Re-introducing
Mortimer & Mears
Good reading,
|
Dick: Please!!! Not such large print. I haven't fully recovered from "The Bentilean" Christmas Party yet.
Sarah: Too much to drink?
Ed: No thanks, he's had too much already.
Dick: Blummin' heck, I'm still drunk! And seeing the most horrible, crawling, slimy thing.
Ed: It's me, the editor.
Dick: Arrrrrgh!! It's real!
Ed: How would you like to spend the New Year in a manor house? Or haven't you read Elsie Procter's article?
Dick: I'm sorry, your Crawling, Sliminess.
Ed: I'm warning you.
Sarah: Ignore him, Your Editorness, and tell us why you've called us out of the blue like this. I thought the next issue wasn't due out 'til Summer '92.
Dick: Yes, and why's the mag shrunk? I've been all the way through and can't even find a Poety Page.
Ed: There isn't one. Just the odd ode inserted to break the monotony. And you two are here because our wonderful and dynamic publisher, RM
Dick: Raving Megalomaniac!
.....has made his New Year's Resolution to develop "The Bentilean" into a more newsy, topical, and professional magazine -- and increase its circulation to rival to that of the Bentilee Bulletin.
Sarah: But why call us up? And why, as Dick asked, as the mag shrunk?
Ed: The mag's shrunk because he's planning to publish one once every two weeks now, for at least the next three months, and eight pages should just be the right size for this -- more would be too much, less hardly worth the effort.
Dick: It never is.
Ed: And you've been invited along to add a little light relief to this, the first issue of what R.M.'s calling "The Bentilean" mini-mag.
Dick: But what can we be doing? We've got no script, again, and the author's gone off on holiday with the new designer woman, Molly.
Sarah: I didn't know they were so close.
Dick: They aren't, but you know what these writer-performers are like, always giving themselves the best parts. And Molly has some of the best parts I've ever seen!
Have you forgotten about me?
Sarah: Who said that?
Me! Your dynamic and
wonderful publisher, RM.
Dick: It's the Raving Megalomaniac!!
RM: Watch your tongue, you. I thought this script was going to be all about me and the new mini-mag, and here you're going off at tangents about the author and the new designer woman, Molly.
Dick: Ah, well, we were just filling in 'til you arrived. Weren't we, Sarah?
Sarah: Sheer, desperate ad-libbing to mask our eager anticipation.
Dick: Do you know, if you'd crawled any lower then, nobody'd been able to read you?
RM: I'm warning you! Any more snide comments and you could be one of the changes round here.
Dick: Don't threaten me! Without me, you'd have to give the mag away to people.
Ed: We do already. That is why you don't get paid, you know.
Sarah: And we though he'd just sent our cheques 2nd Class. But what's all this about changes?
Ed: He means more news, more features, more community info, less mindless gibberish!
Dick: You can't do that!! What'll we do for a living?
Sarah: I have a dog and useless wastrel to support.
Ed: Dick'll just have to find somewhere else to live.
Dick: I'll smash his face in!!
RM: That's not what I meant at all.
Ed: No?! Hold the front page!!
RM: Why?
Ed: Sounds like news to me.
Dick: He's been reading my jokebook again, "Frankie Howerd's Greatest Titters, 1872".
Sarah: Don't you mean 19-72 ?
Dick: There's none of them that new!
RM: No, what I had in mind was semi-naked women.
Sarah: I won't do it!!
Dick: Besides, you'd never fit her on the page.
He doesn't mean her.
Dick: Who said that?!
RM: Our latest asset, Samson Fox.
Sarah: Shouldn't that be Sam?
RM: No, she's bigger than her! Show them, Samson.
Sarah: He's gone all BIG and Stiff.
Ed: Please!! This isn't The Sunday Sport, you know.
Dick: We can tell from this rubbish we have to perform.
Rupert said that, if I was good, I could
have the entire centre pages to myself.
Dick: Rupert!!? I wondered why he was wearing that red scarf and them there yellow trousers.
Ed: Last warning.
Don't let him fool you, if you're 'good', you won't even last to the end of this sketch -- nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more
I don't know what you mean,
our relationship is purely
professional, like a boss
and his secretary.
Dick: I know a secretary who got made pregnant by her boss, twice!! A Mrs. Pendlebury it was. Mr. Pendlebury's boss was most upset.
Sarah: His boss was upset?
Dick: Yes. Mr. & Mrs. Pendlebury has supposed to have been sorting out theit in-and-out trays at the time, and the photocopier's never been the same since!
Can you say things like that
in a magazine?
Dick: You can when nobody reads it. Anyways, your charms may be great, but why do you need two pages?
RM: Well, semi-naked would just be the beginning.
You mean, I'd have to go
completely naked?
RM: Soft focus, one leg over an armchair rest, your hair teasingly not quite hiding your left nipple, it'd be very tasteful.
Sarah: Have you ever thought of a cruise round the Canary Islands on a small yacht?
RM: Think of it: together we could grind our rivals into the ground, with your attractions -- first the Bentilee Bulletin, The Advertiser, the Evening Sentinel, the Beano & Dandy; then onward to a national magazine -- The RM Times -- and International -- a Euro-Bentilean!! -- then into satellite television, cable television, Worldwide Radio!!! And you; you could be Britain's first nude chatshow hostess; Calendar Girl to millions of macho mechanics; video star, and the voice for all those lucrative 0-8-9-8 numbers!
{Dick: Sad, isn't it? They can land a man on the moon
but they still don't a cure for the Raving Mad and
Chronically self-deluded.}
I just can't do itt, my
mother's still alive.
RM: Then you're both fired! And Dick as well.
Oh, what will I do? All I've
got going for me is my body.
Dick: Rubbish!! Let me be your Professor Higgins and we'll plumb your hidden depths together; discover your unsuspected talents, and prove to you and the world that you're a Mind -- with brains -- not just a body.
Sarah: I've obviously mis-judged you all these episodes. Such feeling, and not a single double entendre or sleazy, sexist comment!
Dick: No point. They'd never print the depths I'm really planning to plumb.
Bring me sunshine...
Sarah: He'll never change. Do you think RM
or Samson will be back again?
Ed: Will any of us, after an ending like that?
Sarah: Ah, well. At least he didn't do the one
about the feminist, the Hell's Angel, and the
transvestite vicar.
Ed: He's saving that for next time.
Copyright John Steele 1992, 1999
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