Gasping - the Play (3 page)

CHIEF:
Do you think it’s worth going through
it again?

MISS HODGES:
Well Sir, you had scheduled a
brainstorming session ...

CHIEF
(glancing at watch):
What? good lord yes, that excited memo from young Philip ... Is he
here?

MISS HODGES:
He’s outside Sir.

CHIEF:
Well send him in girl, send him in.

MISS HODGES:
Certainly Sir Chiffley.

(She exits.
SIR CHIFFLEY
pats the ledger.
PHILIP
enters.)

PHILIP
(into phone):
Hold all calls.

CHIEF:
Sorry to keep you waiting Philip, but
I’ve been considering your memo and I must say it confused me slightly. You say
here
(referring to memo)
you’ve grabbed the challenge by the balls and
sunk your teeth into it. Does this mean you have an idea?

PHILIP:
Chief, my metaphorical balls are so
lacerated you’d think I had a hypothetical crocodile in my trousers. As you
know, it’s been a few months since you outlined the Pot Noodle brief and I
don’t mind admitting that those few months have been about as fertile as a dead
eunuch.

CHIEF:
But no longer.

PHILIP:
I think not Sir. You’re probably
aware that we recently acquired the Associated London Press ...

CHIEF
(thoughtfully):
Publishing ... Publishing ... Yes, good, I’m interested. Not
desperately original of course, been done before, but so has bending over a
roll-top desk and getting your secretary to beat you on the bottom with a
really heavy ledger, and I certainly don’t let that stop me.

PHILIP:
And why should you.

CHIEF:
Associated London is a perfectly
decent group of newspapers. All we have to do is turn them into viscous,
semi-pornographic, right wing toilet paper and we’ll make a mint. Of course
Rupert Murdoch will sue us for conceptual plagiarism but it’s all good
publicity ...

PHILIP:
Uhm, actually Chief, I’m targeting
something a little more specific here ...

CHIEF:
I see, well let’s have it then lad.

PHILIP:
Well Sir, I was checking out the
titles we’d acquired, looking for a decent male, adult-interest magazine ... They
have some bloody interesting articles about vintage sports cars in those male,
adult-interest magazines you know.

CHIEF:
Of course they do and there’s nothing
dirty or shameful in that.

PHILIP:
I suppose I was trying to get my
mind off noodles ... but no go I’m afraid.
(pacing)
I was restless, fretful,
I could feel it, I could smell it ...

CHIEF
(slightly doubtful):
Now then Philip, I’m confused, are we still talking about your idea
here? Or have we moved onto male, adult-interest magazines?

PHILIP:
Still the idea Chief ... I knew it
was close ... I’d seen something in one of the papers, but I couldn’t recall ...
The little Vodaphone I keep in the back of my head was trying to dial me, but I
guess my brain must have been in a meeting Then suddenly ...

CHIEF:
Your brain took the call!

PHILIP:
Exactly! The paper I’d been trying
to remember was a magazine for hay fever sufferers.
(producing mag) The
People’s Hayfever Listener Examiner Gazette Magazine
—
Phlegm. (hands it
over)
Or to put it another way; a Pot Noodle. It says here Chief, and get
this ... they have just invented a machine which is guaranteed to suck in
pollen-infested air, extract the pollen, and blow the air out again!!

CHIEF
(after pause):
Well frankly Philip I’m a little disappointed. This is a very junior
stuff. Of course we can purchase the patent on this machine if you wish, put
the price through the roof. I have no objection to milking a few snot noses.

PHILIP:
Hmm, yes but ...

CHIEF
(the light of enthusiasm):
If I am under any moral obligation to offer a bunch of streamy-eyed
sneeze merchants an easy ride, then I am unaware of it.

PHILIP:
I was ...

CHIEF:
No dew-drop-hanging free-loader
chewing on a mouthful of mucus need expect the feather bed treatment from
Lockheart Holdings.

PHILIP:
I should say not but ...

CHIEF:
Yes, certainly, go ahead, nail those
phlegmheads to the wall and empty their pockets. If they want pollen-free air,
make ‘em pay. But really Philip, your secretary should be doing this sort of
thing for you.

PHILIP:
Chief hear me out! It says here that
the machine takes the oxygen from the air, cleans it, and stores it ready for
when Cyril Snotnose feels a tickle coming on, when he can give himself a blast
of pure, cool oxygen ...

CHIEF:
Stores oxygen? What, like a scuba
tank?

PHILIP
(very excited):
Yes but more so ... the ad says it incorporates a revolutionary
compression process which allows considerable quantities of oxygen to be
extracted from the air, and stored for when the sufferer needs to flood the
environment with pure nose-fodder.

