‘More or less as we discussed. The big question is how he’ll react. You know how he feels about having his competence called into question.’

‘Naturally, since he hasn’t got any. But the show is making a fortune for us here at the station, another fortune for Lo Chef and a very nice career for you, my dear. Don’t let’s screw any of that up just because Romano Rinaldi can’t take a joke. And that’s all it was meant to be.’

Aplane flying low overhead on the final approach into Ciampino put the conversation on hold for some time.

‘You’re sure about that?’ Delia yelled over the final resonant rumbles.

‘One hundred per cent. My people checked with Ugo’s people today. In any case, none of our audience is going to care less what some professor of semiotics in Bologna thinks. All Romano needs to do is ignore the whole incident and it’ll be forgotten in a couple of days.’

Delia checked her watch.

‘I’ve got to go. He’ll be off-stage at any moment.’

Actually there were at least five minutes to go, but Delia had never mastered the art of taking a mobile phone call and lighting a cigarette at the same time, and it was the latter rather than a coffee that she desperately needed before bearding her highly-strung client. Unmarried, very ambitious, with a baker’s dozen years of ova already addled and a molto simpatico but totally ineffective significant other, Delia knew that she couldn’t afford to lose this job.

After graduating with a modest degree, she had worked her way up through several jobs in corporate communications and public relations before landing her present position as personal assistant to the celebrity chef whose television show, Lo Chef Che Canta e Incanta, regularly pulled in millions of faithful viewers every week. Moreover, the figures were always rising, and there had even been approaches from other European broadcasters interested in acquiring the rights for their own territories. And then this left-wing academic and obscure novelist pops up and lets the cat out of the bag, jokingly or otherwise, thereby threatening to ruin the whole sweet deal.