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smiles. ‘Today we welcome two debutants, two debutants who are making their very first appearance on the show,’ he added tautologously. ‘Jean-Paul Gascaud of the Moulin Verte in Putney, and Henry Pratt, of the Café Henry in Soho. Our first question is for you, Sally, blah blah blah. Blah blah blah. Correct. Two points. Jean-Paul, a nice easy one from the world of French letters. What French writer blah blah blah?’
    Henry was relieved to find that they weren’t actually going to be asked questions during the rehearsal.
    ‘And now, a brand new round,’ said Dennis Danvers. ‘We ask all our contestants to give us the CV, the life story, of a fictional chef invented by them. We’ve given them advance notice beforehand of this one, so that they can come up with something really good. This should be enormous fun.’ He gave them an evil smile. ‘What gems have you conjured up for us, Henry Pratt, blah blah blah, blah blah blah?’
    Henry shivered. He had thought that the little idea he’d been working on was brilliant. Suddenly it seemed desperately unfunny.
    As they drifted away at the end of the perfunctory rehearsal, Henry approached the other debutant.
    ‘Have you ever seen the programme?’ he asked.
    ‘Of course not. It’s terrible,’ said Jean-Paul Gascaud.
    ‘How do you know it’s terrible if you’ve never seen it?’
    ‘I sent for tapes. I could hardly watch. For idiots. About idiots. By idiots.’
    Arrogant French bastard, thought Henry.
    ‘I’ll tell you how bad it is,’ said Jean-Paul Gascaud. ‘It’s a hit on French television. You will be brilliant. I will be brilliant. It will be, as you English say, a piece of piddle. Excuse me.’
    He went off and kissed Denise Healey suavely on both cheeks. Henry found himself walking beside Bradley Tompkins.
    ‘Nervous?’ asked Bradley Tompkins sympathetically.
    ‘A bit.’
    ‘It’s natural first time. I was very nervous when I began,’ said Bradley Tompkins, and he smiled warmly. Henry thought that he might have been wrong to dislike the man on sight. ‘I was thrust straight in at the deep end, of course, starring in my own show. You’ll remember it:
Bradley on the Boil
.’
    ‘No. I must have missed it. Maybe I was out.’
    ‘Four series of thirteen programmes. Fifty-two programmes in all.’
    ‘Ah.’
    ‘Maybe you go out a lot.’
    ‘No, I … well of course, as a chef, I am busy most evenings.’
    ‘They were on at 3.30 in the afternoon.’
    ‘Ah.’
    Henry had run out of excuses.
    ‘I bet you’ve got something really funny worked up for your fictional chef,’ said Bradley Tompkins.
    ‘Well, I don’t know. It did seem funny. I’m not so sure now.’
    ‘Would you like to run it past me? Would that be a help?’
    ‘Well …’
    Henry longed to try his routine out on a friendly face. Even in the corridor he felt embarrassed about launching into it, but he forced himself to sound confident.
    ‘It’s about a very shy Russian chef called Anonymous Borsch,’ he said. ‘That’s his nick-name, of course, and he was called it because there was an exhibition of the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch in Moscow.’
    ‘That’s very good,’ said Bradley Tompkins. ‘No, that’s really clever. Hilarious. That’ll go down a storm.’
    They had reached the door of Bradley Tompkins’s dressing room.
    ‘Are you going to the Green Room for a drink?’ Henry asked.
    ‘No. I daren’t drink before a show.’
    ‘I daren’t not.’
    ‘Actually I have a rather rigid routine on these occasions,’ confessed the bewigged chef. ‘Shit, then shave, then shower. Usually in that order. Not always, though. Occasionally I shave before I shit, but I always shave and shit before I shower.’
    ‘Thank you for sharing that with me,’ said Henry.
    ‘I believe in routine, but I don’t believe that one should be too rigid.’
    ‘I’m sure you’re never too rigid.’
    ‘Absolutely right. Got it in one.’
    And with that utterly meaningless remark,