Series 2, Episode 5: The Bublé Ultimatum
‘It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas,’ said Keanu McPherson.
The men of the Millport barbershop were standing at the window, first cup of coffee and a morning pastry in hand. So far there’d been no customers, and few were expected this Christmas Eve.
Barney Thomson, crack, barbershop über-genius, looked out upon the world. The deserted shore road along the front at Millport, the gull-inhabited white promenade wall, the sea beyond, grey and agitated, spoiling for a storm, the rocks and the Eileans, the few boats buoyed this side of those small islands, the sea stretching away to the ugly, dull blocks of Hunterston B on the mainland, the island of Little Cumbrae to their left, and straight ahead, the line of the horizon, and the passage to the south and the Malay Archipelago.
‘It doesn’t matter how many times you say it, son,’ said Barney, ‘it won’t make it happen.’
There was Christmas music playing in the shop, but Barney wasn’t a fan of the modern Christmas song, having heard – like everyone else – I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day, Last Christmas and All I Want For Christmas eight million times too many for one lifetime. He could stomach Bing and Frank and all those fellows, so they were his compromise, but for the most part, he preferred classical interpretations of the old recognisable Christmas tunes, alongside other classical pieces which affected to be winter-based, but which could really have been anything. Seriously, if Bach’s Christmas Oratorio had been called Bach’s Genocide & Pancakes Oratorio, would anyone have been able to tell the difference? It’s just a bunch of people singing, and, magnificent though it may be, it’s not like you can make out a word of it.
‘Well, you know,’ said Keanu, ‘there’s a chill in the air, there’s expectation, there’s stuff on the tele. We can pull this off.’
‘Arf,’ said Igor, legendary deaf, mute hunchbacked barbershop sidekick, a man still wanted for crimes he didn’t commit in seven eastern European countries.
‘Aye,’ said Barney. ‘It’d be a tough ask any year, given the weather’s just grey and bleak, and those magical wintry Christmases are a thing of the past, but this year, we’re screwed. The dream is over.’ He popped the last of his chocolate croissant into his mouth and squeezed Keanu’s shoulder. ‘Next year perhaps we could all plan to go somewhere for Christmas. Assuming this madness is over by then, and obviously when politicians say things like everything’ll be getting back to normal by the summer, one automatically assumes we’re screwed until the end of the decade. But, we’ll see. All being well, we could have a work trip somewhere, take along the sergeant and Garrett and Sophia.’
‘Arf!’ said Igor.
‘Somewhere magical and cold?’ asked Keanu, taking a sip of coffee, before eating the last of a pecan cinnamon nutmeg spiced cloved Tom-and-Jerry-Christmas-episode Danish.
‘If such a place still exists in the northern hemisphere.’
‘Nice. It’s currently minus-27 in Resolute in northern Canada,’ said Keanu. ‘That could be a goer.’
‘I don’t know that place,’ said Barney. ‘Is it magical, with Christmas markets, an old town square, a three-hundred-year-old church and the peel of a bell on Christmas Eve?’ A beat, then he added, ‘And is there a five-star hotel?’
Keanu fished his phone from his pocket, tapped the screen, took a moment, then passed it to the others so they could see pictures of Resolute.
‘Oh,’ said Barney.
‘Seen worse,’ said Igor, though it came out as arf.
‘Cold, at least,’ said Keanu, looking at the pictures of what looked like a remote, desolate army base.
‘Let’s park it for the moment,’ said Barney. ‘Maybe there’ll be somewhere in Norway or Finland.’ Another pause, and then he added, ‘If the Russians haven’t invaded,’ and Igor nodded, and Keanu slipped the phone back into his pocket, and the day continued outside, Christmas Eve, grey and cold, all hope lost beneath a low cover of cloud.
* * *
Late morning, and Old Man McGuire was in for his pre-Christmas cut. He’d had his hair cut so often in the past year his head had evolved to meet the challenge, and now his hair, in a mutation new to science, was growing at a rate of a quarter of an inch a day.
