Bite The Wax Tadpole by Phil Sanders Page B

theme tune, a slightly jollied-up version of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, started and the credits began to roll as Nev hit the stop button.
    “What was that?”, inquired the stunned Rob. “The Dutch entry in the Eurovision Crap Contest?”
    Nev swung his chair round to face Rob and Leo. “It might be crap but it’s the crap that floats on top of the other crap, the crème de la crap. Highest rating show in Holland, Germany and Belgium. You got the gist of it?”
    “Basically”, offered Leo, “guessing which poor sod of a terminally ill patient carks it next.”
    Nev took a long swig of Red Bull and stood up, restless after viewing the DVD. “ “Who Goes Next?” Brilliantly simple, eh? Clever bastards, the Dutch. I was in Amsterdam last week, you know. Guess what for?”
    Despite his best efforts Rob couldn’t rid himself of the awful vision of Nev bending over with his Reg Grundys round his ankles while one of those ladies famous for standing in well-lit windows in the red-light district shoved jagged little crystals up his...
    “Fascinating canal system? Van Gogh exhibition? Anne Frank’s house?”
    Nev picked up a pair of dumb-bells from the Execo-gym in the corner of his office and began a set of biceps curls. “Negotiating with the ZVP Network about buying the rights to a local version.”
    “And you’re telling us this because...?”, asked Rob who had the same uneasy feeling in his stomach that he had when going over the top on a roller coaster. Leo had stopped in mid-chew, his lower jaw set in a westerly direction.
    “Because the writing is on the wall for “Rickety Street”. Know what I mean by the writing on the wall?”
    “It’s in the bible”, said Rob unthinkingly, “Balshazer’s Feast. Mene, mene...”
    “Yeah, yeah, yeah, fucking writers. No offence. Yeah, the writing is most definitely on the wall for you guys.”
    Leo scraped the gum off the roof of his mouth with his tongue and set his jaws in motion again. “We’re getting canned?”
    Nev took a deep suck of air as the curls started to burn his biceps. “Re-zoned. We’re still finalizing the deal but if it goes through, and why the hell wouldn’t it with the dosh we’re offering, Who Goes Next? gets your time slot and you get moved to 1030. I mean, come on, look at the ratings. They’re shit.”
    Leo looked at Rob with a raised I-told-you-so-eyebrow as Nev continued. “Another six months and you’ll be down with the SBS news in Serbo Croat.”
    YOU guys... YOU get moved... YOU’LL be down? So much for Cabinet solidarity. Rob seemed to recall it being “us” when the TV fan mag awards and Logies were being given out. Nev replaced the weights, downed another slug of Red Bull and started lapping the desk, punching his left palm with his right fist for emphasis as he talked.
    “The live ep’ll get the figures up; the stupid bastards out there...”
    By which Rob assumed he meant the viewers who paid his and all their wages by watching the programs and then rushing out to buy dog food, cars and slim-line sanitary towels as instructed during the ad breaks.
    “... lap that sort of thing up. Like dogs and their own vomit, you know what I mean?”
    Another delightful image to run alongside anally delivered recreational drugs.
    “Your mission, should you choose to remain in employment, is to keep the figures up there. Do that and if “Who Goes Next?” goes tits up you could get your old spot back. But you’ve got to give us something different, something edgy, something...” He waved his right arm in the sort of gesture Julius Caesar might have used when addressing the Senate. “Something... out there. Know what I mean?”
    Rob followed the line of the outstretched imperial arm out through the window. “Something Parramatta-ish?”
    “ We’ve done surveys, asked people what they want. And they want something warm and comforting, you know, like an old sweater. But at the same time they want something exciting,