“All I’m saying is that we don’t have to do
it ourselves.” John Cleese said and rested his large hands on the back
of his
head.
Terry Jones looked up at him incredulously
from his writing pad and gawped. “How else are we going to do it? I
can’t see
Ian letting us have any more money to hire more staff. They’re
wondering what
the hell they’ve wasted it on already!”
John shrugged. “Well we can’t very well stand
around fondling each other can we?”
Eric Idle sniggered and Michael Palin ran a
hand up his leg. “You don’t mind me fondling you do you Eric?”
Terry looked at them angrily across the table
and they stopped touching one another and folded their arms.
“All I’m saying is that we can’t possibly
afford to get models in. We’re going to have to do it this way.”
“Hang on Terry, we’re always doing it your
way. Your way isn’t always the best you know.” John said, suddenly
resting his
forearms on the table edge.
“But you may have argued that we need a
woman, or women, but you still haven’t told me how we’re going to get
one and
where from!” Terry said and stood up abruptly. “I’m going for some
lunch. I’ll
see you back here at two.” And with that he disappeared.
Michael sat back in his chair with a sigh. “I
admit he’s my best friend but I sometimes can’t believe how stubborn he
can
be.”
John nodded. “He’s the most passionate person
I know, and some things don’t really need to be gotten passionate
over.”
“There’s not a way we can change his mind you
know, and he is right.” Eric said. “Not one of us has come up with a
solution
to the problem of paying for a woman to come in.”
John grinned. “And it’s not like we want the
back end of a bus playing our sex symbol. We need someone with real
curves,
pretty features. A woman who won’t say no and who’ll do as I command.”
Michael smirked. “Is this what your personal
ad says is it? No wonder no one replies.”
John pulled a face and rocked on his chair.
“Still, we don’t want anyone interfering in
the writing do we? If some woman came in and started trying to write
we’d all
go mad!”
Michael nodded and saw that Eric also agreed.
“So what is there that we can do then? We
want a woman who wants to act for nothing and who doesn’t want to get
involved
with the writing process. And we only want to pay her peanuts for doing
it. Is
there a woman who’d do that? Judging from our wives I’d say no!” John
grinned.
Michael smirked. He hadn’t got a wife so he
technically didn’t know what John was talking about. Eric was nodding.
Michael
knew that his marriage to a model was one fraught with land mines and
unforeseen difficulties. He’d even seen Eric sleeping in his car so as
not to
go home to her.
The door of the writing room burst open and
Terry Gilliam bulldozed his way through chairs and tables and headed
towards
the three waiting Pythons.
Eric caught sight of John rolling his eyes
and smiled. He loved Gilliam, and had done right from the start. He
sometimes
couldn’t believe how discriminating the others were towards him,
especially
Jonesy and Palin. They had been dead against him right from the first
moment
they met him on Do Not Adjust Your Set, but had steadily grown to love
his
weird animations and the strange anecdotes he would treat them to.
Oddly though
there were still times when they would look at him and wonder why they
bothered
at all, especially as he came crashing towards them with a small box,
his hair
covering the vast majority of his face and a silly grin plaguing it.
“What delights have you bought us today then
Gill?” Eric asked as Michael folded his arms with an expression that
read “what
on earth?”
Gilliam plonked the box down and folded his
arms with a look of sheer triumph.
“Well don’t leave us in suspense Terry, what
is it?”
His throaty American voice still startled
Mike every time it was uttered and as Gilliam coughed and then began to
speak
he found himself in awe of the wonderfully flowing accent as it spilled
from
his lips.
“It’s the first set of animations! I’ve done
them all!”
Michael’s jaw dropped and John stared at him.
“You mean to say you’ve done all the
animations already? I take it you mean for the next episode?”
Gilliam shook his head.
Eric coughed. “For the next two episodes?”
Gilliam grinned some more and shook his head.
“Come on then – how many episodes?”
Gilliam reached into the box and produced BBC
tapes, waving them around. “There’s enough here for the next six
episodes.” He
said excitedly.
There was silence and finally Eric smiled and
began to clap his hands. “Well done Gill. How did you manage to do six
since
the weekend?”
“I just did two all-nighters and that was
it.” He said and smiled some more. “I haven’t slept in forty two hours
but I
don’t care because I was on a roll and I couldn’t stop. All these ideas
just
spilled into my head and would’ve kept me awake anyways!”
