Radioplay:
Holus Bolus

A generous insanity

HOLUS-BOLUS is a new game of life.

The pace throughout is more frantic than any day we have yet known.
In fact, Mr. Placketts and his fellow victims of Graeme Baffner's folly are speaking in a score of different languages. For the sake of sanity we shall hear them only in English.

CHARACTERS


GRAEME BAFFNER......	......pioneering scientist
CAROL FROUDE......	......his old flame
PLACKETTS......	......a Yorkshire businessman
CHEREPOVETS......	......the Russian President
MME. CHEREPOVETS......	......his wife
OSBERT CHINERY......	......a powerful psychic
MELNIKOV......	......Russian General
BIBCOFF......	......Russian General
GILES......	......one of BAFFNER'S subjects
MAXIE......	......BAFFNER'S assistant
SMOLENSK......	......Russian officer
RALPH HODEGKINS......	......another psychic
BARRY EVANS......	......a Welsh miner
GUARD AT O'JONESBURG INSTITUTE
SMOLENSK'S BROTHER
DEPUTY BALAIEV
RUSSIAN DEPUTIES
U.S. PRESIDENT RINALDI
AUSTRIAN WAITER
BIBCOFF'S AGENT
PSYCHICS
FRENCH GIRL
FRENCH PASSPORT OFFICER
MEHMET PAKDEMIRLI
U.S. PRISON GUARD
DANNY, DEATH ROW PRISONER
DICK, DOMINATRIX'S CLIENT
MALTRAVERS, LUNATIC
JAPANESE DOCTOR
JAPANESE MOTHER
3 INDIAN FISHERMEN
A RATHER ABUSIVE RABBI
DEREK, CAROL'S HUSBAND
FEINDORF, CIA OPERATIVE
ADMIRAL CLOPSTOCK
SGT. PEREZLOPEZ
FLORES
COL. BRANCOCHAVES
SANCHEZ
SOUTH AMERICAN SOLDIERS
JACK PLACKETTS, PLACKETTS' BROTHER
CRUMMEY, DUBLINER
NOONAN, HIS FRIEND


SCENE 1	WE PLAY IN WITH ERIC MORECAMBE'S PLAYING OF GRIEG'S PIANO CONCERTO: THE RIGHT NOTES BUT NOT NECESSARILY IN THE RIGHT ORDER! CUT THIS ABRUPTLY. CAROL IMMEDIATELY BEGINS A SWIFT NARRATION. SHE IS ALMOST FLIPPANT, IN A HURRY. UNDER HER SPEECH WE HEAR THE LIMOUSINE PULL UP. THE DOOR OPENS AND HER WALKING ON GRAVEL IN HIGH HEELS.
CAROL:	A beautiful cool morning. It's going to be another scorcher, I'm sure. This is me arriving at the O'Jonesburg Institute. I haven't seen Graeme Baffner in 20 years, during which time I have, as you know, married three men almost exactly like him to look at, or the way he looked 20 years ago, only nowhere near as clever, of course. I'm not just saying it: he really is just about the cleverest man ever. He'll rule the World one day we used to say, Charles and I. God! There he is coming down the steps, and looking just as he looked when we were students together. I suddenly feel so ashamed, such a sense of having wasted my life. He always did that to me. I swear he's wearing nothing under that lab coat. Bare feet, even.
	BARE FEET PATTING DOWN STEPS
BAFFNER:	(BRIMMING OVER, BUT IT COMES ACROSS AS SOMETHING OF AN ACT, OR IS IT JUT HIS MANNER?) Carol, my dear thing. I'm so glad you've come. I did hope! I did! I did! I invited Charles as well…
CAROL:	(EMBARRASSMENT HUSHES HER VOICE) Charles? (BRAVELY) Charles is…
BAFFNER:	But apparently he's dead.
CAROL:	Brain tumour.
BAFFNER:	(LAUGHS) I wish he'd said something. I could have fixed him up in a minute. Come straight in. Excuse me, but I'm stark naked under here. I was under my lamp. Did you know that there are more spiders in the average English field than there are people asleep in China?
CAROL:	(DELIGHTED, BUT SOMEWHAT BLANK DUE TO GENERAL SURPRISE) I did. It was the last thing you said to me 20 years ago.
BAFFNER:	(FAST, ONE GEAR ABOVE MUTTERING) I'm always repeating myself. Do you remember when we were students I was always saying that science was worthless because it only operated in the abstract. Everyone else was making models of the human mind: robots, computers. Not me! Not even than. I've only ever bothered myself with the real living thing. (BECOMING ALMOST CAMP) Because it is mysterious, Carol, infinite in its complexities and unexpected in its abilities. (LAUGHING AT HIMSELF) But what do I discover? I discover that we ourselves are an abstract, that every one of us is. (A SUDDEN SWITCH TO SERIOUSNESS) You've lost your looks.
CAROL:	(WITHOUT REGRET) I know.
	BAFFNER LAUGHS WICKEDLY. AUTOMATIC DOORS SWISH OPEN AND SHUT. A SECURITY GUARD STAMPS A SALUTE.
GUARD:	Mr. Baffner, sir!
BAFFNER:	A disc for Carol! A disc! A disc! Better wear this, dear, or someone may shoot you. (LAUGHS)
GUARD:	(PRESENTING THE DISC) Sir! (HE ABOUT TURNS AND MARCHES OFF)
	THEY WALK ALONG A LONG CORRIDOR. DOORS KEEP SWISHING OPEN. BAFFNER KEEPS GIGGLING.
CAROL:	Is this all yours?
BAFFNER:	All! All mine! My baby! We can change in here. (MEETS SOMEONE COMING THROUGH) Giles, my dear boy, they got you back! Where were you?
GILES:	Bolivia.
BAFFNER:	(GIGGLES) Bolivia!
GILES:	Bolivia. Surrounded by llamas in a mountain hut.
BAFFNER:	Sounds divine.
GILES:	Wasn't!
BAFFNER:	Boy or girl?
GILES:	I was a girl. 22.
BAFFNER:	This is Carol by the way, an old flame.
GILES:	Very nice, I'm sure.
BAFFNER:	And you're quite all right? No strange thoughts?
GILES:	Actually, just now, I did have the thought I might grab a hold of your tongue and jam it in the door.
BAFFNER:	(GIGGLES) Nothing unusual then.
GILES:	Ta-ta!
BAFFNER:	(UNDER HIS BREATH TO CAROL) You'd think he'd be grateful for the experience! Put these overalls on, dear. I've got some somewhere with my name on. Here we are! (THROWING OFF HIS LAB COAT) Don't mind my bare bodkin, do you?
CAROL:	(AN EMBARRASSED CLEARING OF THE THROAT, THEN WHILE CHANGING) If this incredible establishment is all yours why is it called the O'Jonesburg Institute? Why not the Baffner Institute?
BAFFNER:	O'Jonesburg is funnier. (A NEW TONE IN HIS VOICE) Look, Carol, my dearest old darling. I know we've sort of lost touch, but I haven't stopped loving you for a minute, honest, and today it's very important to me that you should be here. I'm going to change the world today, dear, radically, absolutely, the biggest change ever. I'm going to do it, me is, and I just had to have one of the old gang to see… do you understand?
CAROL:	What exactly are you going to…?
BAFFNER:	I won't get technical. I refuse to get technical, because I can see from your face that you haven't opened a book since pussy was a cat. I'm going to throw a man's personality out of his head and put it in another man's head on the other side of the world, thereby setting in motion a chain reaction in which the personality of every human being will be cut loose, like six billion balloons floating over the mountains, floating into a distance where they become a single huge balloon - am I getting too technical?
CAROL:	You're joking?
BAFFNER:	Oh, no. No. This is why you're here. To see. We're concentrating on the pineal gland, in the brain.
CAROL:	I know where the pineal gland is.
BAFFNER:	Of course you do, dear: well we're fiddling mercilessly with it, when I say we, I mean all the psychics. Did I tell you about the psychics? Let's go! Let's go!
SCENE 2	DISCREET PLINK-GLOOPITY-GLOOP OF TANKS. OCCASIONAL BWANGGGGGG OF A PSYCHIC TWITCHING IN A TANK.
BAFFNER:	(HUSHED) They're all kidnapped, really. Wicked isn't it? I've got 142 of the world's best psychics in there.
CAROL:	I can't see anyone.
BAFFNER:	Oh no! Oh no! You can't SEE them. Not from here. It would ruin their concentration. They never leave the tanks, not for weeks on end. They're concentrating. I've got Osbert Chinery in Number 64. You must have heard of him?
CAROL:	No.
BAFFNER:	(REALLY ASTONISHED) But he's been on TV and everything. He stops clocks, changes the print in books. 'I wandered lonely as a horse'! That was him. He's 73% more powerful than any one of the others. An amazing man. But to talk to - puh! He can drive a car that he's not even in, from miles away. We nearly killed ourselves when we kidnapped him: empty buses kept crashing into us all the way here! And when we got him here I thought he'd lost his mind completely. But now he's in the tank and he's doing very well.
CAROL:	These tanks are full of water are they?
BAFFNER:	Of course, dear, helps them concentrate. No physical sensations of any kind. This way!
SCENE 3	FAST CLIP-CLOP OF THEIR FOOTSTEPS ON LINOLEUM CORRIDOR. SWING DOORS ARE PUNCHED BY BAFFNER IN A HURRY.
BAFFNER:	(CALLS BUSILY AS HE HURRIES INTO ROOM) Have we our man, Maxie?
MAXIE:	Mr. Placketts is all tuned in and ready to go, sir. He's asleep in his bed in Yorkshire. I'm keeping him asleep until we're ready.
BAFFNER:	Is Osbert Chinery on line?
MAXIE:	He went off-line for 3 minutes an hour ago, but he's on line and focused in on Placketts' gland, sir.
BAFFNER:	Excellent! Excellent! Maxie - this is Carol, an old flame!
MAXIE:	Hiya!
BAFFNER:	Would you like to turn the wheel, sweetie? And set our magnificent game in motion?
CAROL:	I'm not sure.
BAFFNER:	Oh, please, do! We're not hurting anyone. We're saving the world. Really! If everyone can become anyone else at any moment it'll be in everyone's interests to make the world hunky-dory for everyone, won't it, huh? (TEMPTING LIKE THE DEVIL) Go on, Carol, turn the wheel, you gorgeous old thing.
CAROL:	(LAUGHS, HALF-AMUSED, HALF-CONFUSED) Oh, all right!
BAFFNER:	Yippeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
	WE HEAR HER TURN THE WHEEL. WHIZZES, BUBBLES AND FIZZES. THE DISTANT SOUND OF PLACKETTS YELLING "Y'BUGGER!" AS IF PUSHED FROM A PLANE. HIS PARACHUTE OPENS, BUT HE CONTINUES DROPPING FAST. HE SEEMS TO BE IN A WELL.
MAXIE:	(IN BACKGROUND) It's all systems go, sir. Everything on line! That's it! He's flying! He's going!
	AN ALARM CLOCK GOES OFF, MUFFLED. THE SINGLE BARK OF A SMALL DOG. SUDDEN SILENCE.
MAXIE:	He's there, Mr. Baffner, sir. You did it. He should be on your screen now.
BAFFNER:	Well twiddled, Maxie.
CAROL:	What's happened, exactly?
BAFFNER:	(BUBBLING OVER, WITH AIRY CONCEIT) Oh, a doddle. I've sent the personality of a Yorkshire businessman into the head of the President of Russia.
CAROL:	You are a wag!
BAFFNER:	(A NEW NOTE OF AWESTRUCK SERIOUSNESS) It's not the contents of the brain that's sent, not even the mind as such - just an idea, a single complex idea, my dearest darling. Because that's all any of us are. What we think of as being ourself is only our own persistent idea of ourself.
CAROL:	(UNSURE) This is all a joke, isn't it?
BAFFNER:	(BUBBLING WITH TRIUMPH, CALLS TO MAXIE) She doesn't believe! Doesn't believe! (TO CAROL) See, the dots on the screen.
CAROL:	On the little green map?
	HER FINGERNAIL TAPS THE GLASS SCREEN.
BAFFNER:	This dot here is Mr. Placketts, our guinea pig, picked from everyone on earth because his personality has a particular shape. A shape causing just the right displacement in the structure. You understand?
CAROL:	No.
BAFFNER:	Never you mind, then. I've taken one idea from HERE and put it HERE, like sending a letter, that's all. Here's Placketts and… here's the Russian President, Mr. Cherry-povets. He's in Yorkshire now… (GIGGLES, MORE GLEEFUL THAN EVER) This screen will be full of dots before too long! Placketts' personality is just the right SHAPE, you see… it will cause a chain reaction - you know, like with atomic bombs.
CAROL:	(THINKING HARD) Yes. Yes, I think I see.
BAFFNER:	(NOW MORE INTERESTED IN HIS EXPERIMENT THAN IN HER) We've got Placketts on audio only, I'm afraid. Can we have the volume up, Maxie?
	MAXIE TURNS THE SOUND UP. WE HEAR SNORING.
BAFFNER:	Be a good girl, sit down over there and listen, keep out of Daddy's way. (SHOUTS TRIUMPHANTLY) Wake up our pig, Maxie! I can't wait! Ha! Ha!
SCENE 4	THE RUSSIAN NATIONAL ANTHEM, BRASSY AND LOUD. PLACKETTS' SNORES PHUTTER OUT. HE FUMBLES ON THE BEDSIDE TABE AND SWITCHES OFF THE RADIO. WHEN PLACKETTS SPEAKS, IN WHATEVER LANGUAGE, HE ENUNCIATES EACH WORD AS IF SPEAKING TO A DEAF RELATIVE ABOUT AN IMPORTANT MATTER.
PLACKETTS:	(UNSLEEPILY, IN BED) That Teasmade never did that before.
	HE WAKES UP MAKING TASTING NOISES WITH HIS MOUTH. HE YAWNS. GETS OUT OF BED. SUDDENLY CALLS:
PLACKETTS:	Hilda! Them poached eggs better be ready. I'm cummin down.
BAFFNER:	(DOWN THE LINE, GIGGLING HARD) Wait till he switches on the light! Just wait!
	THE LIGHT IS SWITCHED ON. THE CHANDELIER TINKLES SLIGHTLY.
PLACKETTS:	Hey up! Eeee! What's all this, then? (HIS ANXIETY INCREASING SLOWLY) Cor, I've chewed me fingernails right down in the night. And I've gone strangely fat. What's happened? I must be retaining water. Where on God's Earth is this when it's at home? All chandeliers and busy pictures with the same baldy man in the middle. (CALMED WITH A NEW IDEA) I know! It's that private hospital in Huddersfield where me brother had his bowels scraped. (WORRIED AGAIN) I've had a stroke, that's it. I've gone funny. They always said I would.
	DOUBLE DOORS OPEN. BORIS SMOLENSK COMES IN WITH THE BREAKFAST TRAY, HUMMING THE RUSSIAN NATIONAL ANTHEM.
