Late Night Nightmare

Glad to be away from it all, some years slip by unnoticed,

while others fidget awkwardly in the memory.

1968 and, as echoes of the Mersey Sound reach London,

I receive an unexpected invitation from the BBC

to appear on Late Night Line-Up. I am flattered.

This rather highbrow but popular television programme

went out live every Sunday night and featured

a number of guests discussing the arts and various topics.

I did worry of course, during lunch on the train

down from Lime Street (packet of crisps and four cans of lager),

if I would be able to hold my own among the metropolitan elite,

or was I the token Northerner, the Scouse poet

whose pretensions were to be exposed in front of millions?

And here I am in the Green Room at TV Centre

with ‘the thinking man’s crumpet’ Joan Bakewell,

who tries in vain to put me at my ease as she introduces …

‘Sir Edward Boyle and Yehudi Menuhin’.

Unsure of whether to bow or curtsey,

I half-genuflect and realise with a sinking feeling

that I have more in common with the custard

creams on the table than with my fellow guests.

‘Wine? No thanks, do you have any lager?’

Need a wee, but best hang on until the last minute,

because you won’t be able to go once the show starts.

Five minutes before we go on air, I head for the Gents.

I’m just installed, unzipped and, as they say in ceramic circles,

pointing percy at the porcelain, when Yehudi rushes in

and stands next to me. Suddenly I get writer’s block,

as he chats away and micturates melodiously.

Still talking, he puts the finely tuned instrument

back into its case and goes to the washbasin.

I let out a pretend sigh of relief and follow him to the studio.

At the time I hadn’t seen Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz

and Guildenstern, nor Alan Bennett’s Forty Years On,

nor had I read Norman Mailer’s Armies of the Night,

or Cancer Ward by Solzhenitsyn, and so had nothing

to add to the lively discussion that followed.

I have always been an attentive listener

as opposed to a fearless talker, an asset appreciated

at a hospital bedside, but less so on live chat shows.

I listened and nodded wisely, I smiled and tutted

as conversation ranged from Vivaldi to Vietnam,

from Tai Chi to Tchaikovsky. Seated between them

I was like a spectator at Wimbledon, as the pair

lobbed, volleyed, smashed and served verbal aces.

Not only did my neck ache, but I was finding it

increasingly difficult to concentrate on anything

save the half-gallon of lager fermenting in my bladder.

When would they start talking about Everton, I wondered,

or at least ask me what the Aintree Iron was?

Suddenly it was my turn to walk out on to Centre Court.

Had I been inspired to write a poem about the recent

assassination of Robert Kennedy? asked Joan.

‘Er … no, but I do have one called “At Lunchtime”

about people making love on a bus when they thought

the world was coming to an end.’

But time was against us, she was afraid. Thanked the guests

and bid the viewers goodnight. Before the credits had finished rolling,

I was out of the studio, down the corridor and into the Gents.

And guess who was up there on the rostrum before me,

baton in hand, conducting Handel’s Water Music? Yes.