My only consolation was that I didnt have any friends and family here; no one knew who I was, except for a few fans of the band, maybe, and I like to think that they werent the type to read Lindas paper. And some of the guys at the pizza place might see a copy lying around somewhere, but theyd have smelled the cash, and the desperation, and they could have cared less about the humiliation.

Its an old lager ad, I said. "HARP - STAYS SHARP".

I still thought I was going to kill myself when the six weeks were up; what would have changed my mind? I was busier than Id ever been, what with the press interviews and the meetings, and I suppose that took my mind off things. But all the running around just felt like last-minute activity, as if I had some things to get done before I went on holiday. That was who I was, then: a person who was going to kill herself soon, the moment I could get round to it.

See, I didnt know anything about anything then. I thought I knew things, but I didnt.

Who are they? The other three.

And with that, he finally walked into the cage that Linda had opened for him. The public at large were now free to poke sticks at him and call him names, and he just had to sit there and take it, like an exhibit in a freak show.

So youre worse off than me, really. Cosmic Tony can do things for me, but not for you.

Oh. Why do you get money for saying you saw an angel? Ill tell you another time.

Well, I didnt.

But I wasnt sorry. I liked thinking about Cosmic Tony much more than I liked thinking about God.

And then you fire me when Im hot. How many of your presenters are all over the papers today? No, no, fair point, fair point. I can see where youre coming from. What youre saying, if I read you correctly, is that theres no such thing as bad publicity for a… a fledgling cable channel.

So that just left Lizzie, and if she saw a picture of me looking insane, then so be it. You know why she dumped me? She dumped me because I wasnt going to be a rocknroll star after all. Can you fucking believe that?

Id like a holiday.

No offence, I said. I lied too. I lied about the angel. And I lied to Matty, as well. About going to a party on New Years Eve. And to the people in the respite home.

OK. Well, as your manager, Im going to be asking the Big Guy for a holiday a year. Maybe two.

You cant do that! I really felt scandalized. I can see now I was taking it all too seriously, but it felt real to me, and it seemed like a holiday a year was too much.

Jesus Christ. How much will they cost, dyou reckon? Three hundred quid for the three of them, maybe? Plus expenses. One of thems a… Well, shes a single parent, and her kid will need looking after.

Would you want to know what was behind it? Some people would, Im sure, but I wouldnt. I didnt want to carry on talking about me.

She says she didnt say it. She says the newspaper says it.

I think that our viewers are sophisticated enough to know that extreme experiences sometimes produce extreme language.

Obviously I couldnt have put it as elegantly as that. But yes, thats the long and the short of it.

We were talking about the angel, not Sandra Bullock.

Are they? Should we have said he was playing a harp? To make it more convincing? I told her that, in my opinion, the addition of a harp to the portrait of the Angel Matt Damon that we had painted was unlikely to have helped convince people of its authenticity.

What does that mean? Jess asked me on the phone that morning.

Martin didnt like my idea, of course. First he wanted to know what regularly meant, because he didnt want to commit himself. And I was like, Yeah, well, what with no kids and no wife and no girlfriend and no job, it must be hard to find the time, and he said it wasnt a question of time actually it was a question of choice, so I had to remind him that he had agreed to be part of a gang. And he was like, So what, so I went, Well, whats the point of agreeing? And he said, No point. Which he thought was funny, because it was more or less what Id said on the roof on New Years Eve. And I was like, Well, youre a lot older than me, and my young mind isnt fully formed yet, and he went, You can say that again.

Youve never been abroad? He said it as though I should be ashamed, and for a moment I was.

A job.

Mummy, why did you say Daddy saw an angel? I waited patiently while a brief conversation took place away from the receiver.

What youve got to

９9ｌiｂ•ｎｅｔ

tell yourself, I told them, is that no one will be watching.

You hire me when no one else in the world would give me the time of day.

What about you? I said to JJ. What would you say to Cosmic Tony? Ha. Im not sure, man. He calls everyone man, even if youre not a man. You get used to it. Maybe, I dont know. Live the last fifteen years all over again or something. Finish high school. Forget about music. Become the kind of person whos happy to settle for what he is, rather than what he wants to be, you know? But Cosmic Tony cant arrange that.

Just over two years ago, REMs manager came to see Big Yellow, and asked whether we were interested in his company representing us, and we said we were happy with what we had. REM! Twenty-six months ago! We were sitting around in this fancy office, and this guy, he was trying to persuade us, you know? And now I was sitting around with people like Maureen and Jess, taking part in a pathetic attempt to squeeze a few bucks out of someone who was desperate to give it to us, so long as we were prepared to totally embarrass ourselves. One thing the last couple of years has taught me is that theres nothing you cant fuck up if you try hard enough.

