Ten years ago I wrote a novel that was intended to lampoon ‘shock’ television. That is, TV and TV personalities who are deliberately rude, deliberately offensive, and whose ‘schtick’ is having the affront to be unbearable in situations where the rest of the human race are bound by social niceties. Because if we were all like these fuckwits, society would dissolve.

But they continue to thrive, from Sandilands to Newman, because there’s an audience for it. And if you don’t have actual wit or humour in your bag of tricks, and you’re in the entertainment industry, and you’ve already been warned about pinning stuff to the genital area of female mannequins, and your burqua stuff is wearing thin, and blackfacing feels a bit too 1999 – at some stage you’re going to have to pull out your nutsack. Again.

Of course Sam Newman wants me to write this. The Footy Show wants me to write this. Channel 9 wants me to write this.

I am a pawn to their desires.

Anyway, here is something I prepared earlier.

Yours sincerely, Nostradamus.

NB. Players was written in 2004 and published with Text, 2005. Tickets is a fiftysomething playboy ex-footballer. Stan is the working class rags to riches cub reporter made good. Sir Barry Haynes is the media owner pulling the strings. In this scene Tickets is on set in a hospital bed, recovering from a testicle removal (that may or may not have happened).

TW013 Players pp251-55

Players

Text Publishing 2005

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