What’s on TV - 8pm & 9pm

8pm: A memory of buying this radio & television guide

Magazine programme in which you remember the time you went to pick up this radio and television guide.

 PREVIEW:

You are in the news agents where you used to live before. The owner, he knows you, and you know him, but not by name. The door is stiff like it used to be. The bell is clear, and you look out of place waiting for his attention. He talks very loudly because he is somewhat aged now. His shop is a village shop, he insists. He does not like the term news agent. He does not have a license to sell alcohol. He stands in his grey shoes and looks at you.

Oh hello, good morning. Come for your Radio and Television Guide?

Yeah. Hi, I have, yeah.

It’s funny you still get it, nobody else does.

Really? Well, I still enjoy it.

You can get it all online now you know, much cheaper online. Free.

I prefer reading it on paper. I like having it to hand, you know.

I know just what you mean. Physical objects, eh? Presence. Hmm. OK, fine.  Anything else?

Just, top up. Ten on that please.

Ah, no, I’m sorry. Oh dear me. No no.

I’m sorry, is there a problem?

We don’t do electric metre keys. Can’t topup here. Very sorry.

Oh right.

It’s just that no one round here uses those keys. You can just get Direct Debit, you know. Pay the right amount on time, every month. Straight from your bank account. Can’t you do that?

No, I can’t do that where I live.

Where you live? But you live here, don’t you? You’re around the corner aren’t you? Got those kids, haven’t you?

I moved away. I used to live Malthouse Lane. But I. Don’t anymore. Heh. I thought everywhere did the keys.

No. We don’t do them.

OK, well.

You moved away, you’re saying? Do you want to cancel the Radio and Television Guide? I only get it in for you. Everyone else has their TV guide with the Times on Sunday. Or, you know, the good old Radio Times.

No, please don’t cancel my subscription.

Really? You come all the way here just to collect it. You don’t live here anymore. So, where do you live? We don’t deliver far you know. Just round here, so…

No, it’s ok. I don’t mind coming. I don’t want to get it delivered.

Honestly, it’s so much easier for you if I cancel. I can cancel it here, and give you the contact information so your new place can get it for you. It’s easy.

No. It’s alright.

They just call the distributors direct.

It’s alright.

Look, I’ll be honest with you, I don’t get it for anyone else. It’s a very outmoded model they use. Not centralised at all. Not syndicated, and I have to deal direct with the distributor. No profit in it. No profit at all. Four pee, something like that. It’s more trouble than it’s worth to tell you the truth. And you say you left the area now, and I don’t do electric and gas topup keys. People here pay their bills, you know, by Direct Debit. And you have to travel all the way across town.

Yes but I don’t mind driving here to pick it up.

Gah! You drive here? Waste of time. Bad - terrible. The environment. And expensive too.

Well, I suppose. The petrol. But I don’t mind, I really don’t.

No, it’s no good. I’ll cancel it then, yes?

No, don’t. I’ll keep it. Maybe next month I’ll think about cancelling.

Well, if you cancel now, I’ll still get the next couple of months in because it’s on a contract, so you will have time to set it up where you live now. Your new place.

No. I don’t want to cancel, thanks.

Alright alright. It’s a shame, but alright.

Thanks.

9PM, the news at nine o’clock with Nicholas Witchell. Feature: Exit Interview into a Hole.

News programme anchored by Nicholas Witchell. Current affairs, business and sport, with Nicholas Witchell. Although, is it still him? Probably not anymore, it used to be. It used to be but they changed the news to ten. Editor’s note – this programme may be later than scheduled. Yeah, I really think it has been the News at Ten for about a decade now. There was an outcry at first, but it soon died down. Only a hundred letters or so. And the BBC get that any way – hundred letters is water off a duck's back to those people at the BBC complaints department. Even this Television and Radio Guide gets the occasional letter from people. Oddballs. Complaints about things over which we have no control.

And, Nicholas Witchell. Would it still be him? It used to be. His proud ginger hair. Pale, but proud. He did other programmes too, but he started with the news. All his other programmes were like the news. ‘Nicholas Witchell,’ he used to say, ‘this is the news at Nine o’Clock.’

But then, suddenly, Doosh! Sorry, you’re not having news at nine anymore. It’s going to be at Ten from now on. It’s going to be Huw Edwards.

