Authors: Graham Hurley
At the end of the month, with plenty of training footage in the can,
the two teams would meet on the Brecon Beacons for an elaborate
game of Paintball. One of the two teams would be entrusted with a
casket. They had two days and a night to carry the casket forty miles
over gruelling terrain. The other team were tasked to stop them. Inside
the casket, for real, was
£10,000
- hard cash
to be spent b
y the winning kids
on
sports facilities for their home estate.
It was, Brendan assured me, a wonderful concept. The British
version would be followed by an American sequel. The latter, with the
blessing of the Pentagon, would be staged at Fort Bragg, home of the
Green Berets. If the two pilot shows went well, Doubleact were
looking at a series order for another twelve. A big ITV company had
already lined up a major sponsor. Working title, for the pilots at least,
was
Home
Run
.
Brendan broke off to demolish the rest of his club sandwich. I was
still
wrestling with the small print of his latest wheeze.
‘
What are the Green Berets?
’
Brendan gestured at Everett. The American threw me a casual half-
salute, one sinewy hand brushing his right temple.
‘
At your service, ma
’
am.
’
‘
You
’
re a Green Beret?
’
‘
Always. I
’
m technically on the reserve list now, but it makes no
difference.
’
‘
But what are they? What do they do?
’
‘
Special Forces, ma
’
am. Uncle Sam
’
s shock troops. Infil. Exfil.
Sabotage. Intelligence gathering. You want
a
la
carte
?
The whole
damn menu?
’
I laughed. He was bright, this man. I liked him.
‘
You had a hand in this idea? Cooking it up?
’
‘
Sort of, but it
’
s Brendan
’
s baby really. Him and Gary.
’
‘
Gary?
’
Brendan reached for the phone again. I was looking at the fourth
cup.
‘
Gary
’
s our SAS lead,
’
Brendan explained.
‘
He
’
s an old tart
really but at
least he looks the part.
’
‘
And he
’
s due here?
’
‘
Any time.
’
Gary arrived several minutes later. Apparently he
’
d been waiting in
the lobby downstairs. Brendan ribbed him about this and I found
myself wondering why. Maybe he expected something more dramatic,
like Gary arriving through the window on the end of a rope.
I listened while Gary and Everett exchanged notes. It was evident at
once that they
’
d just spent several days together. Compared to the
American, Gary was a scruff: long, greasy hair, flat, slightly lop-sided
face, bitten nails, scuffed trainers, but the two of them shared the kind
of nerveless, laid-back rapport you often find amongst top
windsurfers. They
’
d been there. They
’
d done it. Not very much got
under their skins.
Eventually, I established that the germ of the idea had come from
Gary. A fan of
Members
Only
,
he
’
d lifted the phone and asked to
speak to Brendan, whose name - inevitably - was always last on the
rolling credits
.
‘
Bold,
’
I murmured.
Gary had cornered the club sandwiches.
‘
Yeah,
’
he said through a mouthful of tuna mayonnaise,
‘
but it was
Brendan who ran with it. My idea was shit. I hadn
’
t got much further
than hide and seek on Pen-y-Fan.
’
‘
Pen-y-what?
’
‘
It
’
s a hill on the Beacons. Bloody vertical. Goes on forever, real
bastard of a climb.
’
He wiped his chin.
‘
The rest was down to
Brendan, like I say. He was the one who dreamed up all the stuff
about the kids. That
’
s the key, isn
’
t it?
That
’
s what unlocks the dosh.
’
I found myself looking at Brendan with something close to respect.
He
’
d spent a lot of the last two months telling me about his
documentary days but I
’
d come away with the conviction that this
was a chapter of his life that was firmly over. Market forces had
turned him into a businessman, a machine - as the office joke had it -
for turning bad coffee into worse quiz shows. When I inquired what
had possessed him to flirt once again with a social conscience, he
looked wounded.