PLACKETTS:	Oh aye. And who are you when you're at home? Room service, is it?
SMOLENSK:	Smolensk.
PLACKETTS:	Smolensk?
SMOLENSK:	(PUTTING DOWN THE TRAY) Smolensk.
PLACKETTS:	Smolensk?
SMOLENSK:	Da.
PLACKETTS:	Da?
SMOLENSK:	Da. Smolensk.
PLACKETTS:	Smolensk?
SMOLENSK:	Smolensk.
PLACKETTS:	Oh, aye.
SMOLENSK:	Smolensk. (STAMPS TO ATTENTION)
PLACKETTS:	Smolensk?
SMOLENSK:	Da.
PLACKETTS:	Smolensk.
SMOLENSK:	Smolensk.
PLACKETTS:	Well, what about it?
SMOLENSK:	Hum?
PLACKETTS:	This Smolensk business.
SMOLENSK:	Smolensk.
PLACKETTS:	Aye, Smol… ensk.
SMOLENSK:	Da.
PLACKETTS:	Da?
SMOLENSK:	(CHUCKLING, PLEASED) Da! Da! Smolensk! Smolensk!
PLACKETTS:	Smolensk?
SMOLENSK:	(UNSURE AGAIN, GRIMLY) Da, Smolensk.
PLACKETTS:	Smolensk?
SMOLENSK:	Smolensk.
PLACKETTS:	By gum, lad, you're tiring me out.
SMOLENSK:	He is coming.
PLACKETTS:	Who is?
SMOLENSK:	Smolensk.
PLACKETTS:	Oh, I see.
SMOLENSK:	The other Smolensk.
PLACKETTS:	There's another one, is there? (AFTER A MOMENT, THE KINDLY TONE ONE USES WITH MAD RELATIVES) What you in here for? Are they letting you serve breakfast today as a treat?
SMOLENSK:	I am Smolensk. He is Smolensk also. My older brother. He has your suit, all pressed and handsome.
PLACKETTS:	(REAL) Oh, they're letting me out, are they?
SMOLENSK:	You are addressing the Congress of People's Deputies this afternoon.
PLACKETTS:	(HUMOURING HIM) I must be better then. (UNDER HIS BREATH) Bloody Nora.
SMOLENSK:	Breakfast, please. Nice and warm.
PLACKETTS:	Aye, aye, thanks, lad. But…erh… you don't happen to have a dressing-gown anywhere? I can't stuff me face bollock naked.
	SMOLENSK FETCHES ONE. IT SLIPS ON SILKILY.
PLACKETTS:	Very nice, lad, thank you. Now bugger off and put yer head in a cold bucket.
SMOLENSK:	If you say so, sir, I shall, of course.
PLACKETTS:	(SITTING DOWN TO BREAKFAST) I do say so, lad, I do. I'm Placketts, you know. THE Placketts.
SMOLENSK:	Placketts?
PLACKETTS:	Placketts!
SMOLENSK:	Placketts!
PLACKETTS:	You know, the department store. (SINGS HIS JINGLE) Placketts of Proudfoot, The biggest and the best store, Placketts of Proudfoot, We've got what you're looking for. There's so much to see, For the whole family, Placketts of Proudfoot - and the car park is free!!! …Eh! Eh? Eh! You know us now, don't you?
SMOLENSK:	You are Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Russian Union of Sovereign States.
PLACKETTS:	You're daft, lad. Away and find that bucket.
SMOLENSK:	(STAMPS HIS FEET IN AN OBEDIENT SALUTE. HE MARCHES OFF) Smolensk, he always obeys to the letter.
PLACKETTS:	(CALLS HIM BACK) Lad! Lad! Just a mo! Come here. (SMOLENSK COMES) Closer, lad, closer. Look, this isn't easy for a man to say, but I thought I'd ask you before he comes…
SMOLENSK:	Smolensk?
PLACKETTS:	Don't start that again. No, the Doctor. I don't like Doctors. You're mad, aren't you?
SMOLENSK:	Smolensk.
PLACKETTS:	(KINDLY) Of course. But I find it easier to talk to you. (WHISPERS, EMBARRASSED) You're a man, you'll understand what I mean when I say me 'thing'. It's five times the size it was last night. Some kind of free offer, is it?
SMOLENSK:	Hum?
PLACKETTS:	You have a stroke, they bring you in, fix you up and you go out with a bigger thing?
SMOLENSK:	Oh, 'Thing'.
PLACKETTS:	Aye, thing.
SMOLENSK:	(WHISPERS) Sometimes in the night I dream of Polish girls running naked across the Pripyat Marches. Then my 'thing' also.
PLACKETTS:	(VERY SUSPICIOUS) Oh, aye. And another thing. (WHISPERS AGAIN) Some daft bugger's poured sour milk all over me breakfast, and emptied two jars of rancid gherkins on it 'n all. Was it you?
SMOLENSK:	(WHISPERS BACK) It is the way you like it, sir.
PLACKETTS:	(WITH SINISTER KINDNESS) And do you like it too?
SMOLENSK:	(GIGGLES, HAPPY) Smolensk, he likes it too.
PLACKETTS:	(IN SUDDEN FURY) You bloody eat it then!!!!!
	CRASHING OF BREAKFAST THINGS. THE SHLUPP OF HORRIBLE FOOD ON THE CARPET. FLYING GHERKINS TINKLE ON THE CHANDELIER. THE DROWNING NOISES OF SMOLENSK.
PLACKETTS:	(EXULTANT) I've never been so strong! Not even when I was a lad! I can lift this daft bugger over me head! Ha! Ha!
	SCREAMS FROM SMOLENSK. THEN HE IS THROWN AND CRASHES. A MOMENT'S SILENCE. SMOLENSK MAKES A LOW CHOKING SOUND AS HE COMES AROUND.
SMOLENSK's BROTHER:	(HURRIEDLY APPROACHING US, ANXIOUS FOR BOTH STATE AND PERSONAL REASONS) What is happening please?
PLACKETTS:	(STILL EXULTANT) I threw him right across the room, must be… ooooh… 15 feet easy. Who are you when you're at home?
SMOLENSK's BROTHER:	Smolensk.
PLACKETTS:	Go on, then! - You're a Doctor… he's choking on a gherkin. (PUSHES HIM ROUGHLY) Get your forceps down him, lad!
SMOLENSK's BROTHER:	(ACROSS ROOM, ANXIOUS FOR HIS BROTHER) Smolensk! Smolensk! Smolensk!
PLACKETTS:	(SUDDENLY ANGRY) I haven't forgot about me brother, you know: Jack! He came in here to get his bowels scraped and (TRAGIC) he never felt the sun on his face again!
	A HORRIBLE COUGH FROM SMOLENSK. HE HAS COUGHED UP THE GHERKIN.
PLACKETTS:	(PROUDLY SATISFIED) Told yer - gherkin.
SCENE 5	CHORUS SINGS PLACKETTS' STORE'S JINGLE AS ANNOYINGLY AS POSSIBLE:
CHORUS:	Placketts of Proudfoot! The biggest and the best store! Placketts of Proudfoot! We've got what you're looking for! There's so much to see For the whole family PLACKETTS OF PROUDFOOT - and the car park is free!!!
	WITH THIS STILL RINGING IN OUR EARS WE HEAR PLACKETTS MISERABLY COMPLAINING TO MADAME CHEREPOVETS. HE IS IN THE CHEREPOVETS' APARTMENT IN MOSCOW. MADAME CHEREPOVETS IS UNWRAPPING NEW DRESSES FROM THEIR BOXES AND TISSUE. IN ODD MOMENTS SHE BRIGHTLY HUMS PLACKETTS' JINGLE.
PLACKETTS:	(GLUMLY) It were me grandfather Jack Placketts who started the business in 1917, after he came back gassed from the war. It wasn't where it is now. Oh, no… It were just a stall in them days. Ties, bootlaces - eggs 'n all! - Gran had these manky-lookin chickens in the back yard, yer see.
MME. CHEREPOVETS:	(CASTING A DRESS ON THE BED) What about this dress for this afternoon, Yevgeny?
PLACKETTS:	(DISINTERESTED) Very nice, luv.
MME. CHEREPOVETS:	You don't think the cutaway midriff is too bold for the Congress of People's Deputies?
PLACKETTS:	But it were me old Dad who really built the business up. Of course, it were easy in them days. Brass was lying on the ground just to be picked up. (BITTERLY) Just to be picked up! He died a millionaire, me Dad. But when me and Big Jack took over by ourselves, things got hard, and then Jack died having his bowels scraped and it's all I can do to keep me head above dirty water. So you see I'm not the President of Russia at all. I'm PLACKETTS. (STARTS TO SLOWLY AND SADLY SING HIS JINGLE BUT IS INTERRUPTED)
MME. CHEREPOVETS:	(CASTING OUT ANOTHER DRESS) What about THIS one? I'll still be showing lots of bosom.
PLACKETTS:	(GETTING UP, A SHOPKEEPING INTEREST IS AROUSED) How much did you pay for this, pet?
MME. CHEREPOVETS:	20 thousand roubles.
PLACKETTS:	Oughhh! Yer should've said. We've got a sale on in our French Salon next month. Mrs. Oxenthorpe could've helped you pick one out - she's a big woman 'n all. (SADLY, MISSING HER) Our Hilda's just like a bird, you know.
MME. CHEREPOVETS:	(CONCERNED) Yevgeny?
PLACKETTS:	Uh?
MME. CHEREPOVETS:	What is all this nonsense you are talking?
PLACKETTS:	Just prattlin, lass. Just prattlin.
MME. CHEREPOVETS:	Look at me in the eyes. (SLAPS AND PULLS HIS CHEEKS TO GET HIM IN POSITION)
PLACKETTS:	(HIS VOICE MADE PECULIAR BY HER GRIP) Owya! Watch out for that growth on the end of me nose!
MME. CHEREPOVETS:	You don't have a growth on the end of your nose.
PLACKETTS:	(STILL PECULIAR) Must have dropped off. (SADLY) I've had that for 40 years.
MME. CHEREPOVETS:	You have a funny look in your eyes. You're not yourself. You haven't been taking any of those pills General Bibcoff takes? It's ruining him, you know. OF COURSE! You're worried about your speech this afternoon! Is that all it is? (SHE SLAPS HIS CHEEK AFFECTIONATELY AND LETS HIM GO) Poor, poor darlink!
PLACKETTS:	(COMPLAINS TO HIMSELF) Ooo, I feel like I've shaved with a blunt razor.
MME. CHEREPOVETS:	Would you like to make love before we go? There's a whole hour before the car comes.
PLACKETTS:	(STIFFLY) No thank you, Madam.
MME. CHEREPOVETS:	(SLIPPING OUT OF HER CLOTHES) Go on, my big bear, you know it always loosens you up before you make a long boring speech. It intimidates them. They can see the glow on you. You can always tell when someone has just made love.
PLACKETTS:	It wouldn't be right.
MME. CHEREPOVETS:	What could be more right than a man making love to his own wife?
PLACKETTS:	(ALOUD TO HIMSELF) I know what it is. The Bank came into me office, snatched the accounts and pulled the plug on me. I've retreated into some sort of high-powered dream world, full of lewd women and chandeliers.
MME. CHEREPOVETS:	Yevgeny! Take your clothes off!
PLACKETTS:	(MISERABLY RESIGNED) If you say so, luv. (HE BEGINS UNDRESSING)
MME. CHEREPOVETS:	What are you going to say in your speech this afternoon, anyway? I overheard someone saying that it's the most important speech in History and that if you don't say exactly the right thing then the whole political edifice will fall to bits by the weekend.
PLACKETTS:	Speech? I'm not making no bloody speech.
MME. CHEREPOVETS:	(KISSING HIM) Oh, but you must. If our little regime falls to bits by the weekend then we'll miss the summit in Vienna next week… and I'll have nowhere to wear all my lovely new dresses. (BABYTALKS HIM) Speechy… speechy-speechy… what clever things is Larissa's big strong bear going to tell all the grumpy old men…ummmmmmm?
PLACKETTS:	I suppose I could give them that speech I gave at last month's Rotary Club dinner. It went down very well. (MADAME CHEREPOVETS IS UP TO HER TRICKS, THE BEDSPRING SPRINGS) Oooooh! Yer bugs! (PROTESTS) I had a mistress in Ripon once, you know.
SCENE 6	THE HUGE HUM OF THE CONGRESS OF PEOPLE'S DEPUTIES, EXCITEDLY AWAITING THE PRESIDENT'S SPEECH. GENERAL BIBCOFF ARRIVING IN HIS SEAT, A TINKLE OF HIS MEDALS.
MELNIKOV:	General Bibcoff! Wherever have you been? He'll be on his feet any second. How can you reply if you haven't heard what he's said!!!
BIBCOFF:	(A DEEP, INSANE VOICE) I was in the toilet. (GRUNTS AND GROANS)
MELNIKOV:	He is looking very confident. I think he has been poking his wife all morning. They say he does before a long speech. There she is, look, in that low cut dress.
BIBCOFF:	Where?
MELNIKOV:	There, look, the big white bosoms.
BIBCOFF:	Excuse me, but it's these pills I've been taking. Everyone seems to have large white bosoms.
MELNIKOV:	Shhh - he's on his feet.
	THE HUM OF THE HUGE AUDITORIUM DIES DOWN A LONG WAY. WE HEAR PLACKETTS' TEDIOUS SPEECH FROM THE AUDIENCE.
PLACKETTS:	(TAPPING HIS MICROPHONE) Testing… testing… testing… Can you hear me at the back? Erm, I hope you'll understand all this, because I don't speak a word of Russian even though I'm speaking it. I know, confusing, isn't it? But people were even more confused in 1917 when they came upon me Grandad's stall in Proudfoot Marketplace and saw the ties, the bootlaces, and the eggs. Humble beginnings, I do not deny, but the presence of them eggs was in fact a Revolution in the retail trade…the department store was born…
MELNIKOV:	(A RASPING WHISPER, OVER PLACKETTS' SPEECH) What is he talking about?
BIBCOFF:	It must be a metaphor. The Revolution of 1917. Eggs. I don't know what it means. Ask down the line. I must find out what it means!
	AS PLACKETTS' TEDIOUS SPEECH CONTINUES, WE HEAR THE LINE OF DEPUTIES ASKING EACH OTHER WHAT IT MEANS…
PLACKETTS:	(UNDER THE DEPUTIES ASKING)… But of course today, as I'm sure you'll agree, brass isn't found just lying about to be picked up… or we'd all be out there this minute filling our pockets. No, today, it's hard graft for every penny you pay back to the Bank. Nor is a shopkeeper a leader of fashion, no not even a shopkeeper like myself, Placketts of Proudfoot, is a leader of fashion. Even I, ladies and gentlemen, can only follow. Let me give you the example of our tripe counter… (CONTINUES UNDER THE NEXT EXCHANGE)
MELNIKOV:	(WHISPERS) Balaiev thinks he means that we're all going to be arrested.