‘Don’t look so hurt, Nicholas,’ the producers said to him. ‘Huw Edwards is the future. What choice do we have? Look at Huw Edwards. Look at his incredible body. And he has worked so hard to cultivate that glorious Welsh voice. It’s like Richard Burton is reading the news to you. You think he can just do that naturally? We can’t keep on kicking him when he puts in so much effort, can we?’

Poor Nicholas Witchell. And he had to work, still. We all need a job of work. So he was on different channels after that. Channel Five. You saw stuff with him voicing wildlife documentaries called PREDATORS! Like that, with an exclamation at the end. And techno music playing while Nicholas Witchell, formerly the world’s leading television journalist, described the slaughter of a bison, or a yak, or some kind of big goat, something anyway, as though it was happening at the Coliseum in the last days of the Roman Empire. It never mattered what kind of animal it was being killed. It was always being killed by this just huge pack of wolves and all this techno. And Nicholas Witchell’s voice trying its best to cut through the carnage. You stopped seeing his face altogether – it was all voice over for a while. Soon, you stopped hearing his voice, too. Those techno producers soon realised that his heart wasn’t really in it. But he is still out there, you know that, you can sense him, out in the world. He’s got a family. Children and they love him. And his wife, she’s alright. Stuck with him through all of it. (Editorial note: This needs to be fact checked maybe? If you get a sec)

Do you know the thing Nicholas Witchell is bothered by, more than anything else in the world? The thing that makes his blood absolutely boil and he can’t explain why? It’s his sister, Michelle.

He thinks about his sister Michelle on a near hourly basis. So pretentious! Hew says to himself, out of nowhere, startling his coworkers who are lost in thought. Why is she always lording it!

She’s always lording it.

You know, Nicholas will say to himself, why the hell did she keep the name? She never dropped the extra E. She remained a Witchelle, and has never seemed to think it pretentious. Never lets it bother her. Nicholas wonders aloud to himself if this is the reason for his rage. The fact she goes around letting everyone call her Michelle Witchelle. How offensive! How absurd!

Ever since they axed the news at nine o’clock, and kicked Nicholas out of Broadcasting House, Michelle seems to be rich. Like rich in all ways. Rich in colour, rich in money, rich in just her life. Like this change in the schedule has formed a kind of collagen, and she has found a way to inject it into her existence, and it is now filling out her life. Michelle Witchelle is no longer a person, he thinks, but a kind of luxurious, full-on cream. She wears a leather coat that is both beige and reflective.

Reader: This Television and Radio Guide has it on good authority that one afternoon in December, when Nick W was in Westfield shopping centre, he saw her. Michelle Witchelle in her sack-coloured reflective coat. It made him shake his head, the way she was flouting herself about. My sister, he thought. He was so exasperated by her.

But, he supposed, she was happy. And here she was, almost in front of him. And all he had to do was reach out or say her name and smile and they could go and have a cocktail together at Las Iguanas. But he did not reach out to her. Instead, this moment made him glaze over as he began to think about his whole life. What was he doing in Westfield Shopping Centre? He was hungry, that’s what. He was just trying to find a damned thing to eat and she was on the phone to someone. Laughing, and walking with some other woman, also impossibly rich. He had to hide from her because he was so hungry, and he was wondering around like a stray dog. He was hungry and if there had been less choice, or the BBC canteen, he would have been ok, he would have been alright, but he was so hungry and he had been working all night in the H&M store room, and now he couldn’t pick a place to eat lunch. There were so many places, but all of them saturated in this white light. The light made him look and feel like a ghost. The ghost of the H&M back room. But so what? He wasn’t ashamed of working in the H&M store rooms through the night.

The thing that really stopped him saying hello to his sister, the thing that stopped him going over to even acknowledging her existence, was all the bags. She had so many bags, just so many bags. Bags of shopping all the way up her arms. She had so many bags. She had so much stuff.

And your hair, Nicholas. Not even washed, so just a few streaks across your head. And he was wearing black, as per the H&M temp staff directives. A faded black shirt that was not ironed. And black jeans. Wear black, the employment agency had said. Your worst colour because it deadened your best feature, your green eyes. Sort of milky now, with those strange eye-freckles in them. You wonder if that’s a sign of an illness. Or just, somewhere, the end is waiting for you.