In order to combat the familiar weight of disgruntlement from McGuire, Barney had allowed Keanu to put on some of the old 50s warbler Christmas tunes, and the shop was currently relaxing to the sound of Dean Martin crooning his way through classic yuletide, date-rape creepfest Baby It’s Cold Outside, Mind If I Wear Your Skin.
Keanu was giving McGuire his weekly Disconnected Caesar Undercut, Igor was sweeping up at the back, quietly humming along with the tune he couldn’t hear, and Barney was sitting on the customers’ bench, disinterestedly looking through the days’ newspapers. He’d passed on the Times, with its headline, Trump Threatens to Nuke D.C. As Coup Attempt Gathers Momentum; the Independent, Turns Out Farage Is Still A Cunt; the Guardian, New Covid Strain Bullshit Backfires As Rest Of World Tells UK To Fuck Off; the Express, Truss Announces ‘Extraordinary’ New Trade Deal With North Korea Worth £27.34; the Telegraph, Brilliant Boris Blueprint To Save NHS By Wiping Out Over-60s On Track; the Sun, Tory MP’s Covid Babe Caught In Sex Toy Cure Scam; and the National, with its front page scoop, Salmond Returns With New Nude Centrefold Charm Offensive, choosing instead to read the Mail, Time For D-Day 2, As ERG Persuades Boris To Declare War.
‘So, what have you got for us?’ asked McGuire, looking suspiciously at Keanu in the mirror, with his perpetually raised eyebrow.
Keanu, as ever, smiled in response.
‘How’d you mean, Mr McGuire?’
‘It’s Christmas,’ said McGuire.
‘Yep. Magical, isn’t it?’
‘Naw. So, what have you got?’
‘Not sure what you mean, Mr McGuire.’
‘You’re always talking about this set-up of yours, how it’s like a sitcom.’
‘It is.’
‘So, those shows, they always have Christmas episodes, where, you know, Christmas shite happens, and at the end of it people go away feeling all, you know, Christmassy and whatnot. So, what have you got?’
Barney smiled as he laid down the paper – silently vowing to himself to never again, in his life, lift a copy of the Daily Mail – looked at Igor, made the international sign of the cup of tea, Igor perked up like Scooby Doo, and then he walked through to the backroom to stick the kettle on and get the doughnuts lined up on the plate.
‘We’ve got Christmas music on,’ said Keanu.
‘Ach, they’ve got Christmas music playing at the crematorium, son, that doesn’t mean shite. What your audience is looking for is, fuck, I don’t know, an angel, or a benevolent ghost, or some cute yuletide storyline or other.’
‘It’s just not that kind of sitcom,’ said Barney, leaning on the doorway at the back.
McGuire’s eyes narrowed, looking harshly at Barney in the mirror.
‘What kind of sitcom is it, then? There’s certainly no comedy in it.’
‘Seems to be just three guys in a shop talking about stuff,’ said Barney. ‘If something actually happened, it’d change the nature of the show.’
‘But there’s no depth, son,’ said McGuire. ‘Youse’re so shallow, you might as well not be saying anything. Look around you. Look at Scotland, the real thing. You see they drug death figures from last week? What about that? What about independence and the coming war with England? How about crucial questions on what Scotland’s future currency’s going to be?’
He looked from Barney to Keanu and back. Behind Barney, the comforting rumble of the kettle.
‘Thought they’d settled on the groat,’ said Barney.
‘Aye, and if we do that, we’ll be speculated upon, cleaned out and bankrupted before lunch,’ said McGuire, taking him seriously.
‘Frank,’ said Barney, ‘like you said, we’re a sitcom. We don’t do drug deaths. We might do independence, we might not, but really, I’m through with talking about politics. I hate it all. You want to talk about that stuff, go to the pub, where you can be in an episode of River City. Cup of tea and a doughnut?’
‘Doughnut?’ said Keanu and Igor.
Truth be told, Barney had never watched River City, and had no idea if they ever talked about politics.