I wish I was, Sharpy. But youve left me with no alternative.

And then we couldnt agree on where wed meet. I wanted to go to Starbucks, because I like frappuccinos and all that, but JJ said he wasnt into global franchises, and Martin had read in some posey magazine about a snooty little coffee bar in between Essex Road and Upper Street where they grow their own beans while you waited or something. So to keep him happy, we met up there.

It wasnt as if we were in the papers for long, anyway. We made one more chunk of money, from a new Channel chat show. We were going to really try and do it straight that time, but the woman who interviewed us really got on my tits, so I told her wed made it all up to earn a few bob, and she told us off, and all these stupid brain-dead old bags in the audience booed us. And that was it, no one wanted to speak to us any more. We were left to entertain ourselves. It wasnt too hard. I had loads of ideas.

Fuck off. No ones watching. You said.

We walked in, and the guy that ran it was wearing this old army uniform, and he saluted us, and said, Captain Coffee at your service. I thought he was funny, but Martin was like, Jesus Christ, and he tried to leave, but Captain Coffee wouldnt let us, he was that desperate. He told us we could have our coffee for free on our first visit, and a cake, if we wanted. So we didnt walk out, but the next problem was that the place was tiny. There were like three tables, and each table was six inches away from the counter, which meant that Captain Coffee was leaning on the counter listening to everything we said.

Maybe a bit of a social life. The church has quizzes sometimes. Like pub quizzes, but not in the pub. Id like to have a go at one of those.

MARTIN The headline in Lindas paper - page one, accompanied by the picture of me flat on my face outside a nightclub - read FOR HARPS - SEE SHARP.

Really? If God in His infinite wisdom wanted me to stay on Earth, then how could I ask for anything? JJ laughed. OK, then. Not God.

Who, then? A sort of… I dont know. A sort of cosmic, you know, President. Or Prime Minister. Tony Blair. Someone who can get things done. You dont have to do what Tony Blair says without asking for something in return.

Come on, what else? Oh, I couldnt ask for anything else.

Say he does give you two weeks holiday a year. Fifty weeks is a long time to wait for it, you know? And youre not going to get another appointment with Cosmic Tony. You got one shot. Everything you want, youve got to ask for in one go.

The world headquarters of FeetUpTV! - known, inevitably, to its staff as TitsUpTV! - is in a sort of shed in Hoxton. The shed contains a small reception area, two dressing rooms and a studio, where all four of our homegrown programmes are made. Every morning, a woman called Candy-Ann sells cosmetics; I split Thursday afternoon with a man called D J Goodnews, who speaks to the dead, usually on behalf of the receptionist, the window cleaner, the minicab driver booked to take him home, or anyone else who happens to be passing through: Does the letter A mean anything to you, Asif ? and so on. The other afternoons are taken up by tapes of old dog races from the US - once 藏书网upon a time the intention was to offer viewers the chance to bet, but nothing ever came of it, and in my opinion, if you cant bet, then dog racing, especially old dog racing, loses some of its appeal. During the evening, two women sit talking to each other, in and usually about their underwear, while viewers text them lewd messages, which they ignore. And thats more or less it. Declan runs the station on behalf of a mysterious Asian businessman, and those of us who work for FeetUpTV! can only presume that somehow, in ways too obtuse and sophisticated for us to decipher, we are involved in the trafficking of class A drugs and child pornography. One theory is that the dogs in the races are sending out encoded messages to the traffickers: if, say, the dog in the outside lane wins, then that is a message to the Thai contact that he should send a couple of kilos of heroin and four thirteen-year-olds first thing in the morning. Something like that, anyway.

He looked at me and laughed, and then I remembered about his lie.

Someone should write a song or something called They fuck you up, your mum and dad. Something like, They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

The other three who? Have you read the story? I only read the one about you seeing the angel.

Resign. Or dont. Whatever. He needed to talk to a career adviser, not a daughter.

Yep, we can allow you a quiz.

Shittiness, thy name is Woman. That was my thinking, at that point in time, you know, that it wouldnt hurt her to see how shed messed me up. In fact, if I could be temporarily invisible, then one of the first things Id do, after robbing a bank and going into the womens showers at the gym and all the usual stuff, is put the paper down in front of her and watch her read it.

I didnt know what to say.

