TIM: Come in, you must be my ten o'clock.
JORGE: I think so.
TIM: Excellent. Well, I'm Tim, and if my secretary's got this right, your name is, Jorge Luis Borges - am I pronouncing that correctly?
JORGE: To the best of any of our knowledge, yes.
TIM: Lovely. So, I understand you have some ideas to share. I must admit, I did wonder whether pitching TV shows would be something of a comedown for one of the instigators of post-modernist fiction, and the godfather of non-linear narrative.
JORGE: Well, I've been dead for over 30 years, so it's actually quite hard to find work.
TIM: Great, literature's loss is Carlton TV's gain. Hit me.
JORGE: So, I wondered about a new series of Midsomer Murders.
TIM: Oh, I think that one's played out. Honestly, there's nobody left in the whole village to do a murder. You can't have a whodunit when every single villager is in either prison or the mortuary.
JORGE: Ah, but I have a new twist: the author dunnit.
TIM: No, no, both the local playwright and journalist have already done at least one murder each.
JORGE: I mean, the author of the script. In my version, John Nettles slowly discovers he is a character in a sub-standard piece of conservative detective fiction, and tracks down the author, ie me, to ask about it. I come on and apologise, we do a quick Argentinian rhumba, and roll credits.
TIM: Thanks for that, Jorge. Leaving aside the fact that I abhor that idea with every fragment of my being, what would happen in the other 5 episodes?
JORGE: Nettles and I would retell the myth of Sisyphus to each other, whilst playing chess backwards.
TIM: OK, I'm going to pass. Not least because I know John Nettles is an existentialist proto-Beat fiction fan.
JORGE: Damn him! OK, so my other idea is, bring back Treasure Hunt. And, every week, Anneka Rice can discover she is searching for herself...or maybe that she's Annabel Croft. In a mirror.
TIM: Hmm, nope.
JORGE: Alright, how about this. We bring back documentary series 7-Up.
TIM: Can I just say, your cultural references are quite out of date.
JORGE: I did die in 1986.
TIM: Fair enough.
JORGE: And so, right, every 7 years we catch up on some characters, and then, in the 5th episode they give birth. To themselves. That would be fun.
TIM: That would not be fun.
JORGE: It would! Do you even know what fun is? Whihc one of us has won a Nobel prize?
TIM: Neither, so far as I know.
JORGE: I shoulda!
TIM: Last chance.
JORGE: Fine. So, here's fun: we bring back Lennie Bennett's Lucky Ladders, but, here's the thing, although it doesn't look like it, the answer to every question is actually Venice.
TIM: That one's not you, it's Italo Calvino!
JORGE: Ah...but...you see...[CALLIONG] Richard!
SKETCHWRITER: What's wrong?
JORGE: This sketch you're writing doesn't work.
SKETCHWRITER: I think it's a strong concept.
JORGE: Oh, yeah, it might well be a concept, but the words are galloping shite. Anyway, how many people are going to be aware of both my influential ontologically recursive fiction, and Lennie Bennett's Lucky Ladders? You always do this. It's crap.
SKETCHWRITER: Yeah...OK...but, this bit's clever, right?
JORGE: Pah, I did it better.
SKETCHWRITER: In my defence, it is the third time I've had to write a sketch on the theme of Fun for this competition.
JORGE: Which competition!? The Nobel prize?
SKETCHWRITER: No, on a website.
JORGE: I don;t know what that means. How could I, I died long before messageboards became popular, and then, as they are now, entirely obsolete. Just click Post below this line, and we'll all go back to not existing.
SKETCHWRITER: Fair enough, you are quite good at this.
JORGE: Hey your words, not mine.