BIBCOFF:	Arrested!
DEPUTY IN BACKGROUND:	I want my mammy!
OTHER DEPUTIES:	(IN PANIC) Arrested! A coup! Whose coup! Bibcoff's? Balaiev's? Arrested? Who me!
BIBCOFF:	SHHHHHHHHHH!
PLACKETTS:	…For 50 years we had the same man, Billy Purvis his name was, you'll all know him, on the tripe counter. But then one day I looked at the books and I compared them with 10 years since, and I said: "Oooooh, he's got to go!". People don't eat tripe like wot they did. It's all pizza bits and garlic bread these days. And I can recommend our garlic bread. 79 pence a throw and very good for the bowels. If our Jack had eaten one at every meal you'd be listening to him now and not me. So I let Billy Purvis go…
BIBCOFF:	(WITH PLACKETTS SPEECHIFYING IN THE BACKGROUND) Balaiev is right… he is wanting to do away with the old men. That's you, Melnikov.
MELNIKOV:	I am younger than you by 27 years, General Bibcoff.
BIBCOFF:	(GRUFFLY INSISTENT) It's a misprint in the directory - I am only 36.
MELNIKOV:	(ALMOST COQUETTISH) General Bibcoff?
BIBCOFF:	Uh?
MELNIKOV:	Do I have large white bosoms, also?
BIBCOFF:	(A LONG, LOW, LECHEROUS GRUNT)
	(AGITATED WHISPERING)
MELNIKOV:	Balaiev says that the country will fall apart by the end of the week and wants to know when you are going to make your move… (TICKLISHLY OUTRAGED) General Bibcoff! General Bibcoff!
PLACKETTS:	(SPEECHIFYING) …And a man should positively never wear the same suit two days running. You sir, yes you sir, and you there, and the gentleman rubbing his friend's chest…
	(A GRUNT FROM BIBCOFF)
PLACKETTS:	May I offer you a free fitting in our Outsize Department. Our Mr. Swincliffe will see you right. Because: (SINGS HORRIBLY) Placketts of Proudfoot! The biggest and the best store! Placketts of Proudfoot! We've got what you're looking for! There's so much to see! For the whole family! Placketts of Proudfoot! - and the car park is free…
	AS PLACKETTS SINGS, A SOUND LIKE CYMBALS JUST-AFTER-THEY'VE-HIT-EACH-OTHER COVERS HIS VOICE. MONEY RATTLES IN POCKETS. A SLAP OF TRIPE ON MARBLE.
BILLY PURVIS:	(FROM ELSEWHERE, BROADEST YORKSHIRE EVER) But I've worked that tripe counter for 47 year, Mr. Placketts.
DEPUTY BALAIEV:	Make your move, General Bibcoff! General Bibcoff!
BIBCOFF:	I will make my move! I will! Take all these bosoms away and I'll make my move.
PLACKETTS:	(SORROWFULLY, CLOSE, ASIDE BUT ECHOING SLIGHTLY IN HIS MIKE) By, but I feel queer. I had this same feeling once before. I was in Doncaster, when I felt suddenly light on me feet. I felt that I could be anybody, go anywhere, do anything. It only lasted a minute but I never forgot it. It were shortly before me Dad died. I can't remember why I was in Doncaster.
SCENE 7	WHOOPS AND OOOOPS OF MACHINES. WE ARE BACK IN THE INSTITUTE.
CAROL:	This is cruel.
BAFFNER:	(CHUCKLESOME) No it's not. It's hilarious!
CAROL:	The poor man. Send him back into his own head, Graeme. You must!
BAFFNER:	No, no - listen to what he's been saying. He's alive, liberated.
CAROL:	He sounds terribly upset to me.
BAFFNER:	(FAST AND FERVENT) I've given him the greatest freedom a man could ask for. The final and greatest freedom - I have! I've done it! I've given him the freedom not to be himself. Carol, my darling one, however perfect the world is made, we are still ourselves, stuck with the limitation of being in a single limited body… a body that can experience not even a billionth of what life has to offer - a body that dies, Carol. Our friend Placketts need never die. Never. All I have to do is press this button and he'll pop out of the head he's in and into another one. Can't you see what a wonderful thing I've done for him? He can be his real self now. No more money worries. No more of the habits that have numbed his mind. The tiny little thing that is Placketts now has access to all the skills, feelings and perceptions of the host body I have sent him to. If I send him into a great violinist he will find, if he tries, that he is able to play the violin, and will still, I think, be able to play it in the next body he visits. He can begin life afresh every day. All I've got to do is press the button. Oh, Carol, I'm so happy for him, for all of us. Soon we shall all be flying, flying into each other's hearts!
CAROL:	(COLDLY) Press your button. Send him somewhere else. Not somewhere important and dangerous. Somewhere little and safe.
BAFFNER:	No sooner said…
	A SICKLY SOUND LIKE A CAR NOT STARTING. AND AGAIN, TWICE MORE!
BAFFNER:	(NOT WORRIED YET) Maxie! What is it, Maxie! I'm getting no response.
	SIMILAR FAILED BUTTON SOUNDS FROM THE BACKGROUND.
MAXIE:	I'm trying too. I'm getting nothing. Must be in the tanks. (IN SUDDEN HIGH FRIGHT) It's Osbert Chinery, sir. He's gone!
BAFFNER:	But he's all hooked up and everything. Nobody could…
MAXIE:	Not his body. His mind. It's broken free of our control.
CAROL:	Is something wrong?
BAFFNER:	(IN FURIOUS PANIC) Find it! Put out a trace!
MAXIE:	No sooner said… (WE HEAR HIM PRESSING THINGS IN THE BACKGROUND)
BAFFNER:	Momentary hitch, dear. (ATTEMPTING HIS FORMER LIGHTNESS OF MANNER AND JUST ABOUT SUCCEEDING) Would you like to go down to the cafeteria and have a bit of cake? Maxie can wizard on here by himself.
MAXIE:	I think he's in the South of France. I'm getting a high read from there.
BAFFNER:	(SCREAMS) FIND HIM!!! FIND ME OSBERT CHINERY!!! FIND HIM!!! (CALM AS EVER, ON HIS WAY) They do an awfully nice meringue. It has a raspberry deep inside. Sometimes you can see right through the meringue to where the raspberry is, so you can save it till last. Scrummy!
CAROL:	(ON THEIR WAY) But Mr. Placketts has just destroyed Russian politics. Shouldn't we tell someone?
BAFFNER:	(WALKING TOWARDS THE SWING DOORS) The world is on the brink of the greatest happiness it has ever known… (THE FLIP-FLAP OF THE SWING DOORS) …and I did it! I did! Me!
SCENE 8	VIENNA: AN OFFICIAL DINNER. A STRAUSS WALTZ PLAYS SWEETLY. HUM OF INTERNATIONAL DINERS. SMOLENSK IS EXPLAINING HIS NAME TO THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT IN THE BACKGROUND:
PRESIDENT RINALDI:	Smolensk?
SMOLENSK:	Smolensk.
PRESIDENT RINALDI:	Smolensk.
	(THEN CLOSE:)
MME. CHEREPOVETS:	Well, even if the country has fallen apart, at least we got to Vienna.
PLACKETTS:	(SADLY) Hilda would love this.
MME. CHEREPOVETS:	And everyone has said wonderful things about my dress.
PLACKETTS:	Very luscious, pet. Ah, grub's up!
AUSTRIAN WAITER:	Your consommé, Mr. President.
PLACKETTS:	Hurry up, lad, I'm starved.
AUSTRIAN WAITER:	Guten appetite!
PLACKETTS:	(CALLING HIM BACK) Hoi! Come here you! There's a face in my soup! Where's he gone? (SHOUTS) Hoi! (SNIFFING OVER MME. CHEREPOVETS) There's not one in yours.
MME. CHEREPOVETS:	What?
PLACKETTS:	A ruddy great blinking face in me blinking soup!
MME. CHEREPOVETS:	Stir the soup. It'll go away.
PLACKETTS:	And me spoon's all bent! (SOUND OF EFFORT AS HE BENDS IT BACK) That's better - right, you! (HE SPLASHES HIS SOUP WITH HIS SPOON) It's still there. (CALLS, SARCASTICALLY) My compliments to the chef - very clever. (INSPIRED) Hey - we could do a good line in this at the store. The Queen's face. Footballers.
OSBERT CHINERY:	(A SPLASH ACCOMPANYING HIS WORDS OF WARNING) Do not be alarmed, Mr. Placketts. This is Osbert Chinery speaking to you.
PLACKETTS:	Are you that nit that bends spoons on the telly?
OSBERT CHINERY:	My apologies for interrupting your meal by appearing in your soup like this. But it will be perfectly safe to consume it when I'm gone.
PLACKETTS:	Thanks for nowt.
OSBERT CHINERY:	I am currently occupying the body of a 12-year-old French girl from Bayonne by the name of Paulette Poperen.
PLACKETTS:	You bastard! You're the one that's done this to me! Eh! EH? Well you can just send us back into meself… Right now! Go on!
OSBERT CHINERY:	I do bear some of the responsibility, Mr. Placketts, and I most humbly apologise. But it is the O'Jonesburg Institute who have done this to you.
PLACKETTS:	He's a hard man my solicitor! He'll bloody give you yer head in yer hands and yer brains to play with.
MME. CHEREPOVETS:	(IRRITATED) Darlink, you are talking to your soup!
PLACKETTS:	Aye, and it backanswers, 'n all!
OSBERT CHINERY:	If you wish to be restored to your former self…
PLACKETTS:	(FERVENT) Aye, I do. (SOFTLY, NOT SO SURE) I do.
OSBERT CHINERY:	Then you must hurry to England at once. Slip away, now, tonight.
PLACKETTS:	But General-bleeding-Bibcoff's made his move and I'm playing horseshoes with the American President tomorrow morning.
OSBERT CHINERY:	(EARNEST) For the sake of everyone in the world, Mr. Placketts, leave now and make your way to England.
PLACKETTS:	But I've got no passport nor nowt.
OSBERT CHINERY:	Get to Calais somehow - the Lord will provide - and I'll meet you there.
PLACKETTS:	How'll I recognise you?
OSBERT CHINERY:	(LOSING PATIENCE) I'll be a 12-year-old French girl.
PLACKETTS:	Aye, aye, alright lass.
OSBERT CHINERY:	We'll take the ferry and go straight to the O'Jonesburg Institute. Our very presence there will blow their experiment to bits.
PLACKETTS:	If you say so.
AUSTRIAN WAITER:	(COMING UP WITH A HEEL-CLICK) Is the soup to your Excellency's satisfaction?
PLACKETTS:	Eh? Oh! (A SLURP OF SOUP) Mustn't grumble.
PRESIDENT RINALDI:	(NEARBY, COMPLAINS) Godammit, my spoon's gone and bent! Hey!
SCENE 9	THE RINGSTRASSE, VIENNA. TRAFFIC RUSHING PAST. ANGRY PEEP OF HORNS AS PLACKETTS NEARLY GETS HIMSELF RUN OVER. IN DISTANCE, SOUND OF REVELLERS. THEY RUN PAST A DOORWAY FROM WHICH DRIFTS THE SOUND OF ZITHER MUSIC.
	PLACKETTS IS RUNNING FAST THROUGH THE STREETS, PURSUED BY KGB, CIA, AND BIBCOFF'S MEN: THEY SHOUT "STOP!" "STOP!" "MR. PRESIDENT!" "COMRADE CHEREPOVETS!" "STOP!".
BIBCOFF AGENT:	Wherever you run, General Bibcoff will find you! He will find you!
	ACOUSTIC OF CHASE CHANGES: THEY ARE RUNNING UP AN ALLEYWAY, CLIP-CLOP OF 'THIRD MAN' TYPE FOOTSTEPS.
PLACKETTS:	(BETWEEN WHEEZES) Bloody Nora! What a palaver! Running round the back streets of Vienna at my age!
	ACOUSTIC CHANGES AGAIN: THEY ARE OUT OF THE ALLEYWAY. PLACKETTS IS WHEEZING HIS JINGLE NERVOUSLY AS HE RUNS. SUDDENLY HE CRIES OUT, HAVING BUMPED INTO SAMUEL CRUTTENDON, FROM WHOM THERE IS AN AMAZED "OOF!". THEY ROLL OVER IN A HEAP.
CRUTTENDON:	(A COCKNEY SPARROW) Here! What's your game?
PLACKETTS:	(EXHAUSTED) I slipped away. They're after me!
CRUTTENDON:	The law?
PLACKETTS:	Yes. No. I don't know. Bibcoff's men.
CRUTTENDON:	In here. Quick.
	THEIR HURRIED SLIPPERY SCUFFLING EFFORT AT GETTING UP. THE SOUND OF BINS BEING KICKED OVER.
SCENE 10	A HUSH. WE ARE INSIDE THE STEFANSDOM. FROM INSIDE WE HEAR PLACKETTS' PURSUERS RUN PAST OUTSIDE.
PLACKETTS:	Oooh, thanks, lad. You've saved me bacon.
SCENE 11	A HEAVY DOOR CREAKS OPEN. ECHOEY.
PLACKETTS:	(INSTINCTIVELY WHISPERING) Where's this when it's at home?
CRUTTENDON:	Inside of Saint Stephen's Cathedral. This way. Down these steps into the catacombs, then up some more behind the altar and we're back in the land of the living.
PLACKETTS:	Yer bugger! All these skellingtons is bringing up me soup!
CRUTTENDON:	What they after yer for, stealing spoons?
PLACKETTS:	Spoons?
CRUTTENDON:	With my little eye I noticed you had one clutched in your mitt.
PLACKETTS:	Oh aye - I had it in me hand when I slipped away and I forgot to drop it. (HE DROPS IT. IT PLINKS AND ECHOES ON THE COLD STONE)
CRUTTENDON:	Shhhhh!
PLACKETTS:	Sorry, lad!
	A DISTANT HUM OF A CONFESSION MADE INTO A MUMBLE BY A MUFFLE OF STONE.
CRUTTENDON:	We're right behind the confessionals here. Sometimes I sits and listens. Especially when there's a priest doing another priest. You've no idea what goes on! Nobody's quite what they seem, is they? What part of Russia you from?
PLACKETTS:	Yorkshire.
CRUTTENDON:	Your Russian's very good. I learned mine in clink over there. Four years in a madhouse outside Kiev. I'm not mad though. (HIS GIGGLE SUGGESTS OTHERWISE) Just rotten through and through. I'm a Londoner - Sammy Cruttendon's what I usually call myself, to fellow crooks like yourself.
PLACKETTS:	I'm a respectable businessman!
CRUTTENDON:	Got any dosh on yer?
PLACKETTS:	(HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS) Aye, a bit, why?
CRUTTENDON:	No roubles, mind?
PLACKETTS:	I've got Austrian stuff. Got it for the wife's shopping - his wife, I mean.
