Free Cooking With Fernet Branca by James Hamilton-Paterson Page B

heard of them. You probably know him as Brill.’
    ‘I don’t.’
    ‘Well, he’s a fan of yours.’

    ‘Surely not.’
    ‘Apparently so. His agent rang last night to say that Brill has just been reading Downhill all the Way ! and is, quote, “slammed” by it.’ Downhill , of course, was the book I wrote for Luc Bailly, the skier with the pop-up flag in his pants.
    ‘Ah. He wants the recipe for another love potion?’
    ‘That wasn’t what he said. According to his agent Brill has reached the difficult age, the pop star’s grand climacteric.’
    ‘Twenty-three?’
    ‘No, he’s actually just over thirty but keeps it secret. The point is, he’s extremely impressed by the way you made Luc seem a substantial figure even off-piste. A man of stature.’
    Twenty-five centimetres, by all accounts, although I do not mention this. I am trying to work out what Brill and Luc Bailly could possibly have in common apart from mountains of money.
    ‘Basically he’s got an early attack of McCartney’s Syndrome,’ explains Frankie. ‘You know: unlimited fame, unlimited cash, unlimited adulation, but wants to be taken seriously into the bargain.’
    ‘Don’t tell me: he’s going to write a Requiem for the Human Race to be premièred in St Peter’s, Rome. It will include recordings of whale song. Or else he’s working on a collection of rock sonnets called Roll Over , Shakespeare . Or could there be a forthcoming exhibition of artworks made from his body fluids at the Saatchi Gallery?’
    ‘At this stage I think he wants help with an autobiography as part of a campaign to invest the name of Nanty Riah with all-round artistic gravitas … I know, I know, but there we are. We ordinary mortals can only let our jaws drop at these people’s monumental chutzpah. Meanwhile, remember they’ve also got monumental quantities of dosh, which is why I think you ought to take it seriously that a pop idol wants you personally to help him towards his Nobel prize.’
    ‘Look, Frankie,’ I say. ‘I nearly fell to my death in a lavatory yesterday, but I don’t want to explain now beyond sayingthat I’m feeling a little delicate. I know nothing about the pop world and care less.’
    ‘That’s why Brill wants you. He was hoping you’d known nothing about downhill skiing, too, and his agent was partly ringing me to check. That’s the whole point. He expressly doesn’t want a pop biography done by one of those authors in Armani leather who come complete with baize scalps and closely-observed mockney vowels. He already has a brace of those, anyway; they go with the territory. No, he wants real writing. You’re very good at the wider picture, Gerry. Which you’ve just done for Per Snoilsson, by the way. I don’t know how you do it but you manage to make these one-dimensional people seem positively Renaissance figures. That’s exactly what Brill’s after. He’s determined to hit middle age as the twenty-first century’s Leonardo, though my guess is he’ll settle for an Order of Merit or even a humble K.’
    God’s piles . ‘Will I have to start from scratch? I mean, would I be his ghost writer or his editor?’
    ‘He told his agent he’s already written something but no one has seen it. It may be five hundred pages of dazzling prose or it may be some stertorous jottings on the back of an envelope. No prizes.’
    ‘Well, Frankie, if you insist, I suppose I’d better see him. I’ll call you back a bit later when I’ve got my mind properly around it.’
    I hang up to find Marta prodding the putty-ball in the pan. It has swollen horribly and now looks like an enormous fibroid trapped in stockingette. For a while I had forgotten about both it and her. The thought that I’m about to move in the grand international ambit of a pop icon worried about middle age somehow makes Marta’s bossy importunings less threatening, even slightly touching.
    ‘You really think I should eat this?’ I ask her, playing cowed patient to