Gasping - the Play (8 page)

PHILIP:
We are beginning to be looking at a
potential scenario where grannies could start keeling over in the streets.

SANDY:
Chief I have to tell you, that sort
of development could be a public relations nightmare.

PHILIP:
The same thing’s happening abroad.
There’s a lot of wild talk about ‘massively prohibitive licence fees, possibly
even a blanket ban. I very much fear that Suck and Blow is spiralling into Dodo
mode.

CHIEF:
I see. You’re clearly rather
depressed about this Philip. What about you Sandy, are you as depressed as
Philip?

SANDY:
If anything I’m slightly more
depressed.

CHIEF:
Hmm, I feel terrific.

SANDY
(tiny pause):
I must say I’m perking up.

CHIEF:
It seems to me gentlemen, that what
we are doing here is forgetting the Moon landings.

PHILIP
(mystified):
Ahhhm, yes Chief, you’re right, I did leave the Moon landings out of
this particular equation ... was that terribly wrong of me?

CHIEF:
The Moon landings were a financial
disaster of horrendous proportions. Twenty billion dollars to achieve two small
bags of dust; so much had been hoped of them; so little achieved; it would have
been better if they had never even bothered. Until that is, somebody noticed
the Velcro.

PHILIP:
Velcro, Chief?

CHIEF:
Millions of nylon hooks and eyes on
fabric strips.

PHILIP:
Uhm yes, I know what it is, but ...?

CHIEF:
Developed for specific uses during
the space programme, then somebody decided to stick it on anoraks and turned it
into a Pot Noodle. Within fifty years it will have paid for the whole fiasco.
Out of evil came forth good. Gentlemen, we must find new ways to use our
machinery.

PHILIP:
Uhm yes, forgive me Sir, but it’s
using
the machines that’s the problem. I really am rather  concerned that well we
might have  produced a product that might well  kill someone.

SANDY:
With all due respect to Philip, if
the tobacco industry had taken that kind of line, some of the world’s greatest
sporting events would never have been sponsored.

CHIEF:
No no, I think that Philip has a
point, we certainly don’t want deaths on our conscience, bad for morale, bad
for business. However, a solution presents itself which also opens up a whole
new world of commerce and profit.

PHILIP:
It does?

CHIEF:
It’s really very simple ... We build
Super Suckers and Bumper Blowers, far in advance of anything currently
available, and undertake to collect oxygen in under-populated areas. Then
councils who find their atmospheres temporarily thinned, through, I might add,
the actions of their own citizens, will be in a position to make up the
shortfall by hiring us to pump some back into the public arena.

SANDY:
My God! It’s brilliant.

PHILIP:
So Chief, you’re suggesting that
having . made a huge profit from machines by which people hoard oxygen, we now
build bigger versions of the same machines, in order to make further profits
replacing it.

CHIEF:
Exactly.

PHILIP:
Look Chief, call me an insanely
cautious old turd if you will; look me in the eye and say ‘Phil, if you drag
your feet any further you’re going to be tripping over
tube
trains’;
ring my people and tell them that their boss wouldn’t recognize solid gold if
he was surrounded by three quarters of a million Californians jumping up and
down, waving their pick axes and shouting ‘yeeha, we’ve struck it’, I just feel
that there’s going to be objections.

CHIEF:
Philip, we didn’t create this
situation, we only make the machines. If a problem exists, the consumer has
created it and thank God we live in a society where the consumer has a right to
create problems.

PHILIP
(still doubtful):
Yes, I see that certainly, it’s just that, well ... selling air? I
see a media backlash, and frankly, I’m buggered if perhaps they wouldn’t have a
point. I mean, everybody owns the air, don’t they? We don’t really have a right
to sell it? Do we? Or what?

CHIEF
(a tiny bit angry):
Yes Philip, and while you’re taking your Ph.D. in moral semantics Mr
Suzuki is laying down the keel of the first Super Sucker. You’re my top man
Philip, President of the division and quite frankly I’m surprised ...

SANDY
(pleased):
Perhaps you’re tired Phil. You drive yourself like an insane man.

CHIEF:
The air is a natural resource. Like
food or coal. Is the grocer or the coal man wrong for selling his wares? And
yet people need food and warmth as much as they need air. It seems that a man
is to be allowed to put bread on his table, clothes on the backs of his
children, buy land upon which they can run and play, and yet he is to be denied
the chance to provide fully and properly for his family the most basic human
prerequisite of the lot, the wherewithal to breathe. Denied that chance for
fear that some hypothetical, free-loading drop-out may find himself momentarily
short of breath.

SANDY:
Phil, this is more than a business
venture, it’s a moral crusade!

PHILIP:
You’re right Sandy ... sorry Chief,
just thinking things through that’s all.