CRUTTENDON:	Well, I've got to be recompensed, haven't I? I mean, I was waiting for a customer. Two new passports, all crisp and new. Maybe he won't come back. That's 30 thousand schillings I'm down.
PLACKETTS:	I'm sorry, lad - I know what it's like to lose business. We had 12 thousand quid's worth of three-piece-suites fire-damaged and the insurance company wouldn't pay up. I still have a quiet cry about that sometimes. Haad on - passports! One of them wouldn't do me, would it?
CRUTTENDON:	Yeah, plenty more in me bag. You can be who yer likes. Cost yer, mind. (THE CONFESSIONAL MUMBLE ANOVE THEM STOPS) We can go up now. If anyone stops yer, pretend you're a ghost. Go like this - oooooooo! (GIGGLES)
PLACKETTS:	(UNDER HIS BREATH) Barmy-looking sod.
SCENE 12	THE O'JONESBURG INSTITUTE. THE QUIET WHIR OF MACHINES. THE PLONKING OF THE TANKS.
BAFFNER:	(CALLS, INCREASINGLY ANGRY) Maxie! Maxie! Maxie!
MAXIE:	(WAKING UP WITH A START) Um? Sorry, Mr. Baffner, sir. I must have dropped off.
BAFFNER:	(DEEPLY, DEEPLY DEPRESSED) Where is he? Where's Placketts?
MAXIE:	(RUBBING HIS EYES AND WAKING UP PROPERLY, SETS THE MACHINE'S TRACE PEEP-PEEPING) Last time I saw him he was on the night-train from Zurich to Paris. (A BRIEF WHEEEE FROM THE MACHINE AND WE ARE TUNED IN TO THE SOUND OF THE TRAIN) He's still with that Cruttendon character he picked up in Vienna…
BAFFNER:	And Osbert Chinery?
MAXIE:	On a bicycle between Paris and Amiens, on his way to Calais. They'll all be here by lunchtime tomorrow, sir.
BAFFNER:	Lunchtime tomorrow?
MAXIE:	Yes, sir.
BAFFNER:	Any more dots on the screen?
MAXIE:	(TRYING TO SOUND ENCOURAGING) Yes, yes, sir. Nearly a hundred.
BAFFNER:	Too slow. It's too slow.
MAXIE:	I put the print-outs on your desk, sir. It is working. Lots more are flying, every minute more and more.
BAFFNER:	It's still too slow, Maxie. If Chinery gets within a few miles of us he'll screw this machinery up for good, you know what he's capable of.
MAXIE:	Yes, sir.
BAFFNER:	And if he gets Placketts back into his own body, then the chain reaction is halted too. The forces of darkness are gathering around us, Maxie.
MAXIE:	(NERVOUSLY SUGGESTS) Sir, I couldn't go early could I? Now, I mean.
BAFFNER:	Wait till the last minute, Maxie, there's a sweetiepie. Where are you going, anyway?
MAXIE:	(EMBARRASSED AND CHEERFUL) I'm going to be a fashion-model in America, sir. I've got her all picked out and ready. A real smasher, sir. (SHY) I always felt I was a woman trapped in a man's body.
BAFFNER:	(A GOD-LIKE UNDERSTANDING) I'm sure you'll be far happier all round, Maxie. (SUDDENLY ALERT WITH A BRAINWAVE) I've an idea! It'll do it! We can fix Brother Chinery! Ha! Ha!
SCENE 13	CAROL SPEAKS SUDDEN AND SWIFT:
CAROL:	I had the most godawful row with Derek when he found out I'd been up at the Institute seeing Graeme Baffner all week. "He's the cleverest man in the world," I said. "And I suppose I'm stupid," he said. "Yes!" I said. "If he's so clever why would he want anything to do with you? Look at you!" "He loves me!" I said. "He's always loved me!" Derek started smashing-up his ashtray collection, so I slammed the door on him and went straight to Liverpool Street. I met a strange woman on the train who said she shouldn't be here and that usually she was much taller. I had to walk across the fields towards the Institute. It was all silver and shiny. The sun was in its windows a thousand times. The man at the gate was reading the last page of a book. I found Graeme in a little wooden gazebo surrounded by nettles, right next to the electric fence.
SCENE 14
CAROL:	Oooh! Oooh!
BAFFNER:	Carol?
	SHE RUNS THROUGH NETTLES AND UP ONTO THE PLANKS OF THE GAZEBO.
BAFFNER:	I wasn't expecting you today.
CAROL:	I had a row with Derek. I forgot to put on any tights. (RUBBING HER NETTLE-STINGS) Oooh! Oooh! (A SUDDEN CHANGE OF TONE) I was thinking about… when I used to read you poetry… punting on the river. You've always loved me, haven't you?
	A ROOK CAWS DISCREETLY ABOVE THEM.
BAFFNER:	(HIS OLD JOKEY SELF) Passionately, my dear thing. No one else has any claim on my heart but you.
CAROL:	And yet for 20 years not even a card.
BAFFNER:	20 years. It's just like yesterday to me, dear. (WITH THE SAME DULL DEPRESSION HE HAD IN HIS LAST SCENE) Look, Carol. When I've difficult things to think about, this is where I come.
CAROL:	I do love you!
BAFFNER:	(HE TALKS THRUGH HER LINE) I've been thinking something out, a difficult decision, and I need my mind to be prepared for what I'm about to do. (AFTER A DEEP BREATH TO COLLECT ALL HIS COURAGE) I'm putting myself in Osbert Chinery's tank. I think I can manage with the power of my own mind, though I'm not a psychic, God knows, but I think I can push the chain reaction on just enough, if I concentrate. I can whoosh Osbert Chinery and Placketts off to Greenland or Waikiki Beach before they get near us tomorrow.
CAROL:	Is it dangerous?
BAFFNER:	(EMOTIONAL, OBVIOUSLY LYING) No, no, not dangerous. But can I have a kiss for luck?
CAROL:	Of course.
	THEY KISS.
BAFFNER:	Wish I'd been Charles.
CAROL:	(AMUSED AT SUCH A DAFT IDEA) Why?
BAFFNER:	Dunno. Always did.
SCENE 15	THE TANK ROOM. THEY ARE WALKING ON BOARDS ABOVE THE TANKS, ABOUT TO LOWER BAFFNER IN. PLINK-PLOPS. AIR BUBBLING TO SURFACE. HEARTBEATS FROM THE SUBMERGED PSYCHICS. BAFFNER IS STRIPPING OFF.
BAFFNER:	Don't mind my bare bodkin, do you?
CAROL:	He will be all right, Maxie? What's your degree in, anyway?
MAXIE:	Safe as houses, Miss. (OVERLOUD, TO BAFFNER) I'm putting the tube in now, sir, careful not to gag.
BAFFNER:	See you later, alli… (HE IS SHUT UP BY THE TUBE GOING DOWN HIS THROAT)
CAROL:	(LOVINGLY, TENDERLY) In a while, crocodile.
	SNAP OF ELASTIC AS MAXIE CONNECTS OTHER LIFE-SUSTAINING GIZMOS TO BAFFNER. THEN: THE CREAK OF THE WINCH AS HE IS LOWERED. MUFFLED GOODBYES FROM BAFFNER.
MAXIE:	Ta-ta, sir, ta-ta… Careful, Miss. He'll hit the side. Just push his head down for him. (STRICTLY) Harder!
CAROL:	(ANGRY) This water's cold! (FRIGHTENED) He's come back up!
MAXIE:	Push him under. He'll be all right.
	THE CUBICLE BEING KICKED UNDERWATER
CAROL:	He's drowning!
MAXIE:	He'll settle.
CAROL:	Where's Giles? I want to see Giles!
MAXIE:	Giles has gone back to Bolivia, Miss. Little joke of Mr. Baffner's.
	THE KICKING SETTLES DOWN, BIG BUBBLES OF AIR HIT THE SURFACE
CAROL:	You'd better know what you're doing! You'd better had!
MAXIE:	What's that perfume you're wearing, Miss?
CAROL:	(THROWN BY SUCH A QUESTION AT A TIME OF CRISIS) Perfume? I don't remember.
MAXIE:	It's very nice. Very you.
SCENE 16	BAFFNER IN THE TANK. HISS OF HIS BREATHING THROUGH TUBES. METALLIC BANGING FROM FAR AWAY. DOLPHIN-LIKE SOUNDS. A MUTTERING OF VOICES. OCCASIONAL DULL LAUGHTER.
BAFFNER:	I'm trying hard to focus my mind. God, it's hard. It keeps wanting to fly off. I'm having to use all my concentration just to keep it here. Where would it go? Everywhere, I suppose. Everywhere at once.
HODGEKINS:	(CAN'T QUITE BELIEVE IT) Mr. Baffner, that you?
BAFFNER:	Who's that?
HODGEKINS:	Ralph Hodgekins, sir. I'm in the next tank.
BAFFNER:	Shut up and concentrate, man!
HODGEKINS:	(CHILDISHLY MIFFED) Sorry, I'm sure.
BAFFNER:	It's so important. I must concentrate.
	A CONSTIPATED SOUND OF GREAT GRITTY EFFORT FROM BAFFNER.
HODGEKINS:	You're going, I can feel you going. Don't try so hard. Ease off. Think of a daisy, a daisy in a field.
BAFFNER:	(FERVENT, EXHAUSTED AND BREATHLESS, AS IF IN THE MIDDLE OF HIS CRUCIFIXION) If at any moment you might BECOME your neighbour, how would you feel about him? If you are an American millionaire how interested will you be in the welfare of an Ethiopian herdsman, because you yourself might become that herdsman tomorrow during breakfast, or right now! THIS is my New World Order. A humanity cleansed of selfishness, that will dedicate itself as a single body to great works. We will be like one single being, with all the virtues of the best to the fore, The nobility that is in Graeme Baffner will spread out and enlighten the world, and I too will touch every other mind and become greater. We will all touch, in every glorious swirling moment we will touch each other's thoughts in an infinity of combinations. We will never be lonely again, none of us… (YELLS, DESPERATE) I'm losing it!!!
HODGEKINS:	The daisy!
OTHER VOICES IN OTHER TANKS:	Think about the daisy. The daisy.
BAFFNER:	(TRYING DESPERATELY) In a girl's hair, a daisy in a daisychain. It's beautiful.
HODGEKINS & OTHERS:	By itself. The daisy. Just the daisy.
BAFFNER:	Got it! A daisy! Yes, it's there. Darkness all around it. A daisy. A DAISY!!! (CALMLY, AS IF AFTER AN INJECTION) A daisy. I'm calming down, I think. For a moment I was gone, I saw through a thousand eyes at once, different rooms, places. Hodgekins, am I strong enough for this?
HODGEKINS:	(TO OTHER PSYCHICS, AS IF DISCUSSING A CAKE) He feels quite strong.
DISTANT VOICE:	Not as strong as Mr. Chinery.
ANOTHER VOICE:	Nowhere near.
HODGEKINS:	As strong as any of US, though.
STRONG-SOUNDING VOICE:	I'm much stronger, I am!
BAFFNER:	Concentrate on Osbert Chinery, darlings, come-come, try your best for Daddy. (LAUGHING, DELIGHTED BY THE EXPERIENCE) I can feel you all. Yes, better, better.
HODGEKINS:	The daisy!
BAFFNER:	I've got the daisy. It's huge, big as a zeppelin. It's out there, flapping in the skies, looking for Osbert Chinery. (TO THE PSYCHICS IN THEIR TANKS, BUT ALSO DIRECTLY TO THE RADIO AUDIENCE, SLOW) All of you, out there, you can hear me I know: send yours too. All our daisies…
SCENE 17	CALAIS. CHANNEL FERRY EMBARKATION. PASSENGERS NOISILY MAKING THEIR WAY THROUGH PASSPORT CONTROL.
PLACKETTS:	(HIS VOICE FOR SPEAKING TO LITTLE GIRLS) Excuse me, little lass, but are you Osbert Chinery?
FRENCH GIRL:	(VERY MIFFED) Non!
CRUTTENDON:	She don't speak no Russian. Let me have a go. Hello, gorgeous - are you, what's his name?
PLACKETTS:	Osbert Chinery.
CRUTTENDON:	Are you Osbert Chinery?
FRENCH GIRL:	NON!!!!
PLACKETTS:	Perhaps it's the wrong one. Ask her how old she is.
CRUTTENDON:	(BABYTALKING A FRENCH GIRL) I'm 37. That's old isn't it? How old are you?
FRENCH GIRL:	NON!!!!
PLACKETTS:	Blimmin heck!
PASSPORT OFFICER:	Passport, please.
PLACKETTS:	(A WORRIED SOUND)
CRUTTENDON:	(WHISPERS) Just keep smiling.
PLACKETTS:	(WHISPERS BACK) That photo in there looks nowt like anybody, never mind me. (WITH FALSE LAUGHTER, TO PASSPORT OFFICER) I was much slimmer in them days.
PASSPORT OFFICER:	(OVERLY FRENCH) Bon voyage.
PLACKETTS:	Thanks, lad. Whey-hey, we're through!
CRUTTENDON:	Yeah, and that's two grand you owe me for nannying you this far.
SCENE 18	ON DECK. SEAGULLS. WHOOSH OF WIND, SHIP'S ANNOUNCEMENTS IN BACKGROUND.
PLACKETTS:	That's her, must be. She's about 12. Very serious looking. Must be her.
CRUTTENDON:	Where?
PLACKETTS:	With the Mars bar. See?
CRUTTENDON:	I'll give it a try, shall I?
PLACKETTS:	There's a good lad.
	CRUTTENDON WALKS OVER HUMMING 'CUSHY BUTTERFIELD'.
CRUTTENDON:	(SITS DOWN ON BENCH) Bonjour.
OSBERT CHINERY:	Bonjour.
CRUTTENDON:	That's a nice deep voice you've got, little girl. You're not Osbert Chinery by any chance, is yer?
OSBERT CHINERY:	Je suis Osbert Chinery.
CRUTTENDON:	(A HUGE WHISTLE, THEN YELLS) Hoi! Found her!
PLACKETTS:	(HURRYING OVER) Shhhh, we mustn't draw attention to ourselves. I'm still worried about General Bibcoff's men. You Osbert Chinery?
OSBERT CHINERY:	Good afternoon.
CRUTTENDON:	Best midget I ever seen. We can make a fortune with her.
OSBERT CHINERY:	We will proceed immediately to the O'Jonesburg Institute and confront Mr. Baffner with his foolishness.
PLACKETTS:	And I'll get back into myself?
OSBERT CHINERY:	As sure as my name's Osbert Chinery.
CRUTTENDON:	That's a rotten name for a pretty little girl. What about Monique? I've always had a weakness for that name. Make it Monique, eh? You'll be 17 in no time. I'll wait for you.
OSBERT CHINERY:	(WHILE EATING THE MARS BAR) Graeme Baffner, Mr. Placketts, has ruined my life. I was in retreat, retired to the Lake District. I'd given up my TV show. Couldn't keep my mind in my head anymore, you see. It kept flying away, expanding into space.