John smiled. “I know what that feels like!”
“I wish we’d got our scripts all sorted for
the next six shows. We’ve only just finished the show for next week!”
he
pointed to Gilliam’s box. “We’d best leave that for Terry. He’ll want
to see
them before we put them in the show – you know how it works.”
Gilliam nodded. “Where is the old tyrant?”
John laughed. “Out to lunch right now. We’re
just deciding on whether to play the female roles ourselves or to get
cheap
model-looking women in.”
Gilliam took a seat and cocked his head
sending a spray of brown locks over his eyes.
“Well it really depends on how much you want
to spend.”
Eric nodded. “We want her to work for
peanuts.”
“But we don’t want the back end of a bus, if you
catch our drift.” John put in.
“And we don’t want her to want to write, we
just want her to be able to act.” Michael added.
Gilliam grinned and shook his head.
“Impossible. No woman is going to stand for that.”
John groaned and put his hands over his face.
“He’s right you know. We aren’t going to find anyone who’ll do what we
want.
Especially if it’s a woman.”
They sat in silence for a few moments more
before Eric stood up. “I vote we go for a pub lunch, just to think this
over of
course.”
John stood up and followed him out. Michael
motioned for Gilliam to go but he shook his head. “What about the
tapes?” he
asked protectively.
Mike waved his keys at Gilliam who visibly
relaxed. “There’s only three of us who have keys to this place. Terry,
Graham
and I. So don’t worry. They’ll be safe if we leave them here ok?”
As they all headed towards the pub Michael
caught sight of Terry Jones leaning against the bar with a pint and
grinned.
“Seems like we’ll have company for lunch.” He said and John grimaced.
“If he starts anything…”
Eric nodded. “Yeah we’ll stop you from
whacking him.”
Michael laughed and pushed John into the pub,
closely followed by the other two Pythons.
*************************************************************************************************************
Chelsea sat down at her desk with a sigh.
Another wasted afternoon trying to understand what the hell Nigel the
BBC 2
Researcher was waffling on about. She’d sat transfixed by his tie for
at least
two hours before realising what he was trying to say, and then when
she’d
finally remembered to take notes he’d tried hitting on her for what
seemed the
thousandth time.
Hastily leaving the research room and her
meeting with a waffled excuse about graphs due in that afternoon, she’d
stumbled across her boss, Kinky King Harold, waiting in a darkened
corner of
the plant covered corridor.
“Ah Miss Marsh. Is now a good time to discuss
the reports, or are you going to hide from me again?”
Chelsea nodded glumly and followed him to his
office.
Sitting in the hard back chair she felt
strangely like she was back at school in the Head Teachers office,
ready for a
severe bollocking.
“So, these latest reports.” Harold said
waving them about and looking sternly at her. “What were you thinking?
Did you
really think you’d get away with giving me reports, serious reports,
all marked
out in felt pens of gregarious colours?”
Chelsea shrugged. “It was a cry for help
sir.”
Harold cocked his head. “Right….”
“I don’t like my job,” she began and Harold
sniggered, “but I know there’s not a lot else I can do. So I thought
why not
brighten things up by using pens instead of black lines.”
Kinky King nodded. “And did you think that
that would be sensible considering that these reports go straight up to
the
programming office? And that if they can’t read the graphs because some
idiot
has decided it would be fun to put them in stupid colours that are
unreadable
then I get some snooty arsed memo through asking me to control my
staff?”
Chelsea
felt small and stupid. She’d known it was going to be confrontational
when
she’d done it, but at the time she hadn’t cared about her job, and
right now
she was close to not caring about anything.
“It’s disruptive,” he said as spittle flew
across the desk at her, “and it’s not conducive to the team players
ethic that
surrounds this office.”
There was a knock at the door and a small
woman called Valerie who worked in the same office space as Chelsea
poked her
head around the door.
“Um, excuse me sir, but there’s an unrecorded
grant request that’s just gone through our system and no one seems to
know
where or who it’s from or when or who performed the grant. We can only
assume
it was done yesterday sir, but there was only myself and Hilda in the
office
who could perform Grant Requests, and neither of us remember ok-ing the
one
from a,” she glanced at a piece of paper, “Monty Python’s Flying
Circus.”
Harold’s face crimsoned. “Someone’s done a
grant request without your approval?” he asked.
Valerie nodded.
