Freddie stared grimly at the FTSE index, watching his fortune melt away in a sea of red. Damned Europhiles, he thought. How different it had all been 15 years ago when Margaret was at the helm and he and Jeffrey vied for the title of the world's greatest storyteller. Freddie checked himself. This was a time for action, not sentiment. Quickly, he rose from his leather armchair and reached for his trusty Mont Blanc pen that had been gathering dust in the recesses of his mahogany desk.
A few hours later, with the first story complete, Freddie poured himself a single malt and allowed himself a few moments' self-congratulation. Who could possibly guess that the rather posh barrister who gets the two mindless thugs off a murder charge would turn out to be the good guy after all? Top that, Jeffrey, he said to himself.
Freddie glanced up at the paintings on his wall and felt another surge of creativity. Why had no one ever thought about a story about the art market? Within minutes he had come up with a plot involving not just one, not even two, but three different scams. Sometimes his brilliance amazed even himself. His only slight concern was whether readers would be able to follow all the twists and turns of such delicate plotting and realise that the last two scams were the honest-but-poor man's way of getting back at the roguish auction house vice-chairman, but Freddie was in no mood for rewrites.
A deep laugh escaped Freddie's throat as he completed the third story. How his readers will identify when they discover on the last page that the US tourist who hands over a large amount of money to keep alive the memory of a local saint has been suckered and that the story is actually a load of rubbish.
The fourth story came to him in the early hours. Not even Customs & Excise would work out that the long-haired hippy wasn't the drug mule, but actually the undercover officer.
Just one more story to find. But the master storyteller felt his inspiration drying up. "Could I get away with some hocus pocus about a cowboy who survives the Battle of Little Bighorn, goes to sleep for a century then emerges to get the love of his life pregnant, but turns out to have been dead the whole time?" he asked. "I should think so," said his agent. "In which case we are done," replied Freddie, turning to ring his broker.
And if you really are pressed: The digested read, digested...
Paper-thin plots and cardboard characters from the self-styled world's greatest storyteller
