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can shoot it. But the day itself will still cost about five grand. Tony and I spend most of the time sitting outside on the steps of the studio, smoking cigarettes and eating the muffins that were supplied by some eager beaver production assistant keen to impress the television lady. It embarrasses me slightly – I am not quite so impressed with myself. Not fresh muffin impressed. My phone rings, and I check the number before answering – it’s Phil.
    ‘Yep?’
    ‘Nicola, it’s me,’ he says.
    ‘I know, what’s wrong?’
    ‘There’s a problem with the teaser trailer.’ He sounds panicked. It’s rare to hear him this worried, which panics me.
    ‘Oh what now?’ I ask, and close my eyes, ready to concentrate on today’s catastrophe.
    ‘Somebody has called it porn.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘It’s been put on the front end of the new Bristo the Badger videos, and some mum has written in and called it porn.’
    ‘It’s what?’ I say again; I don’t know why, I heard him the first time.
    ‘Somebody’s put it on the new Bristo the Badger video and José’s going mad. He says it’s your fault. And then he asked if you had got me to send him an email from your computer this morning. I said no.’ Phil goes quiet at the other end of the phone.
    Evil Ghost: The Return is going to be the equivalent of an eighteen certificate for television – it will be strictly post-watershed. Needless to say, the trailer that I cut was very much an eighteen certificate. Some young model, who I now have to write into the film, practically naked but for a wet bra, but it’s fine because we would have had one in there somewhere. I spliced in shots from the first film, the one with a decent budget and a film release, the one we didn’t get to make. This is what I do; you’ve got to hook your audience. And we stick it all over our adult comedy videos, our soft porn videos. It raises awareness, so when we finally come to sell the thing, we can say we already have a market. But my audience is not three- to five-year-old kids, or their mums, who stick their pride and joy in front of our bestselling kids’ video franchise, Bristo the Badger, for an hour’s peace in the mornings. As usual it has nothing to do with me. Some bright spark in the mastering department, some doped up operations type, has got confused. It’s a publicity nightmare. Not that anybody is going to care so much about that. What José is obviously doing his nut about right now is the fact that it’s going to cost us tens of thousands of pounds to recall all the tapes, and replace the trailer with something a little more three-to-five-year-old friendly. Saying that, I doubt it’s the kids themselves that have complained. More likely some young mum with a rich husband, who gets to sit about allday thinking about playing tennis, has happened to catch a glimpse of our original Evil Ghost, after hearing her offspring having a good old giggle at the naked lady on the television. Again, this is not my fault. Why doesn’t she just take her kid to the park, instead of sticking it in front of a box all morning? I have a feeling they won’t let me send a letter back saying that. And even though José knows it has nothing to do with me, you can bet he is damn well telling anybody who will listen back at the office that it is, because I am the person who doesn’t happen to be there. I am the one out, on his orders, photographing an old bird in smog.
    ‘Phil, I’m coming back. Don’t worry about it, it’s nothing to do with us.’
    ‘One last thing.’
    ‘What?’ Surely nothing else can be wrong.
    ‘Charlie called.’ I catch the tone of his voice, but ignore it. I am more surprised than anything. Charlie doesn’t call my work any more.
    ‘Really? Charlie? What did he want?’
    ‘I don’t know, but he sounded weird. I answered the phone, and he asked me if I was you. Obviously I said no, and he hung up.’
    ‘That’s not weird, Phil, that’s just him,’ I say.