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regime.’
    ‘I can’t read it.’
    ‘Yeah; I used to think the smudges were the result of tears, but then I realised it was probably just drool. Least it’s not written in green ink.’
    ‘What did you do?’
    ‘Suggested Lynyrd Skynyrd and Mountain should appear on a double bill.’
    Nikki looked at me blankly.
    ‘Well, you had to be there,’ I sighed. ‘Before your time anyway, child.’
    ‘Lynyrd Skynyrd were a band from the States whose plane flew into a hillside,’ Phil supplied, looking up briefly from his Guardian . ‘They wrote a song called “Sweet Home Alabama”, seen as a Confederate reply to Neil Young’s “Southern Man”, which was an indictment of Southern racism.’
    ‘Ah-hah,’ Nikki said. I had the strong impression we might as well have been talking about ancient Greece.
    ‘Phil has all the annoying attributes of Encarta without the ease-of-turning-off facility,’ I told her.
    ‘Start talking about your sex life, Ken; that usually does the trick,’ Phil said, reaching for another piece of chewing gum.
    ‘Oh yeah, and he smokes,’ I said. ‘Phil, isn’t it time for your next nicotine patch?’
    He glanced at his watch. ‘Nope. Eighteen minutes, forty seconds to go. Not that I’m counting.’
    We were in the show’s office in the Soho Square Headquarters of Capital Live!, part of The Fabulous Mouth Corporation complex in what used to be the United Film Producers building. Afternoon; Phil - who trawls the press assiduously for material before the show - then goes on to read the broadsheets afterwards. Unforgivable.
    Assistant Kayla - a droopy-eyed über-fem-geek forever in graded shades and camo baggies - was on standard afternoon perpetual phone duty, hitting and hitted, scribbling notes and talking in a quietly intense monotone.
    Nikki shook her head and hobbled towards the next frame on the office wall. She was down to one crutch now, but still lame. Her plaster had been covered in a variety of multi-coloured messages. She was here because I knew she was a Radiohead fan and Thom Yorke had been coming in to talk on our lunchtime show. Only now, we’d just heard, he wasn’t, so the best I could offer the girl was a tour round the place, culminating here in the narrow, much partitioned and generally broken-up space where Phil, myself, our two assistants and the occasional back-up researcher put the show together each day. From here we had a fine view of the rain-stained, white-glazed bricks of the light-well, though if you squatted down by the windows and looked up, you could see the sky.
    The office walls were mostly covered in posters for Indie bands I had never heard of - I suspected Phil only hired assistants who heartily despised all the music we played; it was one of his little rebellions against the system - however, we did have (as well as the office-equipment mandatory portrait of our Dear Owner, Sir Jamie) a few Sony awards, donated gold and platinum discs from artists and bands who’d been cruelly deceived by their record companies into thinking we’d helped them with their careers, and - what I was genuinely by far the most proud of - a modest but high-quality collection of framed landmark hate mail.
    ‘This one’s a lawyer’s letter,’ Nikki said, frowning.
    ‘Just a sample,’ muttered Phil.
    ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’d suggested that if you speeded up “You Are The Sunshine of My Life” by Stevie Wonder, you got the main riff from “Layla” by your man Clapton. There was talk of legal action, but it passed.’
    ‘Duane Allman,’ Phil said.
    ‘What?’ I asked him.
    ‘Came up with the riff; not Clapton. Allegedly.’
    ‘You know, the lips are particularly rich in blood vessels, Philip; you could usefully stick that nicotine patch there.’
    Nikki nudged me hard with one elbow and nodded at the next Frame of Shame. ‘That one?’
    ‘Ah, my first death threat,’ I said with what I hoped sounded like undue modesty. ‘A particularly proud