PLACKETTS:	(KNOWS HE'S GOT A WRONG 'UN) Oh, aye.
OSBERT CHINERY:	It took all my strength to keep it in place. Sometimes I lay on my bed for days with my eyes tight shut. It's happening again, just this morning. I'm having trouble staying here.
PLACKETTS:	Seasickness, is it?
OSBERT CHINERY:	No: my mind. You of all people should understand. Baffner's mad, you know. He thinks that by scrambling us all up he'll end up with some sort of perfect world where everybody loves everyone else. He'll just drive everyone around the bend. And what's best in people will be lost, drowned in the tidal waves of evil and stupidity that makes up most of humankind. It is a question of the focus of the mind, Mr. Placketts.
PLACKETTS:	Aye.
OSBERT CHINERY:	When we're all scrambled up it's the crassest part of the human animal that will prevail. Oh yes, Mr. Placketts. There'll be no reason left, just a whirlwind of emotion, anger and fear. We need to be alone, Mr. Placketts, alone: uniqueness is our greatest virtue. It is in our uniqueness that all new ideas are made: slowly, one person at a time, does the human spirit grow. If Baffner can make all our minds into a single mind we'll be like some mad old bigot, getting older and older, madder and madder, with no spirit to move us and the victim of sudden obsessions we cannot control.
CRUTTENDON:	(SOMEWHAT WORRIED, BUT LIGHT OF HEART) I hate to interrupt but there's an enormous daisy flying right this way.
	CRIES OF AMAZEMENT IN BACKGROUND.
OSBERT CHINERY:	(IN SUDDEN TERROR) It's HIS daisy! HIS! I'm holding on, BAFFNER! I'm… (SUDDENLY A SMALL WELSH VOICE, HE HAS BECOME BARRY EVANS) Hello! Was there a cave-in?
PLACKETTS:	(ASTONISHED) Sorry, lass?
BARRY EVANS:	I was down the pit, having a bacon sandwich, when suddenly… I don't know. Aren't you the President of Russia?
PLACKETTS:	(HALF-SECRETLY TO CRUTTENDON) She's turned into a Welsh miner.
CRUTTENDON:	There's a novelty! Now what?
PLACKETTS:	I don't know. (EXCITED) Home, I suppose.
CRUTTENDON:	I want that two grand in cash, mind.
SCENE 19	A YORKSHIRE BRASS BAND PLAYS 'ON ILKLEY MOOR BAR TAT' FAST AND FURIOUS, FULL OF CONFIDENCE.
	KNOCKING ON DOOR, FURIOUS PRESSING OF DOORBELL. THE DOOR IS OPENED.
PLACKETTS:	Hilda! Hilda! My little currant bun! I'm so happy to see you. In all our years of married life…
HILDA PLACKETTS:	Are you the specialist Dr. Fitch sent for?
PLACKETTS:	It's me, pet. Placketts. (SINGS) Placketts of Proudfoot…
HILDA PLACKETTS:	He's in the lounge doing a jigsaw. Mind the carpet.
	THEY WALK THROUGH INTO THE LOUNGE. A CLOCK IS CHIMING. AN ATMOSPHERE OF PERFECT STILLNESS.
PLACKETTS:	(INTRODUCING HIS COMPANION) This is my friend Mr. Pakdemirli.
PAKDEMIRLI:	Mehmet Pakdemirli, at your service, Madam.
PLACKETTS:	He was Samuel Cruttendon this morning, of course, but then he went like this. He's a Turkish barber. He's got his own shop. I'm going to show him around the store. Oh, and this little girl is Mr. Evans.
BARRY EVANS:	Hello.
PLACKETTS:	I see you got that clock fixed. (STOPS IN HIS TRACKS) Bloody hell! Him in that chair… Him's me.
HILDA PLACKETTS:	(ON THE VERGE OF TEARS) You won't upset him, will you? I don't know why he thinks he's the President of the Russians. It's a virus, I think. Dr. Fitch has come down with it too. He says he's a man called Bibcoff. They've put him to sleep. I suppose I'll be next. My husband's not violent though. (SPEAKING TO A DEAF IDIOT) You're not violent, are you?
CHEREPOVETS:	(THICK RUSSIAN ACCENT) Time was if I wanted a man killed I just did this. (SNAPS HIS FINGERS)
HILDA PLACKETTS:	(TEARFUL) He keeps saying things like that. (ON HER WAY, WEEPING) I'll make some tea, Doctor.
BARRY EVANS:	There's luvly!
CHEREPOVETS:	(CALLS AFTER HER) And some of those ginger biscuits, Hilda.
PLACKETTS:	(WORRIED) Hoi, she's my Hilda, not yours. (HUSHED, TO PAKDEMIRLI) That growth on the end of his nose is right horrible!
PAKDEMIRLI:	If I had my razor I could swipe it off for him. Barbers in Turkey, we also do such small operations. He would hardly know.
CHEREPOVETS:	(IN SUDDEN FRIGHT) You're not the specialist Dr. Fitch sent for! Bloody Nora, you're ME! Cherepovets! You are Cherepovets!!!
PLACKETTS:	Calm down, lad, I'm going to hold yer hands and look into yer eyes. Comprenday?
CHEREPOVETS:	Da.
	THE SMACK OF THEIR HANDS GRIPPING EACH OTHER TIGHT.
PLACKETTS:	Just hold on tight. Summink might happen. I'll go into you and you'll come back the other way.
CHEREPOVETS:	I think about myself, about how much I hate Bibcoff, about my years in the Ukraine. You think about yourself, your department store?
PLACKETTS:	Aye! Aye! You think about your missus, big handsome woman? Think about her big wobbly thighs?
CHEREPOVETS:	What's he say?
PAKDEMIRLI:	He says think about your wife's big wobbly thighs, her ample chest spilling from a red dress…
CHEREPOVETS:	What's he know about my wife's chest?
BARRY EVANS:	He told us all about it in the taxi on the way here.
CHEREPOVETS:	(OUT OF HIS CHAIR IN A FURY) You been poking my wife??!
	A PUNCH. PLACKETTS FALLS WITH A CRASH.
PLACKETTS:	Ooh, yer bugs!
CHEREPOVETS:	If it wasn't my own face I was hitting, I'd hit you the way I hit people when I was in K.G.B. in Armenia. (LAUGHS, DELIGHTED IN HIS STRENGTH)
HILDA PLACKETTS:	(COMING IN WITH THE TEA THINGS) Oh! Oh! He's not normally violent, Doctor. I promise, he's not. You won't have to put him away, will you? I can look after him. Doctor, are you all right?
PLACKETTS:	I never knew I could pack such a punch. (CALLS) I'm all right. I've broken that ornament your Nancy gave us. (CALLS LOUDER) Tell her I'm all right.
PAKDEMIRLI:	He says he is all right.
HILDA PLACKETTS:	My husband's never hit anyone before, ever, Doctor, not someone who wasn't a member of staff.
CHEREPOVETS:	Give me those ginger biscuits, woman!
PLACKETTS:	(DEEPLY EMOTIONAL) Hilda, pet, I'm sorry. I'm - is it bleedin? - sorry that I kept a woman in Ripon all those years. I'm sorry I never talked to you more. I'm sorry that when I did it was always about the store. Me Dad was the same with me Mam. I should have seen from them and known better. I do love yer. I do. More than ever now. I promise I do. We'll sell up. Should have years ago. We'll come out with enough. I've seen some lovely places when I was escaping across Europe with these buggers. Places I should have taken yer when we was younger, I know. I'm sorry I never took yer nowhere. But we've plenty of time left. And I'll have that thing taken off me nose. Hilda? Hilda?
PAKDEMIRLI:	She doesn't understand a word, Mr. Placketts. You are speaking Russian.
PLACKETTS:	(SHOUTS, AGONISED) Hilda!!!!!!
HILDA PLACKETTS:	(SPOOKED) He's not a faith healer, is he?
CHEREPOVETS:	(AFTER A GRUNT, GRIMLY EXCITED) I feel a change.
PLACKETTS:	Aye, it's working. I thought it would, like, if we got together. (TO PAKDEMIRLI) Tell Cherepovets, I feel there's a balloon in me head floating away…
PAKDEMIRLI:	Mr. Placketts is telling me to tell you that he has a balloon in his head floating away…
BARRY EVANS:	A balloon?
	FAINTLY: THE SQUEAKY SOUNDS OF A BALLOON BEING TWISTED INTO SHAPES.
CHEREPOVETS:	Da. I have the same.
PAKDEMIRLI:	He tells me to tell you he has the same.
CHEREPOVETS:	My brain, it is like a cathedral, and the balloon she is floating upwards all the time, towards the ceiling where there is a painting of God on his Throne…
PLACKETTS:	(EQUALLY EXCITED) And when the balloon reaches the ceiling it is caught by the hand of God and we shall be ourselves again… Hilda! Hilda!
	THE BALLOON BURSTS!!!!
	A WHOOSH OF AIR. A SHIVER OF CYMBALS. SNOOKER BALLS HIT EACH OTHER VIOLENTLY ON A TABLE.
	FAINTLY: THE MUSIC FROM THE FINALE OF 'SUNDAY NIGHT AT THE LONDON PALLADIUM' WHERE ALL THE STARS ARE WAVING GOODBYE.
SCENE 20	PLACKETTS' SHUFFLING FEET. IN DISTANCE A CUP BEING KNOCKED ON IRON BARS. SOMEONE IS PLAYING 'PLACKETTS OF PROUDFOOT' ON A MELANCHOLY HARMONICA.
PLACKETTS:	Where the Hell's this when it's at home? Hoi, you, where am I?
PRISON GUARD:	(WALKING PAST WAGGLING HIS KEYS, CYNICALLY, A CRUEL AMERICAN VOICE) You been dreaming dreams again, Nussbaum? About maybe how they pinned a medal on yer for strangling them widows.
PLACKETTS:	I never strangled no widows.
PRISON GUARD:	That what they all says. But you're on Death Row, Louisiana State Prison, Nussbaum, with four days left before they turn your lights out… and do you know what I'll do, Nussbaum?
PLACKETTS:	No.
PRISON GUARD:	I'll laugh. (GROWLS WITIH DEEPEST SINCERITY) I'll laugh because I hate you, Nussbaum. (WALKS ON LAUGHING)
PLACKETTS:	(SHOUTS AFTER HIM) If you worked at my store I'd give yer yer cards, son! (TO HIMSELF) Cheeky bugger! (SHOUTS AGAIN) Any road - what's wrong with strangling widows???? (TO HIMSELF, SURPRISED AT HIMSELF) I don't know why I said that.
DANNY:	(FROM ANOTHER CELL) Psssst, Nussbaum! Knock on the pipes if you can hear me.
PLACKETTS:	I can hear you.
DANNY:	Knock on the pipes then!
PLACKETTS:	(HAVING KNOCKED THREE TIMES ON THE PIPES) There you are then.
DANNY:	I shouldn't be here, you know.
PLACKETTS:	Me neither.
DANNY:	I'm not who they say I am. I'm someone else. They've put me in this body somehow.
PLACKETTS:	(DOESN'T BELIEVE A WORD) They never.
DANNY:	You believe me, don't you, Nussbaum?
PLACKETTS:	Aye, I believe yer, lad. Try not to fret about it.
	THE PRISON GUARD COMES BACK IN HIS HEAVY SHOES.
PRISON GUARD:	Visitor, Nussbaum. It's your lawyer. Five minutes. No more.
PLACKETTS:	Hello, lad - I'm going to tell you something you'll not believe.
CRUTTENDON:	Hello, Mr. Placketts.
PLACKETTS:	It's not you, is it? Sammy Cruttendon?
CRUTTENDON:	Don't ask! I've been a six-foot-four black lawyer called O'Roarke since lunchtime. I've spent most of his money already.
PLACKETTS:	How did you know I was here?
CRUTTENDON:	Dunno. Just did.
PLACKETTS:	Go and tell the head man. Go on. They're going to chop me head off in four days. They're all bastards in here.
CRUTTENDON:	I'll see what I can do, mate. But I've tried everything already, or rather he has. O'Roarke has, and the governor's a swine. (ON HIS WAY) Anyway, prisons give me the heebiejeebies - must dash. Have a nice day!
	BRING UP HARMONICA.
	A CHORUS OF PRISONERS STARTS SINGING 'PLACKETTS OF PROUDFOOT'' AS MISERABLY AS POSSIBLE.
PLACKETTS:	(MOANING TEARFULLY) Y'bugger! Y'bugger! Y'bugger!
SCENE 21	GLOOP OF THE TANKS.
BAFFNER:	(CHUCKLING) They'll never stop it now. Never. As long as old Placketts is out there the chain reaction goes on. If I can concentrate… how much longer, a day, a week, then I'll be okay.
OSBERT CHINERY:	Your mind is expanding, Baffner. Fool. You unholy fool!
	WORRIED SPLASHING IN THE TANKS. OTHER PSYCHICS MUMBLE HELLO TO CHINERY.
HODGEKINS:	Is that you, Mr. Chinery? Where are you, O magnificent one!
	FAINT BUZZ OF A JUMBO JET.
OSBERT CHINERY:	I'm on a plane over the Atlantic, Hodgekins, on my way to see Mr. Baffner.
BAFFNER:	Concentrate, everyone, focus your attentions. Make the plane crash.
HODGEKINS & OTHERS:	We can't do that to Mr. Chinery. No, sir! We can't.
BAFFNER:	My daisy keeps dying on the stalk… every time I get it back again, it dies again. What can I do?
OSBERT CHINERY:	(FIRM AND DREAMILY) Don't tell him, Hodgekins.
BAFFNER:	(KICKING THE WALLS OF THE TANK IN FURY) I'm cleverer than all of you! I'm Graeme Baffner, for God's sake! Why can't I do this? It died again! Lovely daisy, pretty little daisy…please.
SCENE 22	CUT AEROPLANE'S ENGINES.
CAPTAIN:	(OVER INTERCOM, VERY CALMLY INDEED) This is your Captain speaking. Please, if you are not already doing so, read the leaflet on emergency procedures. We are about to crash into the sea.
	CRIES OF FRIGHT FROM THE PASSENGERS.
CAPTAIN:	(HIS VOICE BECOMING MORE BOYISH) It's really much better this way. I don't know how to land this thing anyway. I'm not a pilot, really. I'm only 10-and-a-half. It's all a dream.
	SOUND OF THE PLANE HURTLING INTO THE SEA.
SCENE 23
BAFFNER:	(LAUGHING TRIUMPHANTLY) Got him! Got him!
HODGEKINS:	No you didn't, sir. He's hopped into someone else. He's even closer now.
	DING-DING OF A BUS'S BELL.
OSBERT CHINERY:	I am even closer now.
BAFFNER:	LEAVE ME ALONE!!!! Please - don't spoil everything, please, please. This is meant to happen! The world may never get another chance.
OSBERT CHINERY:	The world never wanted your help, Baffner.
BAFFNER:	I am the world. I am the Light. I must do what must be done.