‘
You don
’
t think it
’
s any good? The concept?
’
‘
I
think it
’
s great.
’
‘
And you
’
re serious? You don
’
t know where it comes from?
’
‘
No.
’
I shook my head.
‘
I haven
’
t got a clue.
’
He looked wo
nderingly at the other two and then told them about
my precious undergraduate video. It was, he said, the best piece of
student film-making he
’
d ever seen. It had sat on a shelf in his office
for months and months while he watched me soil myself with
Members
Only
.
One day, he
’
d sworn, he
’
d figure out just how to
marry the two disciplines, how to combine what he called my very
special documentary talents with the demands of the commercial
marketplace. The trip hadn
’
t been easy, but over the last month or
two, in the course of several million phone calls, the three of them
had come up with something pretty workmanlike and now the rest -
the really important bit - was down to me.
I glanced over my shoulder, impressed by this little speech, wondering just who he could possibly be talking about.
Only when I
heard their laughter did I realise he was serious.
‘
You want me to produce this thing?
’
‘
Sure,
’
he reached for a stray prawn.
‘
And direct it, too.
’
Much later, we took a cab to a Cajun restaurant called Baby Jakes
on First Avenue. Everett had been a regular at the place for years. A
waiter showed us to a table at the back and we were halfway through
fried catfish and salmon fajitas before I was quite certain that this
wasn
’
t another of Brendan
’
s elaborate
showboating
gestures.
He really was
making me responsible for the UK end of the shoot. And I really would
be in charge.
I
’
d squeezed his hand in the back of the cab. Now, under the table, I
did it again. He was talking about production schedules. It sounded
nearly as exciting as sex.
‘
We shoot in the hills in November,
’
he said.
‘
All the prelim training
stuff during the summer.
’
‘
November?
’
I began to argue about the light, about short days,
about the weather.
‘
Shit weather,
’
Brendan agreed.
‘
But that
’
s all part of the story. The
network
’
s bought challenge, the sponsors too. That
’
s what
’
s fired
them up. We
’
re going to give these kids a fucking great mountain to
climb, and November
’
s part of that mountain.
It’s about confrontation.
It
’
s about self-esteem. It
’
s about
…
’
he nodded,
‘
…
manhood.
’
I
’
d seen Brendan in these moods before, bless him. He was a genius
at pitching an idea, at marshalling little squads of
cliché
and sending
them into battle. The fact that he so obviou
sl
y believed in whatever he
was trying to sell simply added to his appeal, and that night in the
restaurant was a perfect example of Brendan losing his grip on the real
world. Within minutes, at this rate,
Home
Run
would have solved the
nation
’
s crime problem. The series would doubtless end with a guest
appearance from a grateful Home Secretary and knighthoods all
round.
I tried to bring him back to earth. Half a year in television had
taught me that
Home
Run
,
like anything else, would only be as good as
the facilities we threw at it.
‘
Talk to me about helicopters,
’
I said.
Helicopters are a good test when you
’
re talking high-performance
ideas. At
£700
an hour, even one would make a hefty dent in any
Doubleact budget I
’
d ever seen.
‘
Two,
’
Brendan said at once.
‘
Minimum.
’
‘
For how long?
’
‘
As long as it takes.
’
The others were nodding. They could afford to. They wouldn
’
t be
the ones running the figures past Sandra. I looked inquiringly at
Brendan a moment, then decided to let it pass. The evening was too
lovely an experience to muddy with the harder questions.
‘
And ground level?
’
I asked instead.
‘
What do we do there?
’
‘
Handheld mini-cams with video uplinks.
’
Brendan was helping
himself to the fifth bottle of wine.
‘
You
’
ll have recorders on the
choppers.
’
‘
How many cameramen?
’
‘
None.
’
I paused, wondering whether I
’
d heard him properly.
No
camera-
men? Was he serious?
‘
How come?
’
‘
The kids shoot their own pics.
’