CHIEF:
I understand my boy ... A fellow’s
always a bit soft and loopy when he’s in love eh? Any developments on that
front yet? Can’t have you mooning about for ever.

PHILIP:
Well she did say something quite
encouraging a month or two back ... haven’t quite got round to acting on it
yet.

CHIEF:
Ha ha, well you get on with it lad.
Got to clear the air my boy. So that we can sell it.

ACT TWO

SCENE ONE

The control room of a huge air supplier,
consoles of buttons and flashing lights, computer screens, electronic maps of
Britain with different coloured areas and arrows on them that could mean wind
direction. If possible the arrows should move and the lights and stuff flash
etc. There is celebration bunting hanging about, the Lockheart Logo is very
prominent, there is a dais and a ribbon to be cut, a table full of champagne.
It is clearly a media opening.

(PHILIP,
in black tie, is alone
...)

PHILIP
(nervously rehearsing a speech):
...
It’s just that what you said to me that
time at Image Control ... deeply sensible of enormous honour, yes deeply ... Oh
God, oh God ... Come
on
Philip, be a man for Christ’s sake, she’s damn
hot
for you too so just
go
for it!

(Enter
KIRSTEN
also dressed for launch.)

KIRSTEN:
Go for what Philip?

PHILIP
(confusion):
What? Oh, just all this Kirsty, you’ve really gone for it, no woman
could do more, a truly Herculean effort. Christ, I don’t think I’ve ever
seen
so much champagne and dippy things.

KIRSTEN
(checking things):
Well Philip, I can’t deny I’m confident, the Industry awards for the
most champagne and dippy things at a launch are next month and I think our only
real competition will be the first night of
Aspects of Mussolini.
I was
very worried about last week’s Channel Four re-rerelaunch but they blew it by
switching to Asti Spumante after Michael Grade left.

PHILIP
(looking about):
This launch is terribly important to me Kirsty, it’s a hearts and
minds launch.

KIRSTEN:
Which is why it’s so important to
get the champagne and dippy things right ... Top quality bite-sized savoury
thingies and plenty of them.
(motions to table)
The times I’ve heard
high-level opinion-formers dismiss an entire product range on the strength of
soggy filo pastry.

PHILIP:
Well this little lot should
guarantee some decent coverage.

KIRSTEN:
You can never, never tell ... you
can have the most successful launch of all time, then Princess Di gets out of a
low slung sports car, some hack gets a decent shot of her knickers and you’ll
be lucky if the press find room for you on the sports pages.

PHILIP: It
just goes to show ‘there ain’t no
such thing as a free lunch.’

KIRSTEN
(slightly offended):
Well there isn’t any call for that kind of comment.

PHILIP
(confused):
What? I mean did I ...?

KIRSTEN
(a zealot on her pet subject):
Free lunch is what keeps the mighty cogs of public relations
turning. Why without free lunch there would be no more magazines, no more pop
records, no more television programmes, no new estate agents opened ...

PHILIP:
God, heaven forbid.

KIRSTEN:
Free lunch is the universal
lubricant ... from a tiny, two-person, tax-deductible power pasta to a
six-hundred-head media faceful like this. Without free food London would stop
moving, we’d be a third world country in a month.

PHILIP:
You’re absolutely right Kirsty,
sorry ... A fellow gets so tied up in his own little area that it’s shamefully
easy to forget the quite incredible amount of dedicated eating that has to go
on just to bring a product before the public.

KIRSTEN:
PR and Media
is
the product
Philip. As you Say, it’s hearts and minds.

PHILIP:
Yes, no more so than in this case.
Sadly there are still people who rather resent their councils having to buy in
private air to make the streets safe. We’ve got to get people to understand
that pushing private air into the public arena is the inevitable result of
people’s God-given right to own their own air.

KIRSTEN:
The press packs are very clear.
(glossy
brochure)
I’ve had my very best people working on the buzz words and catch
phrases ...
(flicking through)
I’m particularly pleased with ‘air’s
fair’, and ‘an Englishman’s nose is his castle’ ...
(looking at watch)
Christ
is that the time! Sir Chiffley will be here any moment, and I haven’t checked
that the waitresses’ little black skirts are short enough ...
(She makes to
leave.)

PHILIP
(slightly embarrassed, grabbing
his moment):
Uhm, hang on a moment Kirsten ... there
was something I wanted to say ...

KIRSTEN:
Better make it quick Phil ...

PHILIP:
What? oh yes, of course ... well
it’s just that ... Oh hell, I’m not much good at this sort of thing ... I wanted
to tell you that you have got the most fantastic ... most fantastic ... people ...
No really, you have great ... people and ... and well ... I’d really like to
get my hands on them ...

KIRSTEN:
Thanks Philip, I’ll memo them.