OSBERT CHINERY:	(IN A HYPNOTIST'S VOICE) All the daisies are gone, Graeme. All the daisies. There are no such things as daisies.
BAFFNER:	(SLEEPILY) No such thing.
OSBERT CHINERY:	Your mind is expanding, Graeme. You can see the whole world. You can feel what everybody feels, see what everybody sees, Graeme.
BAFFNER:	Yes! Yes, sireee, indeedy! Hello my darlings! (LAUGHS IN DELIGHT) It's working - all the delight, I feel it. All the confusion turning to thought. It's there, just like I said it would be.
OSBERT CHINERY:	(STRICTLY) But no daisies, Graeme.
BAFFNER:	(DULLED AGAIN) No, no daisies. (INCREASINGLY ANXIOUS) I can't hold onto myself. I'm going. A big balloon slipped from the hand of a child at the fair, my face on the balloon. I'm floating away! HODGEKINS! What must I do?
HODGEKINS:	Think about the daisy, sir.
BAFFNER:	Daisy? What's a daisy? Help me, my thoughts are being ripped apart. They can't reach each other any more. (A LONG CRY LIKE AN UN-WISHED-FOR ASCENSION. A FLAP OF HEAVY WINGS) Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo… Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo…
	A LENGTHY SILENCE IN THE TANKS. THE OCCASIONAL GLOOP.
HODGEKINS:	Mr. Chinery? Are you still there?
OSBERT CHINERY:	(EMPHASISING THE "I'M") I'M still here.
HODGEKINS:	And Mr. Baffner?
OSBERT CHINERY:	It's Mr. Placketts we must focus on now, Hodgekins.
HODGEKINS:	If you say so, sir.
OSBERT CHINERY:	We must make sure he is killed as soon as possible.
HODGEKINS:	Mr. Placketts. Killed. Got you. I'll tell the others, shall I?
OSBERT CHINERY:	They already know, Hodgekins.
HODGEKINS:	Funny, isn't it, how I'm floating around in all this water, but my daisy is so thirsty in her little pot of cracked soil.
OSBERT CHINERY:	Think about a rainy day, Hodgekins, in your childhood. You can't go out to play. You are at the window of your bedroom. The rain on the windowpanes.
HODGEKINS:	(ORGASMIC SOUNDS)
SCENE 24	THE SUDDEN HEANY RAIN OF A MONSOON.
PLACKETTS:	(CLOSE, DIRECTLY TO US) So there I was on Death Row one minute, and the next I was inside this fat git called Baba Jamaluddin. Malaysian poet and gastronome. By heck, could he eat. I've never eaten so much, ever. But healthy! Never felt so healthy! I wonder who ended up back in Nussbaum. I checked in the Kuala Lumpur papers: he got chopped the day after I left him, poor sod. (CHUCKLES) It's a life, isn't it, eh? That Baba Jamaluddin, mind, he were a handsome fella. I stood looking at myself in his long mirror for hours. I never thought before, till I saw myself in that chair at home with that Russian git's expression on my face: what an ugly bastard I'd always been. Me Dad was an ugly bastard 'n all. Me Mam was worse. Me brother was better lookin when he was pullin faces. Funny, isn't it, how when you're a kid, yer know that you're going to be ugly, that your whole life you'll never have a chance to be owt else. Well I have, for a while there I was a smasher, and I enjoyed it. Not that it was me… properly speaking it were HIM. But what's me? I mean, I'm here aren't I, speaking now, this is me, no one else. It's a bloody lark! A bloody lark!
JAPANESE DOCTOR:	Your daughter has been talking like this all morning?
JAPANESE MOTHER:	She just sits looking at the rain, Doctor Akinowashi, talking in that peculiar voice. She has been working very hard for her exams. The strain perhaps?
PLACKETTS:	I was sitting at breakfast with this huge fish in me hands, reciting a poem in Malaysian about fish. I never wrote no poems before. It just sorta came into me head, dunno where from. Placketts never wrote poems cos he was Placketts. But now I had a different idea of myself. (BRIEFEST SNATCH OF LONDON PALLADIUM BYE-BYE MUSIC, LOW IN BACKGROUND) I was about to bite into the fish when… poof, I was gone.
	DRY, HAUNTING WHISTLE.
PLACKETTS:	For three whole days I was in this desert place. Don't know where it was. I was a black man, painfully thin, worse than that woman we had in Haberdashery that died during her lunch break. I couldn't understand how I felt so hungry, cos I'd been stuffing myself all week. I kept on walking, don't know why. I felt HE would have, the black man. So I just kept on. There was a little bush that I slept under one whole afternoon. And there were bones everywhere, wildebeests' mostly, but people 'n all, skulls. "Who were you?" I said to them. One had a grasshopper sitting on top of it… (BRIEF SOUND OF GRASSHOPPER) …and I laughed me head off at the sight of it, don't know why. I was dying of hunger and thirst in the middle of a bloody great desert. But at the same time I wanted to walk on forever and for it never to be any different. I was looking at these natty red hills, far off, and wondering how long it would take me to get there when whooosh, here I am in Japan. But being in the desert has left me a little thoughtful. I haven't got into being this one yet.
JAPANESE DOCTOR:	Naoko?
PLACKETTS:	Aye.
JAPANESE DOCTOR:	Your mother is very worried about you.
PLACKETTS:	(CALLS) Don't fret yourself, Mrs.
JAPANESE MOTHER:	(WEEPS AND WAILS)
PLACKETTS:	We'll go shopping later. We can go around the department stores.
JAPANESE MOTHER:	(MORE WEEPING AND WAILING)
PLACKETTS:	Shutup, woman! Give me a chance!
SCENE 25	BRIEF SNATCH OF LONDON PALLADIUM BYE-BYE MUSIC. A KNOCK ON A DOOR THAT SOUNDS LIKE A CODE-KNOCK. THE DOOR IS OPENED.
DICK:	Are you Philippa Wiggley?
PLACKETTS:	No. Er, I might be, aye.
DICK:	Beany sent me.
PLACKETTS:	Beany? Who's he when he's at home?
DICK:	(WHISPERS KNOWINGLY) Beany.
PLACKETTS:	Oh, Beany. Aye. 'Scuse me, I'm not myself today. Er, come in, why not? (TINKLE OF BELLS, BEAD CURTAIN AS DICK FOLLOWS HER IN) Very dark, isn't it? I've only got red light-bulbs, I'm sorry. I'll nip out to the local department store when I've a chance.
DICK:	Beany told you what I wanted, did he?
PLACKETTS:	Who?
DICK:	Beany! Beany!
PLACKETTS:	Erm, no. He never said, exactly.
DICK:	(A LEWD CHUCKLE) Let's play it by ear them, shall we?
	A HEAVY SLAP.
PLACKETTS:	Aye, a thick ear!
DICK:	(PASSIONATE) Again! Again! Hit me again! You're wonderful!
	SEVERAL MORE SLAPS. PUNCHES. KICKS. FURNITURE SHIFTED. "OOOMPH!" AND "ARRRRH!" FROM DICK.
PLACKETTS:	Had enough?
DICK:	(FAINT AND WINDED) Yes, thank you. Can I come again tomorrow?
PLACKETTS:	You're bloody daft you, lad.
SCENE 26	BRIEF SNATCH OF LONDON PALLADIUM BYE-BYE MUSIC.
	THE ACOUSTIC OF A HUGE VICTORIAN MENTAL HOSPITAL. CACKLES AND MAD SCREAMS FROM FARAWAY ROOMS. SOMEONE IS SHOUTING "SMOLENSK!" DISTANTLY.
PLACKETTS:	Bloody Hell, I'm in a bin!
	PATTER OF NAKED FEET ON LINOLEUM.
MALTRAVERS:	They're after me!
PLACKETTS:	(HUMOURING HIM) They are, are they?
MALTRAVERS:	They're lobsters really. They're only disguised as people.
PLACKETTS:	Get away!
MALTRAVERS:	Can't you tell… the way they look at you?
PLACKETTS:	(WEAKENING) I suppose.
MALTRAVERS:	I've a brother. He's not in here. No. They wouldn't put him away, would they? He's on the outside, over the trees. Everybody likes him, even though he's just the same as me. (WAILS PATHETICALLY) Everybody hates me.
PLACKETTS:	(A NEW-FOUND AND HONEST COMPASSION) I don't hate you.
MALTRAVERS:	(HOPEFUL) You don't?
PLACKETTS:	No.
MALTRAVERS:	(SUDDENLY MAD) YOU'RE A LOBSTER!!!! A LOBSTER!!!!
	MALTRAVERS ATTACKS PLACKETTS IN THE WAY MACLINDEN ATTACKED BODELL IN THE BRITISH HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP OF 1972.
PLACKETTS:	(SCREAMING AND RUNNING AWAY) Help! Y'buggerrrrrrrr!!!
MALTRAVERS:	LOBSTER!!!!
	THEIR COMMOTION SETS OFF THE WHOLE BIN. SCREAMS AND CRIES, CACKLES AND COCKADOODLES ALL AROUND. TO THE FORE OF WHICH WE DISTINCTLY HEAR SOMEONE, NO DOUBT SMOLENSK HIMSELF, SHOUTING: "SMOLENSK!" "SMOLENSK!" "SMOLENSK!". BRING THE LONDON PALLADIUM BYE-BYE MUSIC UP THROUGH THIS AS IT FADES.
SCENE 27	PLACKETTS' YORKSHIRE ACCENT IS SLIPPING. HE IS NOT QUITE THE SAME MAN AS HE WAS WHEN WE FIRST MET HIM.
PLACKETTS:	(TO US) I suppose what it is, is that when you're yourself you only ever do the sorts of things you think you can do. For instance, I've never been able to play darts, could never even hit the board, but t'other night in Johannesburg I won a cup and a hatful of money. Champion! (CREAK OF DHOW, SPLASH AND TWITTER OF FOLLOWING DOLPHINS) And just this morning I was this peg-legged sailor on this leaky dhow-boat in the Arabian sea and I was watching the dolphins chasing the boat. I've never been so aware of… as Placketts I would hesitate to use the word… beauty. I mean, sometimes, in the old days, before Placketts of Proudfoot was so run down, I used to stand across the road, Christmastime specially, and watch the store with all its lights blazing. It were the brightest thing in town and oooooh: beautiful. But this morning I was aware of so many new and wonderful things, more than ever in me whole life before, and I knew the names of all the fish and I felt meself loving a lass in Karachi that I'd never even seen. But I ached from missing her and I knew I wasn't just me, I was him 'n all. Then that bastard Osbert Chinery spoiled everything. A face that said it were his appeared on the surface of the waves and frightened all the fish away and me thoughts swam off with them. "Hello again, Mr. Placketts, this is Osbert Chinery," he said… and right after that we started sinking.
INDIAN SAILOR:	Oh dear, we are sinking! Oh, dear!
ANOTHER INDIAN SAILOR:	(A WELSH ACCENT) Swim for it, boyos!
YET ANOTHER INDIAN SAILOR:	It's only 800 miles to Karachi!
INDIAN SAILOR:	Oh, dear!
PLACKETTS:	I thought he wanted me to go back to England with him, so's we could put a stop to all this bloody daft carry-on. But it won't stop, not now, I can feel it in me bones, or whosever bones I happen to be in today. I hated that Baffner sod when this started, but I'm grateful to him now. I'd sell PLACKETTS and give all the money to his Institute. But I expect they'll shut up shop now that he's dead.
SCENE 28	CRANK OF WINCH. STEADY DRIP OF WATER AS BAFFNER IS HAULED OUT.
CAROL:	Do something, Maxie! Why isn't there a Doctor?
MAXIE:	I am a qualified Doctor, Miss.
CAROL:	But you just twiddle knobs.
MAXIE:	Grab his feet! Careful, he's falling in with Hodgekins.
	SPLASH AS BAFFNER FALLS IN WITH HODGEKINS. MORE CREAKS OF THE WINCH.
MAXIE:	Please, Miss. I can handle this myself. There's nothing you can do.
CAROL:	But the kiss of life! Something! Anything!
MAXIE:	He should never have gone in! I did warn him!
	THE DRIPPING SLOWLY DIES DOWN.
CAROL:	Where did all these daisies come from? They're floating everywhere.
	SOUND OF BAFFNER'S CORPSE BEING LAID ON THE PLANKS BY THE WINCH.
MAXIE:	Watch out, I'm pressing the release. His feet'll drop.
	THUMP OF BAFFNER'S FEET ON THE PLANKS.
CAROL:	(SOBS) Oh! Oh! Oh! HE'S DEAD! REALLY DEAD! (A DANGEROUS CALM IN HER PASSION) I've loved him all my life, you know.
MAXIE:	(AS IF HE IS APOLOGIZING FOR SPILLING A DRINK) I said I was sorry.
CAROL:	I don't know why. I had this idea of what someone should be. And he was it. These others, in the other tanks…
MAXIE:	Hearts all stopped. Mind you, that Osbert Chinery was lucky. We hauled his body out to make room for Mr. Baffner. There's a rather abusive Rabbi got it now. He was raising hell in the canteen this morning. (MUSES WITH THE PROFESSIONALISM OF A TV REPAIRMAN FACED WITH AN EXPLODED SET) I don't know what went wrong. The machines are still working okay. Too much thinking, I expect… they all just blew a fuse at once. It happens. Not enough relaxation, that's probably it. (DIFFERENT, MORE INTIMATE TONE) I like to go dancing, do you? I belong to this club where we lads all put on dresses and dance around our handbags. I'm not shocking you, am I?
CAROL:	(FURIOUS, WITH A FALSELY CALM VOICE, SOBBING ONLY ON THE LAST WORD) Graeme Baffner is… dead.
MAXIE:	(WITH CAROL SOBBING IN THE BACKGROUND) I know. I worshipped the man. But it doesn't seem to matter somehow. (BLOWS HIS NOSE) Don't know why, I've suddenly remembered something Mr. Baffner once told me… about this Tibetan god who one day sat down and tried to think out a solution to the problems of mankind. Something horrible happened to him, I don't remember what.
CAROL:	His head split into a million pieces. After that he had a million heads.
MAXIE:	(DUMBLY) Yeah, that was it, I think. Look, I'll drop him back in here and we can have a nice girly chat.
	BIG SPLASH AS BAFFNER DROPS BACK IN.
CAROL:	(A GASP OF HORROR)
MAXIE:	I can comfort you and you can comfort me. We can have tea and a bun.
CAROL:	(TEARFUL) A telephone. I want to speak to Derek.
MAXIE:	(MIFFED) Please yourself.
SCENE 29	CAFETERIA IN BACKGROUND. RATHER ABUSIVE RABBI IS COMPLAINING THAT HIS MILK IS SOUR AND THAT HIS BUN IS STALE.
RATHER ABUSIVE RABBI:	Call this a bun?! Oy! Oy! Oy!
	WE ARE ON CAROL'S END OF THE PHONE. WE HEAR THE RINGING TONE. THE RECEIVER IS LIFTED.
