Free Gridlock by Ben Elton Page B

shagged her plastic boyfriend Ken behind a Fisher Price garage, and had so far forgotten herself as to forsake the principles of safe sex, the child that might have been produced could well have grown up to become the gruesomely cutesome little girl in Sam Turk's car advert. She was perfectly calculated to make every parent in the country wonder why they themselves had given birth to the dirt monster. And there, in the video, she stood, innocent and utterly vulnerable on a tough city pavement whilst her father, a lean, finely chiselled, confident man, locked the fortresslike front door of their apartment building.
    It was important that this super-yuppy and his Cabbage Patch daughter lived in an apartment, as opposed to a flat. Despite being British actors, playing British characters in a British advert for a British car (which is officially defined as a car in which a minimum of the ashtrays and seat covers are fitted by British workers), the story was none the less set in New York.
    The reason for this was because the director wished to create an atmosphere of gritty realism, and New York will always seem more real than anything Britain has to offer. It is strange that, although the majority of British people have never seen a skateboarding body-popper, an exploding fire hydrant, or anybody dunk a doughnut, these things seem infinitely more immediate and happening images than that jar of Horlicks which has stood in the cupboard for forty years.
    'New York is good,' Sam had said. Despite the fact that the new car would spend its life stuck in traffic between Redditch and Wolverhampton, Sam was concerned that it should have a global profile.
    On the screen, the little girl's face, surrounded by golden curls, is a study of nervous fear. This was hardly surprising, as she appeared to live in the middle of an urban nightmare – leaves blow across the dirty flagstones in a sinister and forbidding manner, lights are on red, abandoned cars burn. A black man with no shoes sprays a wall, he is muttering to himself, probably having a quiet rap, prior to spinning round on his head. We can't tell because the soundtrack to the video is Italian opera, the reason for this was to make it clear to the meanest intelligence that the anonymous little hatchback in question has class.
    The little girl continues her nervous perusal of the tough world she will inherit. An old man with a beard and the face of a philosopher sleeps in a cardboard box.
    All cardboard box dwellers shot by groovy filmmakers have the faces of philosophers – which is a good thing because, living in a cardboard box in the middle of an urban nightmare, you'd need to be a bit of a philosopher.
    In front of the old philosopher a cop busts a hooker, we know she is a hooker because she is sensationally sexy.
    In the video tape world, just as all tramps are philosophers, all hookers are gorgeous. Of course, in the real world, streetwalkers (who are the poorest type of prostitutes) do not tend to look as if they've walked straight off a Pirelli calendar. Their sad, dispirited appearance tends to provoke either sympathy or disgust from most people, rather than lust. However, in the movies, from Louise Brooks as Lulu, to Julia Roberts as Pretty Woman, we are taught to recognize streetwalking whores by watching out for the wittiest, prettiest, most flawlessly beautiful girl in view. She'll be the one risking her life getting into cars with drunk strangers and having to try and get a condom onto him with her mouth, while pretending to give him a blow-job because he doesn't want to use one and he might have AIDS.
    'I like the hooker,' Sam had said. Great legs, real class.
    The doll-like little girl continues to stare. She is such a beautiful little girl, with such sensitivity and intelligence that by the look of her she is in real danger of growing up to be a prostitute . . .
    Daddy has finished sternly locking the doors of his fortress and with swift, strong movements he gathers up