girls are men, then why use me?’
‘Good God,’
That’s what I’m on about. You play the King!’
He gestured like a crashing helicopter.
Flick started to say Yes, but something stopped her.
She knew her incarnation of this part
Could mark the dizzy apex of her Art,
And yet she heard an inner voice advise
That Destiny dictated otherwise.
She sent Fringe off to fetch another drink
And thereby gained some time in which to think.
Had Katie left? For once Flick was alone.
It seemed she must decide this on her own,
And in her head so many thoughts were swarming
Decisions could find little room for forming.
Her Heart, though, said her acting days were done:
She felt a whole new phase had now begun.
The larva had become the chrysalis
And now the chrysalis had come to this —
The moment of instinctive concentration
Preceding the exultant revelation,
The tremulous display of sun-shot wings.
Oh yes, she had her mind on other things —
Her solitude had formed a wall around her
That only Fate could pierce. And now Fate found her.
The flatterers outside that magic shield
Were hushed with jealousy to see it yield.
A Stranger stood beside her. Tall, thin-lipped,
Anonymous though scarcely nondescript,
He was the one and only unknown face
That Flick had so far seen in the whole place,
And yet she Knew. They reached out each to each.
Between these two there was no need for speech,
And though no word was spoken or bread broken
Undying Love was instantly awoken,
And Flick knew now she’d never play King Lear —
For Life was Fact, not Fiction. Life was here.
And so for joy our dearest Darling cried.
And so Sir Humphrey Highrise claimed his bride.