OK. Youve turned me round, Sharpy. Whove we got on this afternoon? This afternoon? Yeah. Its Thursday.

That was kind of hard, wasnt it? he said, and I was surprised, because I thought I was the only one whod found it difficult.

Ah. I see. Very cunning. That hadnt occurred to me.

Can I just check something? said Linda. You did see him, Martin, didnt you? Martin shifted in his seat. You could tell he was scouting around the inside of his head, just to make sure that there were no escape routes hed overlooked.

And Im learning that Im tied to Jen, and not to my mum and dad - not to home, which is where the rope should be. Jen thought she was tied to them too, Im sure of it. She felt safe, just because she was a kid with parents, so she kept walking and walking and walking until she walked off a cliff or into the desert or off to Texas with her mechanic. She thought shed get jerked back by the rope, but there wasnt one. She learned that the hard way. So Im tied to Jen now, but Jen isnt solid, like a house. Shes floating, blowing around, no one knows where she is; shes sort of fucking useless, really, isnt she?

By doing what, exactly? Have you seen the paper this morning? Thats a problem for you? You come across as a bit of a nutter, to be honest, What about the publicity for the channel? All negative, in my book.

God. Youre a cheap date. Youd choose to live out the rest of your natural life for a week in Florida? Id like to go abroad. Ive never been.

Trust me, said JJ. I know the market. Cosmic Tony wont blink an eye.

Go on, then. Fuck it. Fuck the expense.

No. Exactly.

What kind of job? Anything. Working in a shop, maybe. Anything to get me out of the house.

I was going to say that I saw the first little glimmer of light that day, the day of the interview with Linda, but it wasnt really like that. It was more as if Id already chosen what I was going to watch on TV; and I was beginning to look forward to it, and then noticed that there was something else on that might be more interesting. I dont know about you, but choice isnt always what I want. You can end up flicking between one channel and another, and not watching either programme properly. I dont know how people with the cable television cope.

Up where? The whole angel thing, Declan, came about because I was going to kill myself. And then I bumped into three other people on the top of a tower-block who were thinking of doing the same thing. And then… Well, to cut a long story short, the angel told us to come down again.

Oh, yes, said Martin. I saw him, all right. He was… He was awesome.

Anyway, watching rubbish San99lｉb•neｔdra Bullock films isnt a very extreme experience.

They were up there with me.

Oh.

If He was asking me personally, He wouldnt have to offer me anything.

What angel? And so on, and on, until Declan walked in with the cosmetics lady and ushered us off the air, into the street and, in my case, out of a job.

You think theres such a thing as negative publicity for FeetUp? How do you mean? What with no one ever having heard of us. You. There was a long, long silence, during which you could hear the rusting cogs of poor Declans mind turning over.

And you reckon you can get the other three? Almost sure of it.

Good. Fuckofffuckofffuckoff. She made her apologetic wave at Maureen, and then into the camera, at the outraged people of Britain.

If you could make a deal with God, kind of thing. Hes sitting there, the Big Guy, across the table from you. And hes saying, OK, Maureen, we like you, but we really want you to stay put, on Earth. What can we do to persuade you? What can we offer you? Gods asking me personally? Yeah.

No, I said. Believe me. Literally no one will be watching. I have never met anyone who has ever seen my show.

I didnt think Id ever be able to go back to the church again after the interview with Linda. Id been thinking about it a bit, the day before; I missed it terribly, and I wondered whether God would really mind if I just sat at the back and didnt go to confession - sneaked out somehow before communion. But once Id told Linda that Id seen an angel, I knew that Id have to keep away, that I wouldnt be able to go back before I died. I didnt know exactly what sin Id committed, but I was sure that sins involving making up angels were mortal.

Ah.

What happened was that after the interview, I found myself talking to JJ. He was going back to his flat, and I was heading towards the bus stop, and we ended up walking along together. Im not sure he wanted to, really, because weve hardly spoken since I slapped that man on New Years Eve, but it was one of those awkward situations where I was walking five paces behind him, so he stopped for me.

No you cant, because its beyond belief, and therefore unbelievable.

Well be in trouble now, then. Because I just said "Fuck off". Youll get loads of complaints for that.

Godll forgive you for those, I think. We walked along a little bit more, and then he said, for no reason that I could tell, What would it take to change your mind? About what? About… you know. Wanting To End It All.

