Gasping - the Play Read Online Free

intercom) hallo ... hallo ... She can’t hear me, the damn
thing’s on security shut-off too ...!
     
    PHILIP: Techno let-down. Try upping the
volume on your natural communication system.
     
    SANDY: What?
     
    PHILIP: Shout.
     
    SANDY (squeaking): Help ... help ... I’m not sure I can Philip ...
     
    CHIEF (struggling to get the words out): If anyone can think of something sensible they will be making a most
advantageous career move ...
     
    (The machine
is now grunting and shaking. The balloon is full.)
     
    SANDY: Well it’s just a thought, but we
pressed the button marked ‘suck’; maybe we should press the one marked ‘blow’ ...
     
    PHILIP (lying prostrate on his back
staring upwards, says faintly): I was wondering how
long it would take you to notice that Sandy. Well done, memo me to intensify
your grooming process ...
     
    (SANDY staggers to button, the whirring changes. The balloon quickly
deflates. Almost instantly they all go ‘AAAAAH’ with relief)
     
    PHILIP: Obviously the instruction manual
will have to be very clear on certain points.
     
    (Blackout.)

 
     
     
     
     
    SCENE FOUR
     
     
    The office of ‘Image Control’, a top
advertising agency. Total cool, designer work place, big glossy blow-up photos taken
from previous campaigns.
     
    KIRSTEN CARLTON, a top ad lady.
     
    KIRSTEN (on phone): No dammit Anton, I can’t see you! This is a major pitch for me,
Lockheart are launching an entirely new product and I want the bloody account......
Listen if you can’t handle sleeping with someone in a higher income bracket
I’ll bike you round a bloody bimbo! Don’t bother to call! (phone down, hits
intercom) Graham darling, send in the gentlemen from Lockheart.
     
    (Enter PHILIP and SANDY
...)
     
    PHILIP: Kirsten, at long last, I’m Philip,
this is my top man Sandy ... I can call you Kirsten? You give such good fax I
feel I almost know you, anyway formalities are totally inefficient. Whoever
said ‘manners cost nothing’ never had to play hard ball across eight time zones
with the Tokyo stock exchange.
     
    SANDY: Those guys are tough.
     
    PHILIP: Terry tough! By the time you’ve said ‘greetings honourable colleagues’
they’ve bought your company, miniaturized your lawn mower and eaten your
goldfish.
     
    KIRSTEN: Phil, Sand, let me tell you
something about me. People tend to address me in one of two ways — it’s either
‘Kirsten’, or ‘that tough bitch’, you can have it whichever, whichways,
whatever way you want it.
     
    PHILIP (laughing): I think we’re going to get along just fine Kirsty.
     
    KIRSTEN: When you come to Image Control, you
come to the best. The media is a minefield of no-talent, sad-act companies
whose address is a portable fax machine on the back seat of a Mini Metro.
     
    PHILIP: Exactly.
     
    KIRSTEN: You do not require some
member-munching mincer with a Design Centre security laminate on his tit ...
(PHILIP grunts with exasperated recognition) a Marks and Spencer crudité
dip in the saddle bag of his ten-speed racer (again PHILIP understands) and an ad concept featuring a basking iguana, an enigmatic male model and
no mention whatsoever of the actual product because that would be naff.
     
    PHILIP: God, you’ve met them too?
     
    KIRSTEN: You’ve come to us because we empty
shelves.
     
    PHILIP: That’s what the word is on the
streets. I play squash with a guy from Imperial Biscuits who says you brought
the Jammy Dodger back from the dead.
     
    KIRSTEN: I had a small, chemically produced
biscuit with a blob of red sticky stuff in the middle of it and my cute little
ass was on the line. Imperial had given me a donger of a budget
to push the Jammy Dodger up market, get it out of the tuck shop and into the
executive dining room.
     
    PHILIP: It was inspired, I’ll never forget
it, Penelope Keith pushing the wafer mints away ... (plummy voice) ‘Pass
a Dodger, Roger.’
     
    SANDY: Brilliant casting, Nigel Havers as
Roger was just so