Outrageous

The TV studio lights were too hot. After the interview, there was almost enough sweat on my forehead for it to breach the thickly-caked make-up I was plastered in.

An old man in a brown suit, with huge eyebrows ringing his eyes like glasses stood in the audience to ask the first question.

A girl in a short skirt and blonde hair fanned across her back handed him the microphone and he cleared his throat for a long time into it.

“How did you get this idea?” he asked.

I gave him my usual answer about finding inspiration for my books everywhere.

“No,” he said. He held up a wretched, dog-eared notebook held shut with a black ribbon. “How did you get the idea from here? I haven’t shown it to anyone.”

The audience murmured, and laughed nervously. The old man turned to them for support. “He should at least admit he stole it,” he said, and they started nodding.

“Is this a joke?” I asked The Book Show’s host. The producers had promised me the audience would all be fans, and there would be no difficult questions, but the host stared expectantly for my answer.

“This is outrageous. Have any of you even read my book?” I was ready to storm off, but the crowd’s murmuring grew angry when I stood up. The movement had raised my shirt to uncover my genitals, so I quickly sat down again, pulling at my shirt to cover as much of my lap and pale bare legs as possible.

The crowd didn’t wait for the microphone, but pelted their questions from where they sat.

How come you got to be on the show? Why did yo had  let that woman’s dog be put down? Hadn’t I realised that Mr Powell (my old maths teacher) was close to a nervous breakdown? How could you, how could you, how could you?

In the morning I wrote it all down and pretended it was my story.

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