Meet the Press

The radio was blasting out the theme tune of ‘Fame’ when the knock at the door came. An omen? Hardly. We were expecting it and were aware that in a few minutes our own accomplishment would become nationally and locally known.

It wasn’t as if anything exceptional had taken place – no heroics or superhuman feat – and,what’s more, fourteen men and three women had achieved the same result. Yet the press had decided to focus on us because we were the only married couple to have done so. It was down to pure luck although we kidded ourselves that it was our skill that won the day.

I have to come clean and say that at the time I was buying the Daily Mail, not because of its politics but for their cryptic crosswords puzzle which was much easier than that of The Times newspaper. Besides, its tabloid format was much more convenient.

The rag also ran a free competition with two prizes of £2500 - one for men and one for women - that I entered many times without success.
What one had to do was to follow the financial market for three months and forecast which of the shares selected by the Mail made the highest profit.

On this occasion Madam Fortune smiled on us. Our combined share of the winning was over £1000, with my wife’s contribution being the bigger. Thus the reason for all the brouhaha.
The photographer snapping away reminded me of Tommy Steele’s song ‘Flash, Bang, Wallop’.
At the same time a reporter kept asking question that would enable her to write a ‘filler’ for the newspaper.

I was resigned to the fact that our ‘fame’ was transient and would soon be forgotten and was mightily surprised when months later I met the director of an ex-employer of mine and learned that the company was in financial trouble.

‘Got any tip for us?’ he asked and then added: ‘We could do with your acumen just now.’

© Luigi Pagano 2017