Replies

Scene: A large posh office. Two clients, well-dressed city gents, sit facing a large table at which stands Mr. Tid, the account manager of an architectural firm.

Mr. Tid:
Well, gentlemen, we have two architectural designs for this new residential block of yours and I thought it best if the architects themselves explained the particular advantages of their designs.

(There is a knock at the door)

Mr. Tid:
Ah! That's probably the first architect now. Come in.

(Mr. Wiggin enters)

Mr. Wiggin:
Good morning, gentlemen.

Clients:
Good morning.

Mr. Wiggin:
This is a 12-story block combining classical neo-Georgian features with the efficiency of modern techniques. The tenants arrive here and are carried along the corridor on a conveyor belt in extreme comfort, past murals depicting Mediterranean scenes, towards the rotating knives. The last twenty feet of the corridor are heavily soundproofed. The blood pours down these chutes and the mangled flesh slurps into these...

Client 1:
Excuse me.

Mr. Wiggin:
Yes?

Client 1:
Did you say 'knives'?

Mr. Wiggin:
Rotating knives, yes.

Client 2:
Do I take it that you are proposing to slaughter our tenants?

Mr. Wiggin:
...Does that not fit in with your plans?

Client 1:
Not really. We asked for a simple block of flats.

Mr. Wiggin:
Oh. I hadn't fully divined your attitude towards the tenants. You see I mainly design slaughter houses.

Clients:
Ah.

Mr. Wiggin:
Pity.

Clients:
Yes.

Mr. Wiggin:
(indicating points of the model) Mind you, this is a real beaut. None of your blood caked on the walls and flesh flying out of the windows incommoding the passers-by with this one.
(confidentially) My life has been leading up to this.

Client 2:
Yes, and well done, but we wanted an apartment block.

Mr. Wiggin:
May I ask you to reconsider.

Clients:
Well...

Mr. Wiggin:
You wouldn't regret this. Think of the tourist trade.

Client 1:
I'm sorry. We want a block of flats, not an abattoir.

Mr. Wiggin:
...I see. Well, of course, this is just the sort of blinkered philistine pig-ignorance I've come to expect from you non-creative garbage. You sit there on your loathsome spotty behinds squeezing blackheads, not caring a tinker's cuss for the struggling artist. You excrement, you whining hypocritical toadies! ... with your colour TV sets and your Tony Jacklin golf clubs and your bleeding masonic secret handshakes. You wouldn't let me join, would you, you blackballing bastards?! Well I wouldn't become a Freemason now if you went down on your lousy stinking knees and begged me!!

Client 2:
We're sorry you feel that way, but we did want a block of flats, nice though the abattoir is.

Mr. Wiggin:
Oh sod the abattoir, that's not important.
(He dashes forward and kneels in front of them) But if any of you could put in a word for me I'd love to be a mason. Masonry opens doors. I'd be very quiet, I was a bit on edge just now but if I were a mason I'd sit at the back and not get in anyone's way.

Client 1:
(politely) Thank you.

Mr. Wiggin:
...I've got a second-hand apron.

Client 2:
Thank you.

(Mr. Wiggin hurries to the door but stops...)

Mr. Wiggin:
I nearly got in at Hendon.