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Clayton. Not that Clayton was hard up. Far from it. He had more than enough money. The royalties from Joking Aside showed no sign of drying up. He had lost count how many countries the series was shown in around the world and with DVD sales continually on the up, even if he never wrote another successful script again, he would be comfortable for the rest of his life.
    But he wanted to write. He missed the buzz that writing used to give him. His life felt meaningless without a script in front of him. It was his identity. And it was thanks to Bazza that he couldn’t write. He had taken it badly when Bazza had ended the partnership. At first he had thought it was a joke, that his old mate was playing a number on him. He had even checked their office for hidden cameras, certain that Bazza was setting him up for some kind of funny-ha-ha candid TV moment. When the truth finally hit Clayton, that Bazza wasn’t mucking about, he was gutted. To his eternal shame, he had resorted to begging Bazza to reconsider. “But we’re the golden ticket,” he’d said. “We’ve got a licence to print money right now. Why would you give that up?”
    “It’s not about the money,” Bazza had said. “I want to write new things.”
    “Then let’s do it together. Just as we’ve always done.”
    “No, I want to write on my own. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for some time. I’m sorry, Clayton, it’s over. We’ve gone as far as we can together. We had a good run, but let’s look to the future now.”
    In the days, weeks and months that followed, Clayton swung from high optimism that he was free to write the best stuff he’d ever written—now that he wasn’t carrying such a useless co-writer—to feeling adrift and incapable of writing a single line of dialogue. It wasn’t long before he ran dry of optimism and all he had left was a debilitating fear that he would never be able to write again.
    Then his parents died, one after the other in obscenely quick succession. One minute they were both alive and nagging him to visit more often; the next his father died of a heart attack and two months later his mother suffered a massive stroke and died a week later. It was then that he discovered that while they had both been supremely proud of what he had achieved, they hadn’t trusted it. To them, it hadn’t seemed like a proper job. After his mother’s funeral, while he’d been staying at the house where he’d grown up, he had found a building society book. It was a joint account and it had over four hundred and fifty thousand pounds in it. Every month, regular as clockwork, a cheque had been paid into the account. It was the exact same amount Clayton had sent his parents every month to provide them with a bit of luxury, holidays, a new car, new clothes, that kind of thing. But here was the evidence that they hadn’t spent a penny of his success. Many times he had offered to buy them a new house, somewhere in the country or by the sea, but they’d refused, saying there was nothing wrong with the house they had. There had been a handwritten note contained within the pages of the account book—written by his mother—and it said that when they died, the money they had saved was for Clayton, just in case things hadn’t worked out for him.
    If there had been any uncertainty before that he was experiencing a phase of writer’s block, losing his parents and squaring up to his own mortality ensured there was not a shred of doubt from then on.
    Meanwhile, Lucky Bazza’s writing career went from strength to strength. If they had once been the crowned kings of comedy writing, Lucky Bazza was now the golden boy who couldn’t put a foot wrong. While Clayton was deeply mired in a state of inertia, Bazza had written a film script for a major box-office hit and had thrown himself into trying to save Africa, along with just about every other comedian, actor, writer and musician in the country.
    Never mind saving Africa, Clayton had his