Nanny Piggins and the Race to Power 8 (13 page)

Boris immediately rushed over and gave the newsreader a big hug. ‘You poor man,’ said Boris. ‘The thought of going to work in the morning makes me want to cry too. That’s why I live in a garden shed and only teach a few afternoon ballet classes to earn my pocket money.’

‘We can’t let a pig burst in here and take over,’ protested the news director, emerging from the control booth. ‘We have a civic responsibility to report the news.’

‘To who?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘The few poor souls who have broken the channel-changing knob on their televisions? No-one is watching this drivel and the people who are watching aren’t paying attention.’

‘You can’t change the editorial policy of the station without consulting the board of directors,’ argued the news director.

‘I’ll make a bet with you,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I bet if I change the editorial policy the board won’t notice because they don’t watch this station either.’

‘But you’re running for mayor,’ continued the news director. ‘People will be cross if we let you take over.’

‘Why?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘They should be impressed by initiative and leadership.’

‘But what about the rest of the bulletin?’ asked the floor manager. ‘This is going to air and we haven’t finished yet.’

‘Let me finish it,’ said Nanny Piggins.

The newsreader happily got out of her way so he could go and weep with Boris in the corner.

‘Just read what is on the autocue,’ the floor manager told her.

Nanny Piggins settled herself in the chair, picked up the sheets of copy on the desk, then tossed them away over her shoulder and ignored the autocue entirely. ‘Good evening, I am mayoral candidate Sarah Matahari Lorelai Piggins,’ began Nanny Piggins, ‘and I am taking over this news bulletin because I think the journalists here are a bunch of old misery guts who should be ashamed of themselves. So this is the news according to me. Earlier today, the Queen of England went to the Battersea dog shelter and adopted a thousand puppies. Then she threw Prince Andrew out of his palace and let the dogs live there.’

‘I like puppies,’ murmured the newsreader between sobs.

‘In South America,’ continued Nanny Piggins, ‘the President of Brazil sent a bag of Brazil nuts to every citizen in his country as a thank-you present for electing him in the first place’.

‘What a nice man,’ said Boris, dabbing his eyes.

‘And in Papua New Guinea a remote group of tribeswomen discovered the cure for the common cold,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘but decided not to tell anyone because they think it is fun to stay in bed eating chocolate and watching daytime television when you have a runny nose. And now for the weather.’

Nanny Piggins turned and looked at the weather man.

‘Tomorrow in Dulsford the weather will be cold and wet,’ said the weather man.

‘No, it won’t!’ interrupted Nanny Piggins. ‘It will be warm and sunny all day, until four o’clock in the afternoon when there will be a very brief shower, so we can all put on our rainboots and jump in puddles.’

‘But according to the synoptic charts . . .’ protested the weather man.

‘The viewers do not want to know about your sinuses, thank you,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘so from everyone here at the Dulsford News Team, especially me, mayoral candidate Sarah Matahari Lorelai Piggins, goodnight.’

‘Clear,’ called the floor manager.

‘Not a word you said is true,’ protested the news director. ‘Not the news bulletin, not the weather, you even said goodnight when it is 10 o’clock in the morning!’

‘Pish,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Other types of television are all made up, like soap operas and medical dramas, so why not make up the news?’

‘What is she talking about?’ asked Boris. ‘What does she mean, saying soap operas are made up?’

‘Don’t worry yourself about it,’ said Samantha. ‘Just put your paws over your ears for a few minutes.’

‘You can’t fictionalise the news,’ argued the news director.

‘Why not?’ asked Nanny Piggins.

‘Because . . . because . . . it’s the news!’ wailed the news director.

‘Come now,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I’ve heard more reasoned arguments from three-year-olds.’

‘It’s jolly good of the Queen to adopt all those puppies,’ said the newsreader.

‘But she didn’t,’ yelled the news director. ‘This pig just made it up.’

The newsreader looked like he was about to cry. Nanny Piggins wrapped him in a big hug.

‘There you go,’ said Nanny Piggins to the news director. ‘This is exactly what you do to your viewers every day. You wear them down and make them upset. Life is hard enough. When people get home and turn on the television, they do so to find relief. The last thing they want is truth and reality. We get more than enough reality from reality, thank you very much.’

‘This is crazy,’ said the news director.

‘Of course it is,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Crazy people have all the best ideas. Look at Leonardo da Vinci, total genius, designed a helicopter in the sixteenth century. But it was four hundred years before the invention of the aviation fuel to power it. Talk about nutty as a fruitcake! Hold on a minute – why are we standing around arguing? Derrick, be a dear and run out to the car and fetch a cake. No, better make that a dozen large cakes, of the chocolate variety.’

Nanny Piggins rightly judged that once they had eaten a slice of her cake, the news director and his television crew would capitulate and give her anything she wanted. After the first mouthful they were begging her to give up her mayoral aspirations and become a television executive instead.

When eleven o’clock rolled around the crew were still eating, so they let Nanny Piggins read the news again. This time she did not make up any news stories at all. She just dictated her recipe for chocolate cake and recounted the time the crown prince of Spain tried to elope with her because he had fallen desperately in love with her apple strudel.