BOOK NINE

THE scene in which Flick ceased to be a spinster
Was set, by Proclamation, at Westminster.
The venue for her nuptials was the Abbey —
A solemn structure normally quite shabby,
But loud that day with fanfares and carillons
And brought ablaze by kilowatts in millions.
Flick’s Wedding was a Highrise Enterprise:
It beggared breath. Description it defies.
It was a waking dream, a psychodrama,
A Second Coming staged in Cinerama,
An all-time, all-star Spectacle of Love
That Berk and Balls directed hand in glove,
With Fringe and Storkins working on the script —
While at a vast control desk in the crypt
(From which a telecast went Nationwide)
Russ Kennel sat, Huge Welshman at his side.
No analgesic short of acupuncture
Would help you to confront, at this late juncture,
The prospect of the Guest List read at length —
And just as you lack patience, I lack strength,
So why don’t we forget the Whirlwind Finish
And simply let the dénouement diminish?
My Muse can no more rise to this occasion
Than re-create the Normandy Invasion:
The utmost I can do is just Suggest
And let your recollections do the rest —
For you, as I did, saw, in all its splendour,
The pageant that joined Flick to her Defender.
You know she did not flinch and would not falter
When faced with the long progress to the Altar,
But merely paused when floating through the door —
And then seemed wafted on by what she wore.
‘And here she is, and my this girl’s got style!’
Said B.B.C. Reporter David Vile.
‘And from our viewpoint high up in the Apse ... ’
Said B.B.C. Reporter Michael Lapse.
‘... She still looks the most Golden Girl of all!’
Said B.B.C. Reporter Stuart Gall.
‘She most ’ave took, ee-ooh, days to get ready!’
Said B.B.C. Reporter Wearing Eddie.
Not days. A week. Towards her bridal gown
The reckless senses ran intent to drown —
The mind had no recourse except to melt.
The dress was fashioned by Karl Lagerfeld
From silk-lined silk on top of silk-lined satin.
The day he finished work he burned the pattern
And blinded all the seamstresses who’d sewn it
So no one else but Flick could ever own it.
The way in which some hailstones are so small
You can’t believe they ever fell at all,
The seeded pearls were clear and icy bright
That added white to white and light to light
And made the collar, bodice, sleeves and train
Illustrious as raindrops in the grain:
Except the outer skirt from foot to waist
Was split and turned back so the lining faced
Ahead, the hemline caught up to the wrist —
And here the silk became an analyst,
Partitioning the glare like Newton’s prism
Into a delicate chromatic schism
Where pools of pastel opals seemed to wander
Like waterlilies painted by Charles Conder
Flick’s face was hidden by a storm of veils —
Thank goodness, since by now my power fails
To reproduce the Vision Unalloyed
That clutched the elbow of Lord Polaroid,
Whose role it was to Give the Bride Away
(Which is, of course, the best part in the Play).
Behind them came the Bridal entourage
With Katie Wart decisively in charge.
She smiled a smile of mingled pain and pride
And looked almost as gorgeous as the Bride.
Her retinue of matrons and of maids
Wore everything from braids to hearing aids.
They stretched back to the doorway, and from there
Along Whitehall, twice round Trafalgar Square
And almost to the Ritz in Piccadilly.
In front came Jolly Molly, Jilly Silly,
My Lady Freesia and Mary Quim —
And after that my memory grows dim.
‘Hello, fantastic, welcome!’
Was back to show the others who was boss.
‘And what we’re seeing here is fascinating.
The Groom and his Best Man are gravely waiting,
And gravely now towards them like a cloud
She gravely moves through this amazing crowd.
And there’s the Groom in close-up, looking brave.
He also looks appropriately Grave.
I hear he’s giving her a supertanker.
For fuller news of that, here’s ALAN WHANKER.’
The mouth that now chimed in wore a moustache:
Its teeth were militant, its tones were harsh.
The horn-rims poised above it were Dynamic:
The piercing view they took was Panoramic.
For Alan Whanker trots around the Globe
In never-ending search of things to Probe.
He claims to be on hand where grit is nittiest —
But usually shows up where girls are prettiest,
And writes a script whose lack of information
Is overlaid with lush alliteration.
‘So fabulous Flick Fark, the fragile foundling —
The girlish, grinning, gawky, gangling groundling —
And haughty Humphrey Highrise — hermit head
Of huge hegemonies — are well-nigh wed.
For heritor-hidalgo-hierarch
Sir Humphrey and for fetching Fräulein Fark —
The pertly pouting pet of Pimlico —
The Countdown’s over: it’s “All Systems Go”.’
The couple met like figures in a frieze.
They turned and sank discreetly to their knees
While Archie Cant went into his routine.
He wore the self-same drag to crown the Queen:
A family could have camped inside the cope,
The mitre would have paralysed the Pope.
If ever there’s been more outlandish clobber
Barabbas was a priest and Christ a robber.
The crowd were rocked as Archie did his thing —
And then he asked the Best Man for the Ring.
Lord Fruitcake reached into his waistcoat pocket,
Took out a box and fumbled to unlock it.
The contents radiated luminosity
Which seemed to drain his movements of velocity
As if that multifaceted effusion
Had bruised his mighty brain like a contusion.
Lord Fruitcake in the diamond had detected
His Face a hundred thousand times reflected —
A multiple bombardment of Humility
Reducing him forthwith to immobility.
They carried him away stiff as a board
And flew him to Morocco to be thawed.
But meanwhile Archie Cant had tied the knot
While making sure the cameras got the shot.
‘Felicity and Humphrey, you may kiss.
This is my final gig. I can’t top this.’
By reverent fingertips the veils were raised
And on his prize Sir Humphrey shyly gazed.
And what have I to do now but admit
There is a time for grief, and this is it?
The distances are all so deep and wide
From which the chances race that coincide
To shape and for a moment fix in space
The breath-bereaving, death-denying Face —
The Face that leaves us rooted to the spot
(Benumbed by what it is and we are not),
Forgetting, as we view such flawless form,
Its molecules are each a whirling storm
And what connects them up must come undone:
That limpid skin is boiling like the Sun.
The poets of these last three thousand years —
The codgers and the colts, the kooks and queers —
Are linked by one delight, share one distress:
They see the holocaust in Loveliness.
To trace the outline of the holy fire
And sing the desperation of desire;
To scan the clustered atoms poised for flight
Before they scatter back into the night;
To watch the star-burst with unshielded eyes —
The lyricist does that until he dies.
It’s striking, when you bring these things to mind,
That so few major bards have wound up blind.
There’s Homer, Milton ... I suppose there’s Heine,
Provided that you don’t find Heine minor ...
But anyway, where was I? They embraced,
And mutually the Kiss was shaped and placed —
A gentle intermixture of bacteria
The sight of which induced wide-spread hysteria.
The music raged again without reprieve,
And as the magic couple turned to leave
The atmosphere grew stiff with Eastern smells
And purple smoke emitted by the spells
That Yuri Spuri cast to ward off menaces
While Polaroid read from the Book of Genesis.
With decibels that chilled you to the bone
Dick Jiggle sang ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’
A new Hit Single for the Bleeding Gits —
While in the font swam Shane Gould and Mark Spitz.
The song spread to the choir and congregation
And out along the ether to the Nation —
The sort of sound at which one simply chokes.
And through it all the Organ of Jess Ffolkes
Was roaring till his fingers were in rags:
Resplendent from the Abbey floor’s worn flags
To where the fan-vault flaunts its Gothic tangle
His Instrument stood upright at an angle
Precipitous, vertiginous, funicular —
A perfect piece of English Perpendicular.
‘And so sweet Cinderella plucks Prince Charming,’
Whined Whanker in tones meant to be disarming,
‘And so this nubile nonesuch nereid
Who nabbed His Natty Nibs like no one did —
This nervy novice of the nouveau riche —
Now nimbly nets a nifty, nobby niche:
Nocturnal knick-knack for a neo-Nero.
Tonight they fly to Rio de Janeiro —
And that bit, I’m assured, they’ve not rehearsed.’
And off he flew himself, to get there first.

