PERCY
Lord Baddingham’s chauffeur.
PASCOE RAWLINGS
The most powerful theatrical agent in London.
BARTON SINCLAIR
Director of
The Merry Widow.
SKIP
A beautiful American lawyer.
LORD SMITH
An ex-Secretary of the TGWU.
DAME ENID SPINK
A distinguished composer and Professor of Music at Cotchester University.
PAUL STRATTON
Tory MP for Cotchester. An ex-Cabinet Minister.
SARAH STRATTON
His ravishing second wife and ex-secretary.
SYDNEY
Rupert’s driver.
URSULA
Declan O’Hara’s secretary.
JAMES VEREKER
Anchorman of ‘Cotswold Round-Up’, Corinium Television.
LIZZIE VEREKER
His wife, a novelist.
ELEANOR VEREKER
His daughter.
SEBASTIAN VEREKER
His son.
HAROLD WHITE
Director of Programmes, London Weekend Television.
MAURICE WOOTON
A bent Gloucestershire property millionaire.
1
Sitting in the Concorde departure lounge at Heathrow on a perfect blue June morning, Anthony, second Baron Baddingham, Chairman and Managing Director of Corinium Television, should have been perfectly happy. He was blessed with great wealth, a title, a brilliant career, a beautiful flat in Kensington, houses in Gloucestershire and Tuscany, a loyal, much-admired wife, three charming children and a somewhat demanding mistress, to whom he had just bidden a long farewell on the free telephone beside him.
He was about to fly on his favourite aeroplane, Concorde, to his favourite city, New York, to indulge in his favourite pastime — selling Corinium’s programmes to American television and raising American money to make more programmes. Tony Baddingham was a great believer in using Other People’s Money, or OPM as he called it; then if a project bombed, someone else picked up the bill.