Bite The Wax Tadpole by Phil Sanders Page A

Nev returned from the washrooms. “In you go”, he commanded Rob and Leo who jumped dutifully to their feet. “Coffee, cakes and no calls for the next half hour”, he continued for the Rottweiler’s benefit.
    Nev’s office was all that Rob’s was not. It positively gleamed with the finest timber and steel and glass and the walls were hung with top quality art works bought as investments by the Network Board who, to give them their due, may not know much about art, may not even know what they like but do know how much per square centimetre a Brett Whiteley is worth. The room even had windows. Rob and Leo sat in the tubular steel chairs on the subordinates’ side of the huge, gleaming paper free desk while Nev trekked to the far side where his leather and rose-wood executive throne awaited. He winced as he sat down and Leo and Rob exchanged knowing looks.
    “You do realise we were up against Davis Cup tennis last night, don’t you, mate?”, said Leo getting in an early defensive shot.
    “Who gives a stuff about Davis Cup tennis? This is what you guys ought to be crapping your nappies about.” He picked up a remote control and pointed it at the giant plasma screen that dominated one wall in much the same way that Leonardo’s Last Supper dominates the refectory wall of Santa Maria delle Grazie. Black and white countdown figures appeared on the screen before it burst into life with a shot of an ambulance racing along the streets of a busy city and in through the gates of a large hospital. A voice over said: “ Het onthaal aan Wie Gaat Volgend” just before a smartly dressed man with a stethoscope round his neck stepped into shot and said: “Het spel van het leven en dodo”
    “It’s in Dutch”, explained Nev.
    “Thank god for that”, said Rob. “I thought I’d had a brain haemorrhage.”

CHAPTER NINE
    The studio canteen, imaginatively called The Studio Canteen, afforded diners a splendid view of parklands and bush. This helped to take their mind off the food which was prepared by a chef with a diploma in reheating . Malcolm and Phyllida sat in a booth next to the window watching a magpie peck at a dead rat next to the barbecue area.
    “Remind me not to have the kebab at lunchtime, will you”, said Malcolm as he popped a couple of paracetamol into his mouth and swigged them down with a gulp of tepid coffee.
    “Are you all right?”, asked Phyllida. She’d noticed over the last few weeks how tired he’d been looking, how grey he’d become, how he fluffed his lines more often.
    “Yes, yes. Bit too much vino collapso last night, that’s all”, he replied, shaking his head in an attempt to exorcise the taste of the tablets. She decided not to pursue the matter and stirred her tea. God forbid that she’d end up like Malcolm or Norman Tubby but, given the nature of her chosen profession, it was a definite statistical possibility. And what if the parts stopped coming in? What if she couldn’t act, couldn’t pretend to be someone else? She couldn’t go back to being herself, not full-time.
    “Did you read about poor old Norman Tubby?”, she said. “ Lovely man, real old fashioned gentleman. He sexually abused me once in an episode of Blue Heelers.”
    The clouds that lowered on Malcolm’s house dimmed still further. “Yes, and look how he ended up. Dying alone in a one room flat in the unfashionable end of Darlinghurst. There but for the grace of He who doesn’t exist...”
    Phyllida frowned. “Are you sure there’s not something else bothering you?”
    Malcolm shrugged. “Is it a myth, do you think, that your hair and fingernails grow after you’re dead?”
    “Sliut me aan bij nos oz volgende week voor ene and ere episode van “Wie Gaat Volgend?”, said the smart young presenter as he sat on the edge of a bed where an old man, face as yellow as a newspaper announcing The Abdication, sat with a multitude of tubes entering his body through orifices both natural and man-made. The program’s