BOOK TEN

WHAT Lady Highrise did that night or next
Is no fit matter for the present text.
The happy pair found Whanker in their bed.
They kicked him out and then climbed in instead,
But how they managed later I’ve no clue
And wouldn’t tell you even if I knew —
For Joy in Love is parcelled out unfairly
Like any other gift, and very rarely
In strict accordance with our just deserts:
A view, I think, which, even if it hurts,
Is better than supposing sensual bliss
Must be a thing the crass are bound to miss —
A psycho-physical Eleven Plus
They fail because they are not nice like us.
Such notions are attractive but mechanical,
Which makes them, when the chips are down, tyrannical —
And though my poem has a Moral Aim
It’s not as keen as that to place the blame.
What blame there is I first put on the Fate
That made Flick Fark impossible to hate:
The world could give her only adoration.
Her brain was liquefied with approbation
Until she had just Instinct left to think with —
Which barely even knows which eye to wink with.
I don’t say that her impulses were mean:
They weren’t that for a minute, as we’ve seen.
Forgive me if my logic is abrupt —
I simply call her Innocence corrupt.
She served to prove the point that what is flawless
Is in its essence likely to be lawless.
She had no need of tricks to help her climb:
Her inner self was climbing all the time,
And now to call her back is past our powers —
And she is Lady Highrise of the Towers.
She still lives on the spot where she was born,
And yet as far away as dusk from dawn.
For Highrise House leaves Pimlico behind
And soars so high you think you’ve lost your mind,
Until you reach the penthouse at the top.
It stands on what was once a pastry shop,
Or so, at any rate, the legend goes —
There’s no one left nearby who really knows,
And Lady Highrise never meets the Press.
But there, if anywhere, is her address.
Up there somewhere is where she has her home
When she is not in Paris, New York, Rome,
At Klosters, Courchevel, Cortina, Cannes:
Her movements these days have a global span
And constantly around the world they wend —
Yet Highrise House is where they start and end.
There comes a day, blind Homer lets us know,
The Topless Towers of Ilium lie low.
Until it comes, the fortunate live high
And fool themselves, because they breathe the sky,
The atmosphere is clean down to the ground.
Their double-glazing damps the rising sound
Of people in the streets who curl up croaking —
Or else they put it down to too much smoking.
The healthy find it hard to like the sick.
And who, you ask, have I liked except Flick?
When all is said and done, is it not true
That I myself have fallen for her too?
A question that compels a pause for thought
And doomed appeals towards a higher court,
Since many a young poet picked from birth
To speak out for the Wretched of the Earth
Has found when Earth acclaims him as a speaker
His interest in the Wretched growing weaker.
He thereupon revises his aesthetic
And claims the Arts are bound to be hermetic —
By which he means he finds it far less stressful
To simply settle back and be successful.
Are Talent, Wealth and Beauty triple tyrants,
Forever tied in tripartite alliance?
Are men condemned to live and die by Luck
And loathe it only when it runs amok?
Is Fortune always to be to propitiated?
Why can’t we fight it? How was it initiated?
These bones of philosophical contention
Will last as long as Time is a dimension.
From slowly spooling stereo cassettes
Directly patched into their neural nets,
Our dreaming children locked in cold cocoons
Will hear such questions like remembered tunes.
That catechistic litany will keep
Their minds alert in Cryogenic Sleep —
Conundrums they can endlessly unravel
To help them kill the light-years as they travel.
But back to Earth. It’s time to call it quits
And let soft pillows soothe my cudgelled wits.
That she was Dangerous without Duplicity
Is really the whole point about Felicity,
Which could mean even angels are a risk —
So if you meet one, give it a quick frisk.

You’ve just seen a Russ Kennel Presentation For Central Drama Complex of the Nation. The art direction was by Berk and Balls. Interiors were shot at Balls’s Halls. For ‘David Dross’ our thanks to ‘Dr Who’. For Patrick Loon our thanks to Whipsnade Zoo. Lord Fruitcake supplied samples of pornography And Yuri Spuri did the trick photography. Dick Jiggle wrote and sang ‘Yer Got Great Tits’. The backing tracks were by the Bleeding Gits. Lord Polaroid is now in ‘Roll on Sex’ And ‘Son of Roll on Sex Meets Madame X’ By Stanley Storkins at the Open Space — And Magicote created Miss Wart’s face. Miss Fark’s gowns were by Mary Quim and ‘Chloe’. Miss Garstleigh’s bra was lent by David Bowie. This poem was a Highrise Enterprise. No wonder it was all a pack of lies.