CAROL:	Derek? (SILENCE DOWN THE LINE) Hello? Derek? It's Carol. Is that you, Derek?
DEREK:	(UNSURE) Yes.
CAROL:	You don't sound so sure.
DEREK:	Are you the girl in the picture here, with all the ashtrays around it?
CAROL:	This is Carol! What game are you playing?
DEREK:	(A GIGGLE) I was in hospital. The operation hadn't been successful, I could tell. But now.
CAROL:	(REALIZING SADLY) Oh, Derek. (POLITELY) I'm sorry but I seem to have the wrong number.
	SHE PUTS THE PHONE DOWN.
MAXIE:	(COMING UP BEHIND HER) Come on dear, I've got a shoulder you can cry on.
CAROL:	(FIERCE THROUGH HER TEARS) He's not really dead, is he? He's out there somewhere.
SCENE 30	'HAIL TO THE CHIEF' PLAYS JAUNTILY. WE ARE IN THE OVAL OFFICE, WASHINGTON D.C., U.S.A.
PRESIDENT RINALDI:	What in Hell and Damnation is going on, Feindorf? Everybody's somebody else. The First Lady wont stop yackin in Chinese. You can't watch the news without the anchorman looking around himself all funny.
FEINDORF:	And then there's the buses, Mr. President.
PRESIDENT RINALDI:	What goddamn buses?
FEINDORF:	All over the country, sir, buses are running outta control, speeding about with no drivers inside even. In Bangor, Maine, this morning, Mr. President, 23 people were killed, sir, including a Puerto Rican.
PRESIDENT RINALDI:	It's a plot! A goddamn plot against my ass and the American people's ass, Feindorf!
FEINDORF:	Yes, Mr. President.
PRESIDENT RINALDI:	Well, Feindorf! Spill your bean - who's behind the plot? You're C.I.A. You know everything! You tick a piece of paper every time I go to the john. You must have an idea.
FEINDORF:	Well, sir, we're still evaluating our information, sir. But we think it's the British.
PRESIDENT RINALDI:	THE BRITISH!!!! Goddamn sons-of-bitches.
FEINDORF:	The British, sir, are attempting world domination, a re-establishment of their Empire.
PRESIDENT RINALDI:	Limey bastards!
FEINDORF:	We have information that an installation called the O'Jonesburg Institute for Psychical Research, in East Anglia, England, sir… there is, incidentally, no such person as O'Jonesburg… is the source of mind waves which are presently attempting a perversion of the American psyche.
PRESIDENT RINALDI:	Hail Mary full of Grace! The goddamn sons of bitches. Can we bomb it?
FEINDORF:	It's not far from our base a Mildenhall, sir… we can… (SUDDENLY HE TURNS INTO AN INDIAN) Hare Krishna… Hare Krishna… Krishna-Krishna… Hare-Hare…
PRESIDENT RINALDI:	Goddamn it! The Limeys have got Feindorf! Get the son-of-a-bitch out of here, Chuck.
CHUCK:	It's Buck, sir.
PRESIDENT RINALDI:	You sure, Chuck?
CHUCK:	Buck, sir.
PRESIDENT RINALDI:	Get him outta here!
	A LIGHT SCUFFLE AS FEINDORF IS BUSTLED OUT, STILL SINGING.
PRESIDENT RINALDI:	(SNATCHES UP THE PHONE) Get me the Joint Chiefs! I want a strike on this O'Jonesburg place. They're not there?! Where the Sam Hill are the bastards?
ADMIRAL CLOPSTOCK:	We're all here, Mr. President.
PRESIDENT RINALDI:	Why didn't you say so, goddammit! What do I pay you guys for? Bomb the bastards!
ADMIRAL CLOPSTOCK:	Yes, Mr. President. Right away, sir.
	THE JOINT CHIEFS MARCH OUT.
CHUCK:	(COMING BACK PUSHING A TROLLEY ) It's time for your luncheon, Mr. President. Tomato soup, just the way you like it, sir.
PRESIDENT RINALDI:	Aw, thanks, Chuck.
CHUCK:	Buck, sir.
PRESIDENT RINALDI:	Say, this spoon's all bent. (EFFORT AS HE BENDS IT BACK) It's okay, I can bend it straight. Same thing happened last week in Vienna. The night Chairman Cherepovets disappeared.
CHUCK:	They found him an hour ago, sir. In hiding in England.
PRESIDENT RINALDI:	(A HALF WHISPER) You think the goddamn-Ruskie-sons-of-bitches are in on this plot too, Chuck?
CHUCK:	Buck, sir. It is an idea not to be excluded from your consideration, Mr. President.
PRESIDENT RINALDI:	Say, this soup tastes just like the soup my Pa used to make for me in Wisconsin when I was a boy.
CHUCK:	I found the recipe on the obverse of your father's suicide note, sir.
PRESIDENT RINALDI:	My Ma never loved my Pa 'n me, Chuck.
CHUCK:	Buck, sir.
PRESIDENT RINALDI:	She walked out on us when I was two days old, changed her name, made a new life for herself. Pa brought me up all alone. Can't have been easy for a man like that.
CHUCK:	No, sir.
PRESIDENT RINALDI:	(SUDDENLY AMAZED AND EXCITED) Chuck! Chuck!
CHUCK:	Buck-Buck, sir.
PRESIDENT RINALDI:	There's a face in my soup! Pa? Is that you, Pa?
OSBERT CHINERY:	I am not your father, Mr. President. I am Osbert Chinery, the world-famous psychic.
PRESIDENT RINALDI:	(OUT OF THE CORNER OF HIS MOUTH) Pull his file, Chuck.
CHUCK:	Yes, sir. Buck, sir. (TAPPING OF COMPUTER KEYS AS HE PULLS THE FILE)
PRESIDENT RINALDI:	Yeah, I'm listening.
OSBERT CHINERY:	My apologies, sir, for appearing to you in this way. The soup will be perfectly safe to consume when I'm gone.
PRESIDENT RINALDI:	Get on with it, you sonofabitch.
OSBERT CHINERY:	The World has reached an hour of great crisis, sir. Perhaps only I Osbert Chinery can save it!
PRESIDENT RINALDI:	Huh!
OSBERT CHINERY:	There is a man named Placketts, sir…
PRESIDENT RINALDI:	Got that, Buck?
CHUCK:	Chuck, sir.
OSBERT CHINERY:	…who is solely responsible for this situation in which we find ourselves. I calculate that we have less than 12 hours before the situation becomes irreversible and we find ourselves in a very different world. If we can eliminate Placketts within 12 hours we shall be saved.
PRESIDENT RINALDI:	Placketts. Placketts. Okay, so who is he? What's he like? Where do we look? Do something, Buck!
CHUCK:	Chuck, sir!
SCENE 31	PLACKETTS' YORKSHIRE ACCENT IS AT TIMES ENTIRELY ABSENT. IT KEEPS COMING BACK BUT DROPS QUICKLY AWAY AGAIN.
PLACKETTS:	I'm very confused. This morning I was in hospital in Australia, sat up in bed reading this long article about Russian politics. I was never interested when I was Placketts, now I'm fascinating. But I'm not Cherepovets so more, so why bother, I said to myself. Then, him that I was in, or me, whichever way you look at it, was ill, slipping away. There was a doctor at the end of the bed, and somehow I knew it was that nit Osbert Chinery, He had a nasty smile on his mush and he was waving goodbye. I looked out of the window and there was a block of flats and behind that a beach full of people. I could hear them shouting and laughing. Funny, but I could see the world through all their eyes at the same moment. It was a lovely day, everyone was happy. I was filled with happiness, and love, and I was kissing girls and boys at the same time, and ironing a shirt, and watching a dog have puppies. It was a bloody strange moment, I can tell yer. The only thing like it I can remember is the day our Brian was born. Big Jack, that's my brother who died having his bowels scraped, took us on a Godalmightly binge, and I woke up next morning sitting in the lap of Queen Victoria right on top of the Town Hall. I could see the whole town on its way to work, and the store was already open and the first customers going in. I was so proud to belong to Proudfoot, my town. But when I was in that hospital bed I was proud of other things, things I'd never thought of before. I was proud of a book some fella was reading on the beach, proud as if I'd written it myself. When my eyes focused on Osbert Chinery again I knew I wasn't Placketts anymore. I wasn't even a super-new-improved-with -added-no-toxic- ingredients-Placketts. I was everyone I'd been and with something extra for everyone I'd been. Mind you, I do have this strange compulsion to strangle widows. I'm in South America now, torturing some poor bugger in a chair.
SCENE 32	CUT ABRUPTLY TO SOUTH AMERICA. GROANS OF TORTURED MAN. IN BACKGROUND A RADIO PLAYS TINNY SOUTH AMERICAN MUSIC.
SANCHEZ:	(STAMPING TO ATTENTION) Flores won't talk, Capitan! Shall I fetch the 'helmet'?
PLACKETTS:	Pardon?
SANCHEZ:	You remember, sir, the 'helmet'. You designed it yourself. We used it on Salvidar!
PLACKETTS:	(REALIZING HE MUST PUT ON AN ACT) Oh, aye, aye. Better fetch it, lad.
SANCHEZ:	Cap-itan! (STAMPS A SALUTE AND HURRIES OFF TO FETCH IT)
PLACKETTS:	(WALKING AROUND THE GRITTY CELL) Morning. Morning.
SOLDIERS:	Cap-itan! Cap-itan!
PLACKETTS:	Hoi, Sergeant!
SGT. PEREZLOPEZ:	Cap-itan!
PLACKETTS:	What's my name again?
SGT. PEREZLOPEZ:	(RECITES IT WITH PRIDE) You are Cap-itan Vincente Wenceslo Colmenares.
PLACKETTS:	Oh, aye, that's it. And who's him in the chair again?
SGT. PEREZLOPEZ:	That's Flores, sir. He was one of Colonel Brancochaves' most trusted men. But he was working for the rebels all along.
PLACKETTS:	He never!
SGT. PEREZLOPEZ:	The question is, Cap-itan: is he the only traitor?
PLACKETTS:	Oooo, I do hope so. (TO FLORES) You all right, son?
FLORES:	(OUT OF BREATH, A REFINED SCOTTISH ACCENT) I am innocent! Innocent!
PLACKETTS:	He doesn't look well, Sergeant. I think he'd better have a lie down.
FLORES:	(YELLS) I don't know anything about any rebels! I am a solicitor from Aberdeen!
SGT. PEREZLOPEZ:	(HITTING HIM SAVAGELY) Shut up, rebel peeeeg!!!
PLACKETTS:	Don't do that, lad. Did you ever think: what if you were him and he was you. There's a thought now, isn't it?
SGT. PEREZLOPEZ:	I hate rebel peeeegs!
CRUTTENDON:	(COMING IN WEARING BIG BOOTS, AS COCKNEY AS EVER) I've brought this 'helmet' thing. Who wants it?
PLACKETTS:	(DELIGHTED) It's not!
CRUTTENDON:	(SIMILARLY DELIGHTED) It isn't!
PLACKETTS:	It couldn't be! Not Sammy Cruttendon?
CRUTTENDON:	Bloody is!
PLACKETTS:	It's me, 'n all. Placketts.
CRUTTENDON:	Bet you'll never guess who else is here?
PLACKETTS:	No?
CRUTTENDON:	(ON HIS WAY) He's on guard outside the latrine. (WHISTLES LOUDLY) Hoi! Velasquez, come here, mate! The Captain wants yer!
	THE HEAVY MUDDY STOMP OF VELASQUEZ/CHEREPOVETS AS HE RUNS ACROSS THE QUAD. HIS VERY HEAVY BOOTED ENTRY INTO THE TORTURE CHAMBER.
CHEREPOVETS:	(STAMPING TO ATTENTION) Cap-itan!
PLACKETTS:	(LAUGHING) It never is!
CHEREPOVETS:	It is I! Cherepovets!
	SLAPS AND HANDSHAKES.
PLACKETTS:	This is Mr. Cherepovets, Sergeant.
SGT. PEREZLOPEZ:	(CONFUSED AND WORRIED) It is Velasquez.
	PLACKETTS, CRUTTENDON AND CHEREPOVETS LAUGH TOGETHER HUGELY, TILL TEARS ARE IN PLACKETTS' VOICE AS HE SPEAKS:
PLACKETTS:	Where've you two devils been?
CRUTTENDON:	Me first! Me first! I was a black lawyer in Louisiana last time our paths crossed…
FLORES:	(MOANS IN BACKGROUND) I am a solicitor from Aberdeen.
CRUTTENDON:	…Then I was in Uzbekistan teaching the Koran of all things.
SGT. PEREZLOPEZ:	Excuse me, Cap-itan. There is something I must do.
PLACKETTS:	Aye, have one for me, lad!
	THE SERGEANT MARCHES OUT. THE OTHERS LAUGH AT PLACKETTS' CRUDE JOKE.
CRUTTENDON:	Then… then, just for five minutes, I was a chef in Monte Carlo… don't go to that restaurant eh? - unless yers like rat droppings… I forget what happened next…
CHEREPOVETS:	You were in the Portuguese Government.
FLORES:	(SCREAMS IN BACKGROUND) My name's MacNab! MacNab!
CRUTTENDON:	I was. I signed papers and everything. Then I spent a very pleasant weekend in Melbourne.
PLACKETTS:	Melbourne? I was there!
CHEREPOVETS:	Myself also!
PLACKETTS:	Were you on the beach reading a book?
CRUTTENDON:	I was ironing a shirt.
CHEREPOVETS:	(VOICE THICK WITH SENTIMENT) I watched some puppies being born. So beautiful. I cried. (HIS OLD SLY SELF) They tell me someone shot Bibcoff.
PLACKETTS:	My dear friends. I'm so happy to see you again. (PROMPTED BY MOANS FROM FLORES) What about this poor bugger?
CRUTTENDON:	Suppose we'd better put this 'helmet' thing on him… (CLICKS AND CRACKS AS HE EXAMINES IT) …if I can work out how it works. Isn't this part of a lobster?
PLACKETTS:	Let's let him go, shall we? Yeah.
CHEREPOVETS:	You sure?
PLACKETTS:	Aye. It's not right.
	SOUNDS OF FLORES BEING UNTIED.
CRUTTENDON:	There you are, MacTavish!
FLORES:	(QUICKLY INFORMING HIM) MacNab. Thank you very much. I really appreciate it. We never knew you were with us, Captain.
PLACKETTS:	With who?
FLORES:	The rebels.
	THE ARRIVAL OF ARMED MEN, BREACHING THEIR RIFLES, COCKING THEIR PISTOLS.
PLACKETTS:	What's your game?
SGT. PEREZLOPEZ:	(FIERCELY) All my life I have admired you, Cap-itan Colmenares! I have modelled myself on you, and all along you were a filthy rebel peeeg! (STAMPING TO ATTENTION) Colonel Brancochaves! These are the traitors! I, Perezlopez, have exposed them all.
