But Tony wasn’t listening. He was watching this incredibly savage girl with her skirt rucked up round her thighs. Christ, he’d like to screw all that smouldering bad temper out of her.

As if aware of his scrutiny, she glanced up.

‘There’s too much air in this glass,’ she said, holding it out for a refill.

‘You’re too old for TV at twenty-five these days,’ Ronnie rattled on obsessively. ‘I work with a guy of fifty. He lives in such constant fear of his age getting out, he keeps on having his face lifted.’

Ronnie looked desperately tired. Beneath the butterscotch tan, there were new lines round the eyes. Cameron chucked the presentation booklet back on the glass table.

‘Well?’ Tony raised his eyebrows.

‘Schmaltz, schlock, shit, what d’you want me to say? It’s utterly provincial, right, but the dialogue’s far too sophisticated. If you’re going to appeal to Alabama blacks, Mexican peasants and Russian Jews in the same programme, you can’t have a vocab bigger than three hundred words. And I don’t know any of the stars.’

‘No one had heard of Tim Piggott-Smith, or Charles Dance, or Geraldine James before “Jewel”.’

‘They’d heard of Peggy Ashcroft. Your characters are so stereotyped. And you’ve got the wrong hero, Johnny’s the guy the Americans will identify with. He’s got drive, he comes from a poor home, he’s going to make it. The Hon Will’s got it already. What’s an Hon anyway?’

‘A peer’s son,’ said Tony.

‘Well, make him a Lord. Americans understand Lords. And they’re all far too wimpish. Americans are pissed off with wimps. We’ve seen too many guys crying in pinnies. You can’t wear your sensitivity on your silk shirtsleeve any more.’

Tony, who’d never done any of these things, warmed to this girl.

‘Go on,’ he said.

‘As a nation, we’re getting behind the family and the strong patriarch again. There’s a large part of the population that want men to reassert themselves, be more aggressive, more accountable, more heterosexual. And you’ve got a marvellous chance with four guys in a house together to explore friendship between men, I don’t mean faggotry; I mean comradeship. It was a great Victorian virtue, but no one associated it with being gay. Today’s man shoots first, then gets in touch with his feelings later.’