Chelsea sat very still and then felt a voice
creep up from inside. “Actually that was me.”
Harold turned his scarlet face to her and she
could see the blood pumping through the large vein on his forehead.
“You did what?”
Chelsea smiled genially. “I granted the
request.”
Valerie smiled from the doorway. She’d always
liked Chelsea and had stood up for her on many occasions when the Kinky
King
wanted to sack her for not doing this and that when she should have,
but she
knew that even this time Chelsea wouldn’t be saved.
“Why?” asked Harold, his voice a tightened
strangled noise.
Chelsea shrugged. “I saw the programme on a
couple of days ago and I absolutely loved it. They needed more money
for this
weeks show, and I wasn’t going to say no. The show is far too good to
not
finance accordingly.”
Harold spluttered and coughed and then stood
up. Chelsea sensed that he might explode and she waited for the popping
noise
and then the blood and gore splatters she would no doubt acquire as her
boss
combusted.
“Chelsea Marsh you are fired without notice.
Remove your belongings from this office at once and never step upon the
floor
of this office ever again or I shall be forced to have you forcibly
removed.”
Chelsea had known that ultimately her actions
would lead to this. She stood up and smiled at Valerie as she left the
office.
At the last moment she turned in the doorway and stuck two fingers up
at her
ex-boss.
“You are an arsehole Harold. Nobody likes
your groping, your spitting or your ties. Every time your back’s turned
people
talk about you because you are an old molesting weirdo.”
And with that she turned around and walked
confidently back to her office, knowing that if she looked back at her
boss
she’d run away scared that he’d come after her.
As she packed up her desk she saw Valerie
return to her desk and whisper to Rachael, who looked up at Chelsea and
began
to clap her hands.
“Oh my God Chelsea! Well done! I would never
have the courage to say what you did to Kinky. I really wouldn’t have
expected
it from you though. He deserves everything he gets.”
Chelsea smiled and continued to pack her
belongings into a small box.
Valerie perched on the edge of her desk.
“It’s going to be sad to see you go. You’re such a nice person.”
“I have to go Val, this job is driving me
crazy. I’ll be sad to leave you girls though. You’re all lovely.”
Val hugged her and went to get a coffee as
Chelsea picked up her box and set off towards the lift, waving a brief
goodbye
to the others.
The lift was typically out of order so she
began the slog down the stairs, and when she burst through the main
entrance of
the BBC she felt a weight release itself from her shoulders. However,
in the
back of her mind she felt a niggling. What would she do now? She had
rent to
pay and shopping to buy. She had to live, but without money or a job
that was
going to be very hard to do.
She cast a glance around and headed towards
the subway, deciding to get home to have a long hard think about her
next step.
Chelsea was about to head towards the subway
when a tall man bumped into her and her box flew to the floor. Groaning
she
knelt down on the floor to pick all her things up before they got
stolen or
broken.
Amazingly her mug was still intact without a
chip in sight and she reached over to grab her stapler when a hand
grabbed it
as well.
Looking up she saw a familiar face.
“Eric isn’t it?” she asked and he smiled
sheepishly.
“Sorry bout this. I was in a rush to get back
to writing. I really didn’t mean to knock all your stuff out of your
hands.”
Chelsea smiled. “It’s ok. It’s not important
stuff anyway.”
Eric cast a glance over the items scattered
about them and looked back up at her. “Moving office?”
She laughed. “More like moving jobs actually.
Only I don’t have a job to move to!”
He looked slightly worried. “It wasn’t
because of the grant was it? The BBC don’t exactly like to be
associated with
us at the moment.”
Chelsea shrugged. “It was that amongst other
things. I wanted to leave really. I hated the job.”
Eric nodded as he put the last file into her
box. “What will you do now?”
Again she shrugged. “Go home and think. It’ll
probably be the job centre for me!”
Eric scrambled about in her box for a few
moments and produced a pen and paper. “Give me your number. I might
have an
idea.”
Chelsea gave him her number and waved as he
left, pushing the paper into his back pocket with a smile and a wave.
Heading home she sighed. Eric might have an
idea but it’d probably be another desk job and she didn’t think she
could
handle that.
Pushing the key into her door as she finally
arrived home she plonked her box down on the hall table and headed
towards the
kitchen.
Four glasses of Vodka later she lay down on
the sofa and flicked on the TV. Four minutes later she was asleep.
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