COL. BRANCOCHAVES:	(AN EFFETE ENGLISH VOICE) Well done, Sergeant. Jolly good show. You really are an egg.
PLACKETTS:	Who the Hell's he when he's at home?
SGT. PEREZLOPEZ:	(SLAPPING PLACKETTS) Shut your mouth, rebel peeeeg! You dare insult Colonel Brancochaves!!!
COL. BRANCOCHAVES:	I feel a little tired, Sergeant. The heat, never agreed with me. Fiona was always dragging me orf to Ibiza and there was always a row. (AFTER A PAUSE WHILE HE WIPES HIS FOREHEAD) Do you think you can get Jaffa cakes in Ipanema?
SGT. PEREZLOPEZ:	What do you want me to do with the peeeegs, Colonel?
COL. BRANCOCHAVES:	The peeeeegs, Sergeant? Oh, the peeeeegs - I don't know. What would be the proper procedure?
SGT. PEREZLOPEZ:	(WITH A TORTURER'S GLEE) We drag them outside by their feet, put them against a wall and shoot them!
COL. BRANCOCHAVES:	Better do that, then. Toodle-oo!
SCENE 33	A LITTLE WAY OFF: THE MARCH OF A FIRING-SQUAD, STAMPING AND ABOUT-TURNING. THE PRISONERS MILL ABOUT UNEASILY AT THE WALL.
CRUTTENDON:	(SOMEWHAT WORRIED) Look, you can see the stains on the wall from where they've shot other people.
FLORES/MACNAB:	When the rebels are victorious they will erect statues in our memory.
CHEREPOVETS:	Already there is a large statue of me. In Minsk.
CRUTTENDON:	They're not really going to shoot us, are they, Mr. Placketts?
SGT. PEREZLOPEZ:	(IN BACKGROUND, SHOUTING) Back a bit, forward a bit… bit more… that's it!
	WE HEAR THEM SHUFFLING.
SOLDIER IN FIRING SQUAD:	Smolensk! Smolensk!
SGT. PEREZLOPEZ:	Shut up, get in line!
PLACKETTS:	(SURVEYING THE SCENE) Aye… errr… looks like it. (SUDDENLY CHEERFUL) But any second, just you watch, we'll be off somewhere else. Easy-peasy! We'll meet up again somewhere else, for sure. (REASSURING HIMSELF) Aye.
CHEREPOVETS:	I would like to be an actor in pornographic films.
CRUTTENDON:	I'd settle for an old people's home in Penge.
PLACKETTS:	Come on, lads, cheer up. Tell you what, we'll have a sing-song. That'll show the buggers.
CRUTTENDON:	(BEGINNING TO SHIVER WITH FEAR) Dunno no songs.
PLACKETTS:	Tell yer what… Yevgeny, you go "BOOM".
CHEREPOVETS:	BOOM.
PLACKETTS:	Now Sammy, you go "OOOOO".
CRUTTENDON:	(UNENTHUSIASTICALLY) Oo.
PLACKETTS:	Put yer heart into it, lad!
CRUTTENDON:	(SCREAMS) OoOoOooOooOOOoooOOOooooo!
PLACKETTS:	Now MacNab, you go "YATATATA".
FLORES/MACNAB:	(DRY-THROATEDLY) YATATATA.
PLACKETTS:	Now all three together. Boom…oooo…yatatata.
CHEREPOVETS:	Boom.
CRUTTENDON:	Oooo.
FLORES/MACNAB:	Yatatata.
PLACKETTS:	And again!
	THEY SET OFF ON ROUNDS OF BOOM-OOOO-YATATATA, INCREASINGLY ENJOYING IT. AFTER A FEW ROUNDS PLACKETTS STARTS SINGING "PLACKETTS OF PROUDFOOT".
	MEANWHILE, SGT. PEREZLOPEZ IS GIVING ORDERS TO THE FIRING SQUAD:
SGT. PEREZLOPEZ:	Load your rifles! Aim at the peeeeeegs!
SOLDIER IN FIRING SQUAD:	(WEAKLY) Smolensk!
SGT. PEREZLOPEZ:	When I say shoot the peeeeegs, shoot the peeeeegs. Shoot the peeeeegs!
PLACKETTS:	(SINGS BETTER THAN EVER) Placketts of Proudfoot! The biggest and the best store! Placketts of Proudfoot! We've got what you're looking for! There's so much to see For the whole family PLACKETTS OF PROUDFOOT - and the car park… is Free!!!
	JUST AS THE SONG IS ABOUT TO REACH ITS CLIMAX THERE IS A TERRIFIC, EAR-SPLITTING ROUND OF FIRE, LOUD ENOUGH TO MAKE A LISTENER DUCK FOR COVER.
SCENE 34	FIVE AND A HALF SECONDS OF SILENCE. THE LISTENER, HAVING DUCKED FOR COVER, SHOULD THINK HE HAS JUST HEARD THE END OF OUR PROCEEDINGS.
	BREAK THIS WITH FADED-UP BIRDSONG. A CAW. CAROL WALKING THROUGH NETTLES.
CAROL:	(CLOSE) Hello! Hello! Ooooh! These nettles!
OSBERT CHINERY:	Sorry, I was miles away. I didn't see you coming.
CAROL:	You're back in your own body, then? You are Osbert Chinery?
OSBERT CHINERY:	(COULDN'T BE MORE ARROGANT AND COLD) I am Osbert Chinery.
CAROL:	We've never actually met, but…
OSBERT CHINERY:	Mrs. Froude, of course. I know all about you.
CAROL:	About everybody, I suppose.
OSBERT CHINERY:	(COULDN'T BE HAUGHTIER) Yes.
CAROL:	I never went off into other people… (A SOCIAL LAUGH) …sorry, you know. Neither did Maxie, poor thing. He's crying his eyes out in there. Wanted to be a girl, apparently.
OSBERT CHINERY:	(THE LIMITS OF HIS SMALL-TALK) It takes all sorts.
CAROL:	Everyone's back where they started?
OSBERT CHINERY:	I do think so, yes.
CAROL:	It's been a bit of a lark, hasn't it?
OSBERT CHINERY:	(JESUITICALLY) Over 20 million people have died in the past week, Mrs. Froude, in this little lark as you call it.
CAROL:	As many as that?
OSBERT CHINERY:	That many. Most of them entirely expendable, but it really shouldn't have happened. It's against life's basic principle.
CAROL:	Principle?
OSBERT CHINERY:	(STRICTLY, JEHOVAH-ISHLY) Christ died alone on the cross, Mrs. Froude. Alone! Do you understand the implication?
CAROL:	No.
OSBERT CHINERY:	No, of course you wouldn't…
CAROL:	(FALLING BACK ON A LINE FROM HER CHEERFUL SMALL-TALK) Life's too complicated for any of us, that's what I always say.
OSBERT CHINERY:	We are each meant to bear our cross ALONE, Mrs. Froude. That is the way the world is supposed to be. (THINKING BETTER OF HIMSELF) I'm sorry, you are an ordinary woman, how could you be expected to understand these things? But, Mrs. Froude, you've no idea how close we came to a total… 'imbalance', shall I call it. All over the world, it wasn't just people who were appearing in other people, it was ideas of people, people who might have been, fictional characters from the astral plane even, Mrs. Froude. Dozens of Pickwicks all over Oxford, Mrs. Froude.
CAROL:	Surely not?
OSBERT CHINERY:	(HIS VOICE CRACKING WITH EMOTION) Oh, for years they laughed at Osbert Chinery's Worldview! Now they know! The dead, Mrs. Froude. Everyone who was dead very nearly came back. (LIKE AN ACADEMIC MUMBLING A FOOTNOTE) The nature of death, Mrs. Froude, is that one becomes forever lost in one's own imagination. One is not a sentient being as such, one is an IDEA that is never added to or criticised. Do you see?
CAROL:	I… erm…
OSBERT CHINERY:	Of course not! Oh, they nearly came back! They nearly did, Mrs. Froude! Another half an hour and every spirit in history would have been flitting through our streets, Mrs. Froude! (WEEPS)
CAROL:	It must have been a great strain on you, all this, Mr. Chinery.
OSBERT CHINERY:	Osbert.
CAROL:	Osbert.
	THEIR CONVERSATION LULLS. THE ROOK CAWS.
OSBERT CHINERY:	Mint?
CAROL:	No thank you.
	CHINERY UNWRAPS A MINT FOR HIMSELF.
CAROL:	This gazebo, it's where Graeme came when he wanted to do some serious thinking.
OSBERT CHINERY:	So I believe.
CAROL:	About Graeme…?
OSBERT CHINERY:	Yes.
CAROL:	He is dead, is he? Properly dead.
OSBERT CHINERY:	(TRIUMPHANT) He was dead meat floating in his tank last time I saw him.
CAROL:	Yes, but his mind. It's still somewhere, isn't it? Couldn't he come back in someone else? Maxie's expecting a phonecall from Bermuda or Zanzibar. I'm right, aren't I? He's out there.
OSBERT CHINERY:	(AMUSED) Out there? Yes. In a manner of speaking he is.
CAROL:	I knew it! (GUSHING) I've told Derek it's all over. I'm shacking up with Graeme as soon as he gets back, whatever he looks like. There'll be no trouble with the police, will there? I know the Americans are very upset about what happened. Oh, Graeme!
OSBERT CHINERY:	(ICY AND PLEASED) He's not coming back, Mrs. Froude. Not for a million years at least and probably not then.
CAROL:	I'm sorry?
OSBERT CHINERY:	This is something I know a little something about, Mrs. Froude. Baffner, you see, by doing what he did to his mind in the tanks, made himself a little bit like me (WITH EXTRA CONCEIT) only a little, and his mind just… expanded. He's everywhere. In everything. In me, even. And you. That rook. (ROOK CAWS. CHINERY SPEAKS FASTER AND FASTER) This mint I'm sucking. Only a little bit of him, you understand, a thought, half a thought, a memory of a day punting on the river, one of his mother's smiles, perhaps. The contents of whatever it was that was Graeme Baffner are as we speak hurtling across the Universe, getting further and further away from each other. If some bump into each other perhaps they'll make a single thought between them, and then they'll find other bits and so on. But Baffner didn't have the mind, he was only a scientist, not like me… (SLOWS DOWN) …so he'll not be coming back. I struggle with the same thing all the time. Oh, yes. Terrible. I have to concentrate all the time. I have to watch every stray thought or I'll be off in every direction, perhaps forever. There, see: I had a stray thought, about the way you crossed your legs, and I was nearly gone. Ah, and another: about how many spiders are asleep in China. Now that's very… (HE STOPS SUDDENLY)
CAROL:	(AFTER A PAUSE EXPECTING HIM TO CONTINUE) Mr. Chinery? Osbert? Osbert?
	MAXIE COMES RUNNING BREATHLESSLY THROUGH THE GRASS AND NETTLES.
MAXIE:	Carol, lovey! Carol!
CAROL:	Maxie! Look, it's Osbert Chinery - he's gone all limp and queer.
MAXIE:	Phone call for you.
CAROL:	(FURIOUSLY, THROUGH CLENCHED TEETH) If it's Derek…
MAXIE:	Reverse charge from Zanzibar!
CAROL:	(RUNNING) Graeme! Graeme!
SCENE 35
	CAROL'S FOOTSTEPS AS SHE RUNS ACROSS LINO TO THE PHONE.
CAROL:	(ANXIOUS) Graeme? Is that you? Graeme?
BAFFNER:	(CHUCKLES DOWN THE LINE)
CAROL:	(MORE OPTIMISTIC) Graeme!
BAFFNER:	(LAUGHS HUGE)
CAROL:	(LAUGHING TOO) Graeme!
	LAUGHING TOGETHER HUGELY. FADE INTO IRISH PUB.
SCENE 36	A DUBLIN PUB. MUCH DISCUSSION. A DRUNKEN MAN SINGS 'THE KERRY DANCING'. WE FOCUS ON ONE CONVERSATION.
JACK PLACKETTS:	So there I lay having me bowels scraped and next thing I know it's ten years later and here I am looking twenty years younger and with a terrible craving for Guinness.
CRUMMEY:	I have the same craving myself. (A BIGGER HINT) I say, I have the same craving myself.
JACK PLACKETTS:	Oh, aye. (YELLS) Hoi, two more over here!
CRUMMEY:	Yer an angel, sure you are.
	JACK SUDDENLY STARTS WEEPING.
CRUMMEY:	Now what's the matter… don't you know the world's a wonderful place?
JACK PLACKETTS:	(RECOVERING HIMSELF) I'm sorry, lad. I've just had a bit of bad news, like. It's me brother. I just rang home and his missus, Hilda, who I've always secretly had a thing for myself, Hilda says, apparently, me brother, he was shot last week. (MORE SOBS)
CRUMMEY:	I lost a brother that way myself.
JACK PLACKETTS:	Up against a wall in South America. He must have been on a buying trip. For the store, you know.
CRUMMEY:	What store might that be when it's at home?
JACK PLACKETTS:	Placketts. Placketts of Proudfoot.
NOONAN:	(CALLING FROM DOOR) Michael! Hurry up! O'Connell Street's full of people who've been dead for years!
CRUMMEY:	(BARKS BACK) Yer drunk!
NOONAN:	Parnell's giving a speech!
CRUMMEY:	(LOUDER) Yer drunk! (TO JACK) What store might this be? Are you on the lookout for a good man?
JACK PLACKETTS:	Placketts of Proudfoot.
CRUMMEY:	Never heard of it.
JACK PLACKETTS:	Oh, you must have. We've the best tripe counter in Yorkshire. (STARTS SINGING) Placketts of Proudfoot…
	DURING THE SINGING NOONAN COMES AND TRIES TO DRAG CRUMMEY OUT. HALFWAY THROUGH THEIR GOOD-NATURED STRUGGLE SMOLENSK AT THE OTHER END OF THE BAR, CRIES "SMOLENSK!". JACK PLACKETTS CONTINUES MOURNFULLY SINGING IN BACKGROUND THROUGHOUT THEIR EXCHANGE.
NOONAN:	Will yer come and see!
CRUMMEY:	Get away, yer drunken sot!
NOONAN:	You'll come if I have to drag yer!
CRUMMEY:	You and who else!
NOONAN:	(INSISTS) Parnell's giving a speech!
CRUMMEY:	Yer mind's gone with the drink!
NOONAN:	What if I was to tell you that yer brother's out there himself, in that same hat he was always wearin?
	BRING UP JACK PLACKETTS' SINGING, THEN PUT THE CHORUS OVER THE TOP SINGING 'PLACKETTS OF PROUDFOOT' WITH EXTRA SPEED AND VIGOUR.
	BRING ERIC MORECAMBE'S PLAYING OF GRIEG'S PIANO CONCERTO UP THROUGH THE JINGLE AND LEAVE IT ALONE TO PLAY US OUT.
	END

Home

Radio

If you have any comments or questions please email me: author@www.swalks.com

Radioplay: Holus Bolus

A generous insanity

Radioplay:
Holus Bolus