In November 2009, I performed at the Opium Magazine Literary Death Match, winning a medal after a tense showdown involving balled-up copies of the Daily Mail.

Here is the special edit of my short story Beyond Help that aided my triumph.

Beyond Help

It was late Saturday afternoon and Sebastian Blast was ordering breakfast: borscht followed by a salt beef sandwich, extra gherkins, extra coleslaw. Extra salt beef. And a double espresso. And some cheesecake. And a Kitkat. We were in Bloom’s on Greville Street, Hatton Garden, the diamond district. The streets were full of fiancés. It was the worst place to bring Sebastian Blast, desperate, steaming, agonisingly celibate Sebastian, bitter, unloveable fat Sebastian.

We small-talked throughout the borscht. When the salt beef arrived, he got to the point:

“I need help, Matthew. I need you to help me.”

I was quick to suggest an alternative.

“Have you spoken to your doctor?”

He smiled. “My doctor hates me. He told me I would have a heart attack before I’m forty. I took my clothes off so that he could examine me. He stood back and said, ‘well Sebastian, medically speaking, you are a fat bastard. And it’s going to kill you.”

Sebastian was morbidly obese, he was desperate and he was asking me to help him. If I hadn’t watched a lot of shit television, I wouldn’t have known what to say.

“You have to help yourself, Sebastian.”

“Pah! Help myself! Don’t be ridiculous. Don’t you think that if I were capable of helping myself, I would have done so. I can’t help myself. My self is the enemy. If someone doesn’t stop my self then I’m going to die, Matthew. They’ll put me in a box in the ground. An embarrassingly big box. Look, I know you’ve got a spare room. I could live with you and your wife. Just for a few months. You could teach me restraint. Save me from my self. Please Matthew. I want to be your baby.”

But I’m getting ahead of myself. This was the end of our relationship.

When I first met Sebastian Blast, he introduced himself as a producer and an agent – “some theatrical but mainly television. Do you have a TV idea?” I admitted that I did have a TV idea. “Pop in to my office with your TV idea and we’ll see if I can be of any help to you.”

Sebastian’s office was a cubicle on the third floor of the Truman Brewery development off Brick Lane. When I peered over the partition, I found him barefoot, with one hand rummaging in a catering box of salt and vinegar crisps, the other hand deep in his cavernous trousers.

“Excellent. You’re here,” he said, not bothering to remove either hand from their vile explorations, “What shall we do today? I know,  Let’s make you a star. You give me your TV idea, I’ll get you a TV deal. Excellent, Would you like a bag of crisps?”

These were the good times.

The bad times began soon enough. After two months of research, I drafted a proposal for a documentary about camping. We were to meet for lunch with a commissioning editor to discuss the idea but when I showed up at Sebastian’s office, I found him hunched over his desk wearing a white shirt, navy tie and rather jaundiced boxer shorts.

“Look!” He waved a pair of powder blue trousers at me.

“The crotch has gone on these. I don’t have any other trousers. What am I going to do?”

“We’ll pick some up on the way.”

“Do you have any fucking idea how difficult it is to buy powder blue trousers with a fifty inch waist? They don’t sell them in Top Man.”

“We can repair them,” I said.

“There’s no time for sewing. I can’t sew. You can’t sew. We’ve got to go now. Wait.” He lurched across the desk, gut dragging piles of documents to the floor as he scrabbled around. Then, he was holding a stapler. “Voila,” he declared and set about stapling the tear shut. Then he completed the repair with cellotape. I asked him if he had read my proposal but his eyes were wild, fast narrow hungry eyes, fit for hunting but not for reading.

We met Schnooky the commissioning editor in the restaurant. We were running late. Her real name was Saskia Charleston, she had a Himalayan tan. “I’m just back from trekking,” she said, “I like to travel in between career challenges.” She told me about Tibetan rainmakers, who summoned a storm before her very eyes. I told her of the Aboriginal wizards who can take you to where the trees bleed. We were getting on, which drove Sebastian into a fury. When Saskia nipped to the toilet, he leant over and spat at me. “Shut up. God’s sake. Shut up, you’re fucking it up. I need this. I can’t have you talking like that with her, not now. Quiet. She’s coming back.”

Sebastian allowed Saskia a single spoonful of her soup before he began pitching.

“It’s a documentary idea,” he said, “it’s about camping. Tents. Pissing in a bucket. Nuts in May. Matthew will present it. He’s very good. Whaddyathink?”

She shrugged. “It could work at seven o’clock on a Sunday. But that’s not my responsibility now. I’ve been promoted to drama.”

I congratulated her.
“Forget him,” hissed Sebastian. “I’ve got a drama idea for you.”
I was shocked at being so blatantly dismissed. Yet I was also curious to hear this drama idea. Sebastian paced around the table improvising his pitch.

“Yes, it’s a drama idea using two clients of mine. Twin thirteen year old girls. And Schnooky, I’m giving you the first look.”

The waiters stared. Fellow diners struggled to remain oblivious.

“In my idea, the twin girls are trying to get a date for their Dad, who hasn’t gone out with anyone since the divorce. It’s a family romantic comedy drama.”

Saskia was impassive.

“I’m not really into family entertainment. I’m after something on the leading edge.”

“This is a leading edge family drama,” continued Sebastian. “You see, the twins try everything to fix divorced Dad up, but Dad’s just too depressed to charm women. You see Dad’s a genius but he’s never been appreciated.” Sebastian was circling us, his hands pulling the words out of his mouth. Unfortunately, with all this leaping about, I noticed the staples in his trousers had come undone. Strips of cellotape hung down between his legs and he was exposing underwear.

“Dad needs help. If one person would help with his career or his sex life he’d be fine. And his daughters understand this so they go down to his bar. But in disguise. Like in Shakespeare. They wait until Dad’s drunk and then they introduce themselves.  He’s so wasted that he takes his little girls home and he has them both without ever realising who they really are. This is a leading edge family drama about incest, weakness and need and it’s called¼. ” The title was written upon Satan’s cuecard. “It’s called Honey I Fucked The Kids.”

Saskia bolted to her feet.

“You promised me Sebastian that this wouldn’t happen again.” She was out the door, leaving us alone with our embarrassment and the bill.

Sebastian stood with a puzzled look on his face, and then he finally looked down at me and asked, “Is there a draft in here?”