07 December 2017

The Climb To The Top

Selling sex.

By Chin Chin

Lying, cheating, dishonest swine, that’s what I say.  I’m going to get hold of the trading standards people and tell them what I think about that hyped-up nonsense!  That’ll fix the bastards!  Who?  Those bloody journalists, of course, the ones who have been reporting on the sex scandals in Hollywood, Westminster and the media.

Well, it doesn’t work as promised and I should know because I’ve tried.  As my readers are aware I have been working very successfully to secure my position at the Shaw Sheet, but don’t think that my ambitions stop there.  An ace reporter nowadays has to be able to switch media as smoothly as Lewis Hamilton changes gear.  One minute a penetrating report for Shaw Sheet, the next a piece on the BBC News and then behind a bench sneering with the clapped-out comics on “Have I got News for You?”  It is just a question of being in the right circle.

So, how do you become one of the top intelligentsia?  Sit around writing for the Shaw Sheet, hoping that your incisive views on current affairs will get you noticed?  Already tried and didn’t work.  Attend a Hampstead church and stand next to the vicar shaking everyone’s hands as they leave?  Already tried and didn’t work.  Ditto at synagogues and mosques?  Already tried and didn’t work – actually the mosque experience was rather painful; better to have read up the difference between a Sunni and a Shia in advance.  Sycophantic emails to everyone at the BBC inviting them to a free cocoa evening at my flat? Five people turned up, all because they thought cocoa was code for something else and that they would end up meeting, or indeed more than meeting, powerful executives.  No, something quite different was called for and it was only while I was rereading last month’s newspapers that I realised what it was.

There it was in paper after paper after paper.  Powerful older men exploiting their juniors by demanding sexual favours as the price of top acting parts, promotion, or even keeping their jobs.  Disgusting, bullying and nasty, that is how the media describe it – at least until their own little indiscretions come out -and they are certainly right about that.  Still, by all accounts that is how the market seems to operate and it is that word “market” which gave me the clue.  If I could find someone important and sleazy enough, perhaps I could dispense the odd sexual favour as the price for enhancing my career.  Not respectable, I hear you say?  Well, there’s no bullying or misuse of position my end, and I am not responsible for the sleazebag to whom I am selling anymore than was the armourer in Shaw’s Major Barbara.  Anyway, ladies use their charms to ensnare rich lords in the best romantic novels so I will be following a highly respectable precedent.

Actually, it was the practical rather than the moral issues which bothered me most.  As you get older your value in the sexual favour market begins to decline and at sixtyish it is probably not as great as it once was.  Still, what of it?  The laws of economics stipulate that if your stock is of declining value you just get rather less for it.  Perhaps then I’d have to settle for local television and the less reputable newspapers.  Yes, that was it.  I must be prepared to be molested in return for moderate advancement.

But how to find a willing abuser?  Well, back to the manual, those newspaper stories of Hollywood and Westminster.  Often the trouble starts with an inappropriate comment about dress, so clearly I needed to set myself up for that.  Hmm, if it was summer I could have stood around the BBC in speedos, maybe posing as a living version of one of those sculptures of Greek gods; but in December I would have needed at least a woolly hat, not an accoutrement much encountered on the slopes of mount Olympus.

Short trousers, of course, would be a possibility but would be more likely to attract gay men of the far right than elderly ladies of discernment.  That doesn’t mean that I am prejudiced against the gay community, oh dear no, I am LGBTRFSVAOPZ with the best of them.  I just didn’t want to cut down the possible market.  There are powerful women as well as powerful men in the media.

Ok, then it had to be casual charming for the clothes; an open shirt just showing the top of the vest (“ooh, I do find a nice vest sexy, my dear”, well you never know).  The question was where to stand.  If you go trout fishing it pays to cast across the water where streams meet, so I thought that maybe I should take my cue from that and position myself where the corridors meet.  Just by the loos, in fact.

After a few minutes along came a possible abuser, a powerful looking lady in a uniform, no less; that’s a sign of predatory tastes if ever I saw one.  Right, a deep sexy chuckle and my career would be on the up.

Ouch, how could I know she was a security guard with a right hook like a sledge hammer?  I wish I had never started this.  It isn’t as easy as the papers made it sound.  Bastards, it just isn’t right the way they led me on.

 

 

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