30. Harry Lamb

What Ho Proles!

The car cut a corner at Piccadilly and a group of Chinese tourists somersaulted out of the way.
‘Steady on there,’ I cried to My Man who had taken my instructions to get me to London as quickly possible too much to heart. He had not unduly stressed a few cyclists since we’d entered the Congestion Zone but it was the sudden souring of the Anglo-Sino relationship that I really didn’t want adding to my bill. Mind you, I couldn’t fault the Chinese for their quick reactions. No wonder they’re so damn good around a ping pong table.

It was a judgement that could not, alas, be made for much of the resident population of London that Friday afternoon. The city is a place run by second class employees after one o’clock when streams of upper management types make their way from their offices to the cafes and bars where they take full advantage of the week’s end to indulge their liking for libation.

I had similar ambitions but with a higher purpose. I was in the city to hatch plans with an old friend who had been labouring for thirty seven years in the BBC news department.

The meeting had come about because I had suffered what is know as ‘a change of heart’, though I’ve always thought that expression sounds as messy as it does ruddy dangerous. Let’s just say that after I’d knocked Melvin Jenkins out of his chair with my slipper earlier that morning, I’d reconsidered my position. On reflection, his suggestion that I re-engage with the media seemed as sound as his not insubstantial gut, into which half of the Hall’s food supply had disappeared as I went about apologising to him and explaining the reasons why I have steel toecaps in my slippers.

The only place where I had any hesitation with Melvin’s idea was with his assumption that I’d accept any old BBC soak coming along to shadow me for a few days. You don’t go giving the BBC the right to roam where they like around your house. The next thing you know, they’d be filming Gardener’s World in your shrubbery and Monty Don’s treading mud on your best Persian.

I decided there and then that the only thing to do would be to get on the front foot with these television types. I rang up Melvin’s editor friend in the BBC and told his straight that I would agree to their proposal but with some conditions of my own.

Harry Lamb was condition number one.

Harry is a name you’ll fail to recognise unless you were watching the BBC news during the early 1980s. That’s when Harry managed to scoop the World’s press by landing on the Falkland Islands forty eight hours ahead of the British invasion force. His subsequent disappearance from our screens and his demotion within the Beeb can only be attributed to the rather juvenile overreaction of his bosses who couldn’t forgive him for confusing the Malvinas with the Maldives. When the six o’clock news went over to Harry that night, I suppose that they expected to see him through night vision goggles, standing on a cold beech on South Georgia, and not stood with a straw hat and Bermuda shorts, sucking on a cocktail straw as he was sunning himself on a beach overlooking the Indian Ocean.

Since then, he’s been backroom staff only.

‘J.P. This is an unexpected surprise,’ he said as he rose to greet me at the small restaurant off Oxford Street.

‘Is it, Harry, old friend,’ I said, clasping his hand and looking into his face left haggard by years inside the BBC. It was sad sight to see the decline of the man who had been such a player within the BBC’s news room that I’d once met Anna Ford at one of Harry’s parties. That was when I’d been straight out of Oxford and working in the City. Things had changed a lot since then. His frostbitten hair looked to have thinned on top, and his once keen eyes no longer darted around his narrow face with the same desperate need to find the next big story.

‘How’s life treating you?’ he asked, vaguely gesturing me to a seat. ‘I was ready to pack up for the weekend when the chief comes down to me and tells me he has a job for me.’

‘I bet you were a bit delighted.’

His face fell a bit and he started to nibble on his bottom lip. ‘To tell you the truth, J.P.,’ he sighed, ‘I don’t know how I felt. It’s been a while since they’ve given me any real stories to cover. Do you know about my slight cock up with the Falkland Islands fiasco?’

‘I know all about it,’ I nodded, ‘and rest assured, Harry, that nobody will hear that dreadful tale from my lips. I’ll carry that secret to my grave.’

My assurances seemed to cheer him up.

‘And you really want me to follow you around?’ he asked.

‘I think it’s a top idea of mine,’ I replied honestly. ‘The thing is, Harry, I’ve had a bit of bad press in the last week.’

‘I’ve had a bad press for the last twenty years,’ he answered and the thought of the footage of Mr. Mullin’s last flight remaining with me for that long gave me a cold shiver.