McGuire squinted into the dull light of late morning.
‘What flavours have you got?’
‘Just the one. Special Christmas flavour, made with the distilled essence of Frank Sinatra.’
‘Aye, all right,’ said McGuire, unhappily. A moment, or two, then he remembered his manners, and muttered, ‘Thanks, son.’
‘Four doughnuts and four cups of tea it is,’ said Barney, retreating into the back of the shop.
And so it was, through the medium of fried dough confection, Barney was able to bring Old Man McGuire the little piece of Christmas magic he was looking for.
* * *
There was a bit of last-minute, Christmas eve bustle about the shop. Barney was giving Old Man Carpenter a Top Of The World cut, Keanu was giving young Hickenlooper a Hatless Corbyn, Igor was sweeping up, and the tink-tink-tinkling of sleigh bells was a-tinkling through the shop, via a classic selection of Frank Sinatra Christmas tunes.
There’s a happy feeling nothing in the world can buy, when they’re passing round the covid and you’re going to die…
‘That’s the dichotomy at the heart of any artist wishing to release a new Christmas album,’ said Hickenlooper, finding a willing accomplice in Keanu when looking for a chat about festive tunes. ‘The old tunes are so well-known, that even if you go eleven months without listening to them, even if you managed the impossible and only listened to them for a week before Christmas, they have an over-familiarity. It’s unavoidable. So, what you’re looking for is something new. But then, it’s very difficult to produce a new Christmas song that immediately invokes the same kind of emotional, festive response as the old classics.’
‘True,’ said Keanu. ‘Just because you mention Christmas in a song, it doesn’t make it automatically festive. And most modern yuletide classics only invoke Christmas because you hear them every year over a period of time. It’s tough to create a new classic.’
‘Doesn’t really happen until a few other people have recorded the song.’
‘Even Mariah Carey took a while, wasn’t an overnighter.’
Hickenlooper nodded, and Keanu quickly lifted the scissors away from his head in order to save a life-threatening ear injury.
‘Hate that shite,’ muttered Old Man Carpenter from beneath Barney’s scissors.
‘Bit harsh,’ said Keanu, while Hickenlooper gave Carpenter a side-eye.
‘I just want you for my own, she says,’ said Carpenter. ‘Really? That’s some weird, fucked-up, possessive psycho bullshit, by the way. That’s serial killer stuff. No wonder the guy’s not going anywhere near her, smart bastard’s on the other side of the planet.’
‘Come on, Mr Carpenter,’ said Keanu, ‘she’s just looking for a hug.’
‘She wants to lock him in the basement, and if she can’t have him for herself, she’ll turn him into soup.’
Barney smiled, and from the back of the shop they could hear the quiet, comforting sound of Igor sniggering.
‘I’ll Be Home For Christmas,’ said Carpenter, rising to his theme, ‘serial killer on death row, threatening to come back from the dead and kill his abused wife on Christmas Eve. And Santa Clause sees you when you’re sleeping? Does he, now? I mean, that’s not even fucking code, by the way. And see they carols… Lo! He abhors not the virgin’s womb? Seriously, what the fuck is even happening in that sentence? Ditto veiled in flesh the godhead see. That’s just fucking minging, by the way.’
‘So, what you’re looking for,’ said Hickenlooper, deciding to retake control of the conversation by more or less ignoring Old Man Carpenter, ‘is a song that borrows from themes of previous numbers, using familiar chord structures and arrangements. That’s kind of what the Mariah Carey does, and yon Leona Lewis did it with One More Sleep, but as we’ve established with our extensive examination of the documented facts here this morning, it still takes a while for a Christmas song to become part of the collective consciousness.’
‘Leona Lewis?’ chimed in Carpenter, ‘wrote a Christmas song? As well as winning that Olympic gold medal in heptathlon. Some fucking woman, eh? You got her phone number?’
‘That was Denise Lewis,’ said Keanu.
‘He said her name was Leona.’