I took pride in my interviewing. I mean, I still do, but at a time when I seemed to be able to do nothing else properly, I hung on to my competence in a studio as I would to a tree root on the side of a cliff. I have, in my time, interviewed drunken, maudlin actors at eight in the morning and drunken, aggressive footballers at eight in the evening. I have forced lying politicians to tell something like the truth, and I have had to cope with mothers whose grief has made them uncomfortably verbose, and not once have I let things become sloppy. My studio sofa was my classroom, and I didnt tolerate any waywardness. Even in those desperate FeetUpTV! months spent talking to nobodies and never-weres, people with nothing to say and no ability to say it, it was comforting to think that there was some area of my life in which I was competent. So when Jess and JJ decided that my programme was a joke and acted accordingly, I suffered something of a sense of humour failure. I wish, of course, that I hadnt; I wish that I could have found it in me to be a little less pompous, a little more relaxed. True, I was encouraging them to talk about an unforgettable experience that they hadnt had, and which I knew they hadnt had. And granted, that imaginary unforgettable experience was preposterous. And yet, despite these impediments, I had somehow expected a higher level of professionalism.

Can he cure Matty? Nope. He can only arrange things.

I hadnt been allowed to speak to them for weeks, but Cindys maternal instinct had obviously told her that the day Daddy was in the papers talking about seeing messengers from God was a good day to reinstate contact.

I told a fib, sweetie. To make some money.

OK. Come on, come on.

And then Cindy and I spoke, but not for very long. During our brief conversation I managed to refer to two different types of domesticated female animals.

Anyway, this place had just changed its name and its vibe. The snoo九_九_藏_书_网tiness hadnt worked out, so it wasnt snooty any more. It used to be called Tres Marias, which is the name of a dam in Brazil, but the guy who ran it thought the name confused people, because what did one Mary have to do with coffee, let alone three? And he didnt even have one Mary. So now it was called Captain Coffee, and everyone knew what it sold, but it didnt seem to make much difference. It was still empty.

Mummy said you did.

Had you forgotten? I sort of had, really, yeah.

But then, we were all freaks now. When friends and family and ex-lovers opened their newspapers the next morning, they could come to one of only two possible conclusions: ) wed all looped the loop, or ) we were scam artists. OK, strictly speaking, there was a third conclusion - we were telling the truth. We saw an angel that looked like Matt Damon, who for reasons best known to himself told us to get down off the roof. But I got to say, I dont know anyone whod believe that. Maybe my great-aunt Ida, who lives in Alabama and handles snakes every Sunday morning in her church, but then, shes nuts too.

Why did Mummy say you did? Youd better ask her.

Thats why he gets the rhyme. He wouldnt like me saying this, but if it wasnt for me and Jen, no one would ever have heard of him. Hes not like the boss of Education - thats the Secretary of State. There are loads of ministers, and hes only one of them, so hes what they call a junior minister, which is a laugh and a half because hes not very junior at all. So hes sort of a loser politician, really. You wouldnt mind if he was a loser because he shot his mouth off and said what he thought about Iraq or whatever, but he doesnt; he says what hes told to say, and it still doesnt do him much good.

When was the last time you had a holiday? Just before Matty was born.

I used to work, before Matty was born. I had a job in an office stationers in Tufnell Park. I liked it; I liked all the different pens, and sizes of paper and envelopes. I liked my boss. I havent worked since.

I hate lies, I said.

The story did not, as Linda had promised it would, emphasize the beauty and mystery of our experience on the roof; rather, it chose to concentrate on another angle, namely, the sudden, gratifying and amusing lunacy of a former television personality. The journalist in me suspects that she got the story about right.

She gave up expecting anything ages ago. Shes still a mess because of Jen, and she hates Dad, and shes given up on me, so everythings all above board there. But Dad really thinks that hes entitled to something, which is a joke. For example: he kept showing me these articles that people were writing about him, saying he should resign because his daughter was in such a fucking state, as if it was any of my business. And I was like, So?

And anyway, how come its all about you? We hardly get a fucking mention.

Most people have a rope that ties them to someone, and that rope can be short or it can be long. (Be long. Belong. Get it?) You dont know how long, though. Its not your choice. Maureens rope ties her to Matty and its about six inches long and its killing her. Martins rope ties him to his daughters, and, like a stupid dog, he thinks it isnt there. He goes running off somewhere - into a nightclub after a girl, up a building, whatever - and then suddenly it brings him up short and chokes him and he acts surprised, and then he does the same thing again the next day. I think JJ is tied to this bloke Eddie he keeps talking about, the one he used to be in the band with.