CHIEF
(still doubtful):
We-ell, interesting concept, I suppose ... could sell well to marine
research, it might even perhaps have some applications in space, but I really
don’t see ...

PHILIP
(very excited):
Chief think bigger, think stunningly big, think first-class cabin
baggage allowance. What I am talking about here is
designer air!!!

CHIEF
(after a huge pause):
My God, it’s enormous.

PHILIP:
I’ve done some research in sister
fields Sir. Water for instance, you can have no concept how big the ponce water
market is, and after all, when you come down to it what
is
Perrier? A
multi-million pound industry, selling people stuff that falls out of the sky.
The French must be absolutely pissing themselves, that’s probably what gives
the stuff its acrid taste.

CHIEF
(beginning to get excited too):
My dear boy, I think you may have stumbled on something absolutely
colossal here, talk me through your thinking so far.

PHILIP:
Picture our target consumer right? I
had graphics knock me together some visual backup.
(He has visual aids,
computer graphics etc. He pieces together or somehow produces a full-size
cut-out of a yuppie with a briefcase)
His career is in ascendant mode, his
other car really
is
a Porsche. He wants the very best and he intends to
get it.

CHIEF:
I like him already.

PHILIP:
He has a home gym that looks like an
ironlung factory. His yogurt is so alive it shuts the fridge door for him. His
muesli is coarse enough to prize open the buttocks of a concrete elephant and
his chickens are so free-range he meets them for drinks at his club. And what
is he breathing? What is he breathing Chief?

CHIEF:
You tell me Philip, you’ve done the
research.

PHILIP:
Bus drivers’ farts!! That’s what
he’s breathing. He is breathing the same stuff that people in the North are burping
their Vimto into. Have you any idea of the cocktail of natural fumes a dog
emits when it’s on heat? ...

CHIEF:
Pretty gruesome I should imagine.

PHILIP:
There are guys out there pulling
down
six figure incomes
being forced to breathe that stuff! Something
has to be done.

CHIEF
(hitting intercom):
Hold all calls please Miss Hodges and alert security if you’d be so
kind, we have a potential Pot Noodle in the building ... Carry on Philip.

PHILIP:
Picture it Chief. You have two wine
bars OK? Both are so crowded it takes three days to get a drink. Both have got
girls slooshing the plonk with legs sufficiently frisky to revitalize the
British motor industry. Both have got a large blackboard that says something
indecipherable about game pie ... But get this, only
one
is offering
pure, sparkling, guaranteed filtered, cleansed and mineral-enriched
private
air.
Now which hostelry do you think our free-wheeling trouble-shooter who wants the
best
is going to patronize?

CHIEF:
Philip, this one, if I might be forgiven
some exuberance, is a stallion’s stiffy.

PHILIP:
It’s a whale’s whopper.

CHIEF:
It’s an elephant’s appendage.

PHILIP:
It’s a dinosaur’s dong.

CHIEF:
It’s the giant’s giblets. How do we
go about acquiring the thing?

PHILIP:
Chief, I’m way, way ahead of you.
You’re still training for 1992 in Barcelona, I’m on my way to Manchester for
‘96. I have bought up the patent in perpetuity. I also took the liberty of indoctrinating
one or two junior top-level executives into the project.
(hits intercom)
Sandy,
bring in ‘Suck and Blow’.

CHIEF:
I like it.

(SANDY
enters with the machine.)

PHILIP:
I suggest that for this
demonstration we implement a complete security shut down ... windows, doors,
intercom ... this thing could be bigger than food.

CHIEF:
And food is very big. Activate the
shut down Philip.

PHILIP:
Sandy, get your butt on it for
Chrissakes.

SANDY
(not really enjoying being
addressed in this manner):
You got it Philip.

(SANDY
hits a button, huge steel screens
descend in front of each window and door etc.)

PHILIP
(bustling round machine, turning
on lights and moving bits):
Now then the chemical
reaction which extracts the oxygen is similar in many ways to photosynthesis;
it creates gaseous carbon compounds which compensate for the loss of the oxygen
in the atmos, so there shouldn’t be a pressure drop. But watch out all the
same.

SANDY:
Pressure doesn’t worry me Philip, I
am a walking area of high pressure. When I go . outside, the weather changes.

CHIEF:
I like this young fellow Philip.

PHILIP:
My top man Sir, believe me, he’s
being groomed.

SANDY:
If people get too close to me their
ears start bleeding.

PHILIP:
Yes all right Sandy, let’s hit Barry
button.
(he presses a button, the machine begins to whirr and hum and flash,
steam comes out of it, and a small balloon begins to inflate)
The oxygen is
now being extracted Chief, in a few minutes it will all be inside the machine.

SANDY:
Uhm Philip ...

PHILIP:
Later Sandy.

SANDY:
No really Philip ...