‘That’s who wrote the Christmas song. Denise was the Olympic athlete.’
‘What?’ snarked Carpenter. ‘The fuck she change her name for?’
‘She didn’t change her name, it’s two different women.’
‘Who are?’
‘Denise and Leona Lewis.’
‘It’s not the same person?’
‘No!’
‘Wait, they’re not one of they lesbian couples are they?’ said Carpenter, and he stared harshly at them in the mirror for a moment, before allowing his face to relax and adding, ‘I mean, I’m a new man, ‘n’ a’ that, these ladies can do what they like, don’t get me wrong.’
‘They’re not a couple, Mr Carpenter,’ said Keanu, smiling.
‘So, what, they are the same person, then? That’s what I was saying. Talented girl.’
‘And we’re done,’ said Barney, giving a final flourish of the scissors, then taking a step back.
‘What the…?’ said Carpenter, not expecting the cut to be over so quickly, and not realising, through his agitated discussion, that Barney had been executing one of his legendary Two-Minute Exceptionals, where he’d have the customer dispatched as quickly as possible, with the finest head of hair in the land.
A moment’s consideration, however, and Old Man Carpenter began nodding, a grudging look of respect on his face.
‘I suppose it’s not shite,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to change my profile picture online, see if I can get hold of the Lewis girl. Might be in with a chance.’
* * *
‘So, my dad gave us the Santa-doesn’t-actually-exist chat, when I was three…’
‘Ooft,’ said DS Monk.
‘I know, right,’ said Sophia. ‘Anyway, he wasn’t holding back. He did Santa, and then boom, he moved on to Jesus. All that stuff about the nativity, he said, none of it’s true. Sure, he existed, he was a guy who was around at the time and he did things, but virgin birth? Son of God? Forget about it.’
‘Hard to argue,’ said Keanu, and Sophia nodded phlegmatically.
End of the day, the Closed sign up, the shop shut for the holidays. The men of the Millport barbershop had been joined by the wives and girlfriends – the hairdresser, the detective and the lawyer – and they were all sitting around the shop, appropriately spaced out, drinking mulled cider and chewing the festive fat, while the Bublé Christmas album played in the background.
‘And I said, what about the three wise men, and he said, well, the Bible doesn’t actually say how many wise men there were, it just mentions three gifts, and I said, so there could’ve been five thousand wise men, and dad said, there haven’t been five thousand wise men in the history of the world never mind in the Middle East at that singular point in time, and then he said it was made up anyway, so in fact, there weren’t any wise men, because when Jesus was born, he was just another kid like everybody else, and there were no angels and no shepherds and no star. And then, I think mum was having a go at him, but I don’t really remember, I guess he started joking and said that Bing Crosby didn’t really exist either. Trouble being, I was, as I said, three.’
‘Uh-oh,’ said Barney.
‘Exactly. I believed him. And, of course, Dad died not long after that, and I’ve always idolized him, and kind of hung on to the little I can remember about him, this being one of the few things. He said Bing Crosby was this mythical troubadour figure, played by various people through time. So when you heard a Bing Crosby song, it was just someone playing the part of Bing Crosby, the way people play the part of Santa, and that no one ever really knew who the different Crosby’s were. As long as they could do that low crooner thing, they’d get the job.’
‘When did you find out the truth?’ asked Garrett Carmichael, town lawyer, and the person for whom Igor swept up at home.
Sophia looked at Keanu, they shared a rueful smile, then she turned back to Carmichael.
‘Last night.’
There was a moment while everyone drank mulled cider. It was decent mulled cider, by the way, and since the town was small and no one had to drive home, they’d all be having a second glass.
‘Until last night, you thought Bing Crosby didn’t exist?’
‘My dad said. You believe your dad when you’re a kid. And he wasn’t wrong about Santa and Jesus.’
‘What happened last night?’ asked Igor, and even though it came out as ‘Arf?’ everyone understood the question.