‘Then this is to our mutual benefit,’ I said to reassure the both of us. ‘I need you to give me a promotional spark to get the bad news out of people’s minds.’

‘Why? What did you do?’

I confess: I sat there with my mouth agape.

‘You must have seen it on the news,’ I said.

‘Can’t say I have,’ replied Harry, demonstrating how out of touch with the news cycle he had become.

‘But I murdered a duck,’ I whispered. ‘I threw it into the spinning turbine blades of a jet engine. I’m the talk of the internet. There are people making t-shirts with my face emblazoned with the word “duckicide”.’

‘Sounds terrible,’ said Harry. ‘People can be so cruel about the smallest mistakes you make.’
Harry’s situation sounded more desperate than I ever imagined it.

‘So, can I rely on you to give me some good coverage?’ I asked, worried that this fragile shell of a reporter might not be up to it.

‘I won’t need to leave the country?’ he asked, looking suddenly worried.

‘Rest assured, there’s no chance of that. This will all be as English as a prawn curry.’

He shrugged non-committally and set to ordering our food.

We ate exchanging small talk as friends often do when not seeing each other in a time. Finally, with the plates emptied and the coffees served, Harry sat back and wiped the corners of his mouth with his thumb and forefinger.

‘So, Mr. Harry Lamb,’ I said, feeling like I was beginning again to instil a bit of confidence into the man who had once given one of the finest war reports from a peaceful tropical beech. ‘Can we say you’ll do this for me?’

He picked up his coffee and blew a hole through the froth before he gave it a sip.

‘The thing is,’ he said with hushed voice and shifty eyes, ‘I don’t know if I can do it any more. I’m more used to working in the office. Life has passed me by. It’s a younger person’s game now. They don’t really want to give another chance to an old run down alcoholic. Answering the phones. That’s all I’m good for now.’

‘A man of you talents is wasted in backroom, Harry,’ I cried and as if to prove my point, I waved the waitress to my table.

‘My dear,’ I said, showing Harry how a gentleman wipes his mouth with a napkin. ‘Would you look at my friend here and would you care to guess his employment.’

She looked to examine Harry and I wondered if I’d chosen the right person to form such an important judgement. I’m firmly of the belief that eyebrows were not built to hold metal bolts.

‘Don’t make me larf! You mean e’s got a job?’ she asked, her brash Cockney riding roughshod over the English language and Harry’s ego.

‘See?’ said Harry, withering so much he nearly disappeared beneath the lip of the table.

‘She’s only teasing you, Harry, old sport,’ I said and aimed a warning look to the waitress. It was a look full of meaning regarding the potential of withheld tips from the Murgatroid pocket.

‘Oh, of course he has a job,’ she said. ‘I was only kidding with you. Didn’t know it was important, no I didn’t. I’d say your friend is some sort of management type. Perhaps a chairman of one of those big city corporation?’

‘Steady on there,’ I said.

‘Well, an accountant? A lawyer? A vet?’

‘What if I said he’s in TV?’

‘Oh, like repairs?’

‘I should have stayed in the office,’ whined Harry.

‘He is actually a reporter with the BBC.’

‘Oh,’ said the waitress, looking a bit disappointed. Her eyes suddenly lit up. ‘You don’t know that Ragi Omar, do you? My girlfriend don’t half have a crush on him.’

I waved her away. My point was made.

‘You see, Harry?’

‘See what? That was disastrous.’

‘Nonsense. It made my point perfectly. A woman looks at you and no longer sees the keen journalist on the hunt for a morsel for the nine o’clock news.’ I pulled at his collar and yanked at his tie. ‘Look at you, man! You’re the stuff that real undercover reporters are made of. You don’t have any of the snappy BBC pezazz. Your face holds more grim tales of woe than the whole of Jeffrey Archer’s prison diaries.’

He looked down at his off white shirt and trousers with a few too many alcohol stains.

‘Maybe you’re right,’ he muttered.

‘Of course I’m right and we’re going to see about getting you the work your shabby appearance so obviously deserves. We’re going to give the BBC news one of the greatest political documentaries ever made.’

‘Are we?’

‘Of course we are,’ I said. ‘Now drink up and do up your fly.’