For example: it was my idea that we met for a coffee regularly -either at Maureens or somewhere in Islington, if we could find someone to sit with Matty. We didnt mind spending bits of the money on babysitters or whatever you want to call them; we pretended we were up for it because we wanted Maureen to have a break, but really it was because we didnt want to go round hers all the time. No offence, but Matty put like a real downer on everything.

Exactly.

Oh.

Did you see an angel, Daddy? No.

I tried to smile, because I knew JJ was joking a bit, but I was finding the conversation hard. I couldnt really think of anything very much, and that annoyed me. And it made me feel afraid, in a strange sort of a way. It was like finding a door that youd never seen before in your own house.

What has lager got to do with anything? Nothing. But the name of the lager was Harp. And my names Sharp九-九-藏-书-网, you see.

And I dont know, man, but to me it seemed a long way back from there. If you were gonna draw a map, youd say that mortgages and relationships and jobs and all that stuff, all the things that constitute a regular life, were in like New Orleans, and by coming out with all this horseshit wed just put ourselves somewhere north of Alaska. Whos going to give a job to a guy who sees angels? And whos going to give a job to a guy who says he sees angels because he might make a few bucks for himself? No, we were finished as serious people. We had sold our seriosity for twelve hundred and fifty of your English pounds, and as far as I could tell that money was going to have to last us for the rest of our lives, unless we saw God, or Elvis, or Princess Di. And next time wed have to see them for real, and take photos.

Martin? Is that what you call him? Just "The Angel", said Martin. He looked happier than this on the night he tried to kill himself.

Anyway, I dont owe Mum and Dad anything. Mum understands that.

OK. Then what have harps got to do with anything? Angels are supposed to play them.

I had many other phone calls that morning - from Theo, who said that theres been a lot of interest in the story, and who thought Id finally given him something he could work with, as long as I was comfortable talking to the public about what was obviously a private spiritual moment; from Penny, who wanted us to meet and talk; and from my daughters.

That was just one of my old pros tricks.

Top man, Dec I think its a good idea. Im pleased with that. Old Declans still got it, eh? Too right. Youre a newshound. Youre the Newshound of the Baskervilles.

Candy-Ann, D J GoodNews and the two semi-clothed ladies have appeared on my show not just once, but several times, in order to give viewers a chance to get to know them a little better. (Sharp Words is two hours long, and though the advertising department, namely Karen on reception, does its best, we are rarely interrupted by messages from our sponsors. The theoretical viewer is highly unlikely to feel as though we have barely scratched the conversational surface.) Attracting people of the calibre of Maureen and Jess, then, constituted something of a coup: only rarely have my guests appeared on the show during the same decade that they have appeared in the newspapers.

I dont wish to overstate my case; its not bloody rocket science, doing a TV interview. You chat to your guests beforehand, agree on a rough conversational course, remind them of their hilarious anecdotes and, in this case, of the known facts about the fictions we were about to discuss, as provided by Jess in her original interview - namely, that the angel looked like Matt Damon, he floated above the roof, and he was wearing a baggy white suit. Dont fuck about with those bits, I told them, or well get into a mess. So what happens? Almost immediately? I ask JJ what the angel was wearing, and he tells me that the angel was wearing a promotional T-shirt for the Sandra Bullock film While You Were Sleeping - a film which, as luck would have it, Jess had seen on TV, and was thus able to synopsize at considerable length.

Fuck me.

If we can just stick to the subject, I said. Lots of people have seen While You Were Sleeping. Very few people have seen an angel.

My guests on Sharp Words tend to be old friends who want to do something to help, or former celebrities in a boat not dissimilar to my own - holed under the waterline and sinking fast. Some weeks I get has-beens, and everyone gets wildly over-excited, but most weeks its had-beens.

Martins the one that most people will have heard of, said Linda.

You want a job? Yes. Of course.

So weve got no one? I reckon I could get JJ, Maureen and Jess to come on.

And hes how old? Hes nineteen.

No, no, shit, Im sorry, Maureen. I didnt mean to imply that. You have a… You have a really hard life, and none of its your fault, and everything thats happened to me is just cos of my own stupidity, and… Theres no comparison. Really. Im sorry I ever mentioned it.

Thats one of your old pro tricks, right? said JJ knowingly.

So I can buy you a nice birthday present.

I also received a phone call from my boss at FeetUp. He was calling to tell me that I was fired. Youre joking.

Im not going to beg, Dec. But it would seem a little perverse to me.

They make you feel fucking bad. Because they do. Especially your dad.