‘One minute to the break,’ said the floor manager.

Across the vast pastelcoloured desk, Dale’s voice could be heard from the midst of a cloud of hairspray. ‘I mean, surely the big issue, Bruce, has got to be this whole copycat killing thing, hasn’t it? I mean, that’s what America is concerned about. As an American woman, it sure is what I’m concerned about. Are you concerned about that, Bruce? As an American man?’

‘ America ’s population is not as young as it was, and soon the numberone issue concerning the majority of Americans will be adult incontinence.’

This was not Bruce. It was the TV. The studio controller had pumped the volume back up preparatory to going back on air. It was after nine, and the network advertisers were beginning to switch their focus from workers and schoolkids to a ‘coffee time’ audience, which meant young mums and old lonelys. Sodasucking babes were giving way to nipple pads, denture fixative and nappies both infant and adult.

‘No, I am not concerned about copycat killings,’ said Bruce, speaking with difficulty because a young woman was painting some kind of mentholflavoured grease on to his lips. ‘I don’t believe that people get up from the movie theatre or the TV and do what they just saw. Otherwise the people who watch this show would all have their hair set in concrete and their brains sucked out along with their cellulite.’

It was scarcely a comment calculated to endear him to his media colleagues, but that was Bruce. Tough, sarcastic and a bit of a stirrer. If you wore a leather jacket and shades on TV at nine in the morning, you were almost dutybound to be abrasive. In fact, Bruce had guessed that Dale would not hear his answer anyway. He could see she was the type of interviewer who used her guests’ answers as quiet time in which to consider her next question.