One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night by Christopher Brookmyre Read Free Book Online

pulled back the zipper and had a quick check of the contents, like there might be two identical, unlabelled and empty‐
looking black leather sports bags coming off the same flight. Neglecting to label his minimalist luggage‐
item was another historical habit, especially flying into Glasgow, ever since some baggage‐
handler had evidently recognised his name on the tag and shat inside it. His just‐
ever‐
so‐
slightly controversial sitcom pilot had gone out the week before that on Channel 4, and presumably the bloke had considered the jobbie more direct than going on
Right to Reply
. Matt had to admit, right enough, the show got worse reviews than that.
    Plook made his move as Matt headed for the car‐
hire desk.
    ‘’Scuse me, any chance of an autograph?’
    He stopped, caught off guard, staring at the guy like he had addressed him in Mandarin, feeling for a second like he’d no idea how to respond. ‘Eh, sure,’ he eventually said, sounding anything but as he patted his pockets for a pen. There was reciprocal confusion on the adolescent’s face, turning to embarrassment as it became evident that the kid had nothing to write on. That was when Matt remembered: there wasn’t supposed to be anything to write on, because an autograph was the last thing Plook was expecting. He was expecting to be told, ‘Get tae fuck’, then he could run off and impress all his pals in the student union bar, if they believed him.
    ‘Hey, Matt Black, can I have your autograph?’ – ‘Get tae fuck.’
    He couldn’t remember quite when it had gone from attitude to standing joke, but ultimately it had reached the stage where it was so much expected that any other response would have been impolite.
    Matt Black: darkest, sharpest, cruellest, scariest stand‐
up comic Britain ever spawned.
    Aye, right. Very good.
    Even his name now sounded like a fucking caricature: Matt Black, the cartoon comedian. Chalk another one up to Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time. The excuse that it really
was
his name didn’t score more than sympathy, because it was still his choice to use it: in fact, if he had actually made it up, it might at least seem half ironic. He’d saddled himself with it early on, when he first started trying his hand at open‐
mike nights. The moral of the story was that if you’re trying to make a name for yourself, you ought to think more carefully about what that name’s going to be, because pretty soon you’ll be stuck with it. Once there’d been a bit of press and he was being offered proper slots, no‐
one was going to book him under any other handle: they wanted the guy people were starting to talk about.
    It all fitted together back then, anyway. The energy, the ferocity, the edge he had in those days – you couldn’t do that stuff, you couldn’t say those things and be called anything
but
Matt Black; same as you couldn’t call yourself Matt Black without doing that stuff, saying those things. It was dark as hell, vicious, vengeful, reckless, and too excessive to be taken as anything other than wild, scary fun. The material had to live up to the name, the name had to live up to the material, and the fact that both were over‐
the‐
top was crucial.
    The symbiosis should, in fact, have been bomb‐
proof, career wise. You get up there, you be the bad guy who says the wrong thing: half the audience laughs because they don’t believe you mean it, while the other half laughs because they’ve thought it themselves and they sincerely believe you do. Half the crowd thinks you’re laughing at your subject, the other half that you’re laughing at yourself. And all of them are right. And all of them love you.
    Yeah, the symbiosis was bomb‐
proof, but only as long as both halves stayed intact. Which meant, as he critically failed to anticipate, that you couldn’t get on a stage and be the scary bad guy after the audience had seen you taking it up the arse on US network television. According to the credits