G: Chapter Seven

Four: In which the grand project is born


Late that night, alone in his flat, JP found himself
uncharacteristically pensive. For all his self-absorption, JP was at
core a kind individual and took his friendships very seriously. The
afternoon's conversation, and Simon's obvious discomfort at his and
Tyson's bawdy tales of sex in the city, bothered him. It pained him to
realise that Simon's romantic life was so unfulfilling, particularly
since as far as JP was concerned, the remedy was so obvious and so
easily obtainable.


But was it?


JP found himself questioning what had been up until now a
cornerstone of his world view: that sex and the company and affection
of beautiful women, were a basic human entitlement, an inalienable
right of any healthy, solvent, modern man. But that view, was failing
to explain a man like Simon: charming, kind, employed, hygienic and
with completely adequate amounts of designer clothing and cooking but
so chronically single that he hadn't had a girlfriend for nine years?
And why was he only noticing it now - and here. Was this a London
specific problem? It certainly didn't seem to happen much in LA At
least not to anybody JP knew in LA.


It didn't seem right. It didn't seem fair. The question was:
what could JP do about it?


Never one to choose thought over action, JP decided he would
research the problem. He retrieved his lap-top from the slim leather
case in which it normally resided all weekend, and plugged it in. The
ubiquitous Google home-page flashed into life. JP hesitated, in the
dark, his face illuminated by the screen's light: a modern petitioner
before a modern Oracle: the issue is the same now as it was in
mythology: how to best phrase the question so as to increase the
likelihood of a meaningful and intelligible answer? For a long moment,
JP's fingers hovered uncertainly about the keyboard, as his mind
organised the issues, then in a fluid motion he typed the following
five words:
English Men Dating Why Bad Celebrity


The first four search terms were obvious enough. The addition
of "Celebrity" was just a whim - JP, because he was a star-fucker,
generally felt that Celebrity helped most situations. Clicking out of
the search field, he noted that Google, unlike most web search engines,
offers its users a choice between not one but two search procedures.
The first, "Google Search", is the typical search mechanism which will
pull up a range of more or less likely results, ranked by algorithm
determined relevance, about which the user can read brief descriptions
and thus exercise his own judgement. But Google also offers a second
option, the so-called "I feel lucky" search button, which skips the
interim step of human judgement and jumps you straight to the page that
Google has, in its automated wisdom, decided holds the answer to your
question.


Because feeling lucky was more or less JP's default state, he
hit that option. The Google Oracle thought for approximately two
milliseconds and pushed up an article about the incidence of Herpes
amongst British actors. This did not seem very lucky to JP, so he
back-paged and tried again. The Google's second suggestion was a piece
from the Telegraph. At first this source seemed equally unpromising to
JP: British newspapers being firmly stratified by the entrenched views
of their readership, the right leaning "Torygraph" was not where he
would expect to find interesting social insight. Scanning the headline
he found that the piece was an interview with Gwyneth Paltrow. A great
admirer of Ms. Paltrow (an actress who by common consent has the best
neck in modern cinema), JP's interest was piqued. He read the first few
paragraphs and suddenly a quotation jumped out at him:


""British people don't seem to ask each other out on dates?.
If someone asks you out, they're really going out on a limb, whereas in
America it happens all the time?. Someone will come up to you and ask
you for dinner and you'll say 'sure'. It's no big deal and no weight
should be attached to it. It's only dinner, for God's sake?.. Yet in
Britain, mostly what happens seems to be that people meet at work. If
there's a little something there, then they hang out together and, all
of a sudden, they're boyfriend and girlfriend."


There is a type of realisation which is generally described
as a Eureka! moment, when something that has been obscure becomes
blindingly obvious. Sometimes these moments arrive through long and
hard introspection and research. Other times the insight arrives simply
by an original restatement of the problem. More rarely, the universe
simply cracks open, and a blond celebrity walks through and hands you
the answer on a plate, a plate wrapped in overly loquacious,
pseudo-articulate west coast syntax, to be sure, but nevertheless, on a
plate. JP was having a very rare blond-celebrity eureka
moments.


He made himself a Parma ham sandwich, opened a bottle of wine
and settled down. Time passed, wine was consumed, web pages read, and
notes made late into the night.


*


The next morning, shortly before 10, he called Simon at work:
"Simon - I need to talk to you about dating";


"JP, I know you mean well, but honestly, I thought we covered
all this yesterday - it's just not my thing. And honestly, this isn't
the best time to discuss it anyway; I'm at work - as I imagine are
you."


JP was immediately exasperated: "No, no. You don't get it.
I'm trying to have a professional conversation with
you."


"Professional in what sense? Are you offering to pimp for me?
Because I'm not paying for it, if that's what you mean"


"Simon will you shut up and listen to me for a second. I'm
trying to pitch you an idea".


"A book idea?" Simon had been suggesting JP write a factual
account of the British Film Industry for a while now, an idea that JP
hadn't responded to with much enthusiasm, so this turn in the
conversation caught his interest.


"Yes, obviously a book idea, now listen. It's a book about
dating. About why it's a good thing, and why Londoner's are so bad at
it, and what they need to do to make themselves better. It's going to
be funny and insightful and useful all at the same time, and its going
to be aimed squarely at new London-man like you who haven't had a woman
for far too long and are ready to try anything; and also at the women
who are so fed up at their men being crap, and want to try and
encourage them to get the first clue. It's going to have lots of real
examples, advice and analysis, all tied together with loads of edge,
charm and ironic tone. Its Sex in the City meets The Idiot's Guide to
Romance. And I'm going to write it" JP paused for breath. Simon paused
to think, taken quite of guard by this idea. JP's pause was shorter:
"Well - what do you think?"


Simon's pause continued. The professional in him immediately
saw the potential in JP's elevator pitch. The chick-self-help market
was huge, with every month seeing a new best-seller advising women over
30 how to hook a husband; publishers had long suspected that there was
a correspondingly large well-spring in male-help, but so far it was
served exclusively by GQ and Nick Hornby novels.


That was Simon's opinion as a publisher. Simon's opinion as
the frustrated best friend of a compulsive womaniser was somewhat
different. He saw exactly what this project would do to JP and how
thoroughly unbearable he would become if the book sold well and his
already self-satisfied friend became recognised as a universal
authority on dating. As the professional and personal Simon's wrestled,
he stalled for time: "What's it called? - you'll need a
title".


JP was ready for this. No one appreciates the importance of a
good title more than a movie exec, and he had spent a good hour of last
night going through different possibilities. JP &;amp; Tyson's Guide
to Getting Laid in London had been unsurprisingly discarded early on.
How to Get Sex in the City whilst benefiting from brand association
wouldn't make it past the lawyers for that very reason, and would in
any case alienate the female market; Love in London was too soppy and
chick-lit. It was two a.m. before he got it, another mini-Eureka
moment: "It's called The Londoner's Practical Guide to Dating. So what
do you think?".


It was the death blow for Simon's personal reservations. He
was too good at his job not to recognise the immediate saleability of
JP's pitch. "I think it's good. Or at least I think it it could be
good, if you can execute on it. It will be a great stocking-filler, and
if it's well written perhaps even more than that. I'll need more than
the elevator treatment to get internal buy-in though. If you are
serious about this I'll need a 10 page document - pr?cis, market pitch,
chapter headings, style and tone etc. You sure that you're up for doing
that?"


"I've already started it. You'll have it in two weeks. Thanks
Simes. This is going to be great"


And so it began.