‘This can’t go on,’ said the news director, licking chocolate icing from his fingers before helping himself to another slice. ‘You can’t just read out recipes. You have to do some news.’

‘But that cake recipe
was
news,’ argued Nanny Piggins. ‘Using chocolate-flavoured butter, chocolate milk and six bars of molten chocolate was a breakthrough in the development of bakery.’

‘At the 12 o’clock bulletin we must report some actual news,’ argued the news director.

‘Don’t worry, I’ve got it covered,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I’ve already called a few friends to drop in and help us out.’

At ten minutes to twelve the entire cast of
The Young and the Irritable
turned up.

‘Darlings!’ cried Nanny Piggins with delight. ‘It’s so good to see you.’ (Nanny Piggins had once been the head writer of
The Young and the Irritable.
For more information, see Chapter 8 of
Nanny Piggins and the Daring Rescue
.)

‘Where’s the cake?’ asked the actor who played Vincent. ‘You told us there would be cake if we arrived before noon.’

‘And there will be,’ promised Nanny Piggins. ‘I just need you to do a little bit of acting for me first.’

What followed was spectacular, because now Nanny Piggins was reading the news and crossing to live dramatisations acted out by her soap-opera-star friends.

The actor who played Vincent played the head of the Water Quality Authority, who was responsible for a thousand tonnes of ping pong balls falling into the ocean. He gave a passionate speech accepting all the blame, but explaining that he made the terrible mistake because he was in love with the woman who checked his gas meter.

Then the woman who checked his gas meter burst into the studio (she was being played by the actress who played Bethany) and declared that she wasn’t really a menial water board employee, she was actually the head of police on a sting operation to entrap him. But she had found no evidence because he was blameless, and instead had fallen deeply in love with him.

The news bulletin ended with a ten-minute session of them kissing passionately, in between looking off into the middle distance and talking about how lucky they were to have found each other.

For the one o’clock bulletin, Nanny Piggins got Buff Senior and Buff Junior to play political rivals who gave up on reasoned debate and settled their differences by stripping off their shirts and combatting in professional wrestling.

And in the two o’clock bulletin, the actress who played Sabrina pretended to be the prime minister of Turkey, and sang a heartbreaking ballad about how devastated she was to learn that the prime minister of Turkey did not get to eat roast turkey every day for lunch.

Between all the cake and the heady atmosphere of drama and requited love, even the crew started to really enjoy themselves. Broadcasting the news had never been so much fun. It was such a relief to have a day with no talk of car accidents, war or politics. Everything was going swimmingly until the real boss, the chairman of the board of directors, burst into the studio.

‘What on earth is going on here?!’ demanded the chairman of the board.

‘Um . . .’ said the news director. On hearing the question put so plainly, he suddenly realised it would sound foolish to say they had let a pig take over the news and make everything up.

Fortunately Nanny Piggins came to his aid. ‘Do not blame your staff. If they showed any weakness of character it is purely because of their low blood sugar levels because you, as their employer, failed to provide adequate doughnuts in the break room. Therefore, I have hijacked this newsroom in the name of happiness, to prevent them from broadcasting any more misery-inducing stories about reality or what mean people are doing to each other in far distant countries.’

‘Well, whatever you’re doing,’ yelled the chairman, ‘keep it up! The ratings have gone through the roof. They’ve doubled with each bulletin. There were 67 people watching the 9 o’clock bulletin.’

‘That would be my mum and her friends at the nursing home,’ said the floor manager. ‘They like to watch so they can laugh at me when I come to visit.’

‘Now there are tens of thousands of people tuning in,’ continued the chairman. ‘With ratings like that we’ll actually be able to attract advertisers and give everyone pay rises.’

‘These workers don’t want pay rises,’ protested Nanny Piggins.

‘Yes we do,’ protested the workers.

‘Okay, yes they do,’ conceded Nanny Piggins. ‘But more importantly they want doughnuts, and chocolate biscuits and real coffee, or better yet hot chocolate in the break room.’

‘And perhaps a window?’ suggested the floor manager. ‘I ended up in hospital last year from vitamin D deficiency.’

And so the
Dulsford Community Television Station
became the first television news service to entirely fictionalise the news (although tabloid newspapers had been doing a similar thing for years) and specialise solely in happy news, with the guarantee of at least one declaration of love and wedding per bulletin. It was a huge success. News stations around the world syndicated their program or copied it outright. And in show business, there is no higher form of flattery than plagiarism and violating someone’s copyright.

‘Will you stay and oversee the transformation of our news service?’ asked the chairman.

‘I’d love to,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘but I’m afraid I have an even more vitally important job, looking after these three children.’

‘Plus you’re running for mayor,’ Michael reminded her.

‘Oh yes, that too,’ agreed Nanny Piggins. ‘I think of that more as a silly hobby than an actual job.’

‘You’d better not mention that in any of your campaign speeches,’ suggested Derrick.