‘We were watching a movie called High Society on iPlayer, and I said to Keanu, who’s that playing the geezer who’s way too old for the gorgeous socialite lady, and he says Bing Crosby, and I’m like, yeah, but who’s playing Bing Crosby, and he’s like, no one’s playing Bing Crosby, that’s Bing Crosby playing a guy, I forget his name…’
‘C.K. Dexter-Haven,’ chipped in Monk, who loved High Society.
‘Yep, that’s the guy, and I’m like, no, you don’t understand, who’s the actual dude who’s Bing Crosby, because you don’t usually see Bing Crosby, he’s always just a voice on a Christmas album, and Keanu’s looking at me like, what the fuck, and it took an hour or two, but we got there finally, then I end up spending like another two hours on the internet reading about the actual Bing Crosby, who really did exist by the way, and had seven children, I could tell you all about him, and so I’ve been on a bit of a journey. Have to admit I had to check out Santa and Jesus just to make sure, but it turns out dad wasn’t making that up.’
‘You have a lot of movies to catch up on,’ said Barney, ‘if you like that kind of thing.’
‘Think they might all be a bit old for me,’ said Sophia. ‘I mean, that was some serious fucked-up sexist shit in the movie, by the way.’
‘Yeah,’ said Monk, nodding. ‘You kind of have to get past that, and just enjoy the songs, and looking at Grace Kelly.’
Sophia let out a low whistle. ‘Wow. Beautiful. Couldn’t act for biscuits, but beautiful. What happened to her?’
‘Tell you later,’ said Keanu.
‘I like Road To Morocco,’ said Barney, ‘though it may not be considered one of his best.’
‘We’ll check it out, boss,’ said Keanu, and there was a nod around the room, accompanied by the contemplative drinking of mulled cider, as the collective acknowledged the discussion on Bing Crosby, real or otherwise, had gone as far as it could.
Bublé had moved on to his innovative post-punk version of I Saw Three Ships, and the feeling in the shop was pretty much as acceptable a feeling as one was going to get in these times, when the country was standing at the precipice, waiting to take the blind jump.
‘We need a new Bublé Christmas album,’ said Carmichael, indicating the air with a general wave of the hand. ‘Disappointed he didn’t pull one out of the bag this year to cheer everyone up. I mean, those old guys like Sinatra and the actual Bing Crosby,’ and she smiled at Sophia, ‘and Dean Martin, they’d be bringing Christmas albums out every other year. Bublé’s is the gold standard of this century, but we’ve all heard it a billion times. We need a new one.’
‘Didn’t he do all the Christmas songs last time?’ asked Keanu. ‘As we established previously in the episode, though you missed it, there’s a careful balance to be struck when creating new Christmas material.’
‘There are tonnes he didn’t do,’ said Carmichael. ‘Hark the Herald, Sleigh Ride, Here Comes Santa, Must Be Santa, the one about New Year’s Eve, Little Drummer Boy, Christmas Island, you know. Masses. Plus, he could do versions of newer songs which have either already made it into the lexicon of the season or which he could help establish as new festive classics. Plus, he could do a different version or two of songs he previously did.’ She looked around the room, pleased to see her bold assertion of Bublé’s future recording career was gaining general approval. ‘Lots of potential. Am I right?’
‘You are,’ said Monk. ‘Can’t believe he hasn’t done it already.’
‘Someone should start a petition. I mean, let’s face it, next year is liable to be even shitter than this year, and we’re all going to need a new Bublé festive album by December.’
‘I’m all in,’ said Monk. ‘Let’s work on it in the new year.’
‘Maybe we’ll sue him.’
‘You are a lawyer.’
‘One of those benevolent lawsuits, we don’t want him piss him off.’
‘Yep,’ said Monk, raising her glass. ‘And maybe I’ll benevolently charge him with a crime in international court.’
‘I see a plan coming together,’ said Carmichael. ‘By this means we can start to think about next year in a more positive light.’
‘Anyway,’ said Barney, finishing off his drink, and heading to the back of the shop to get the pan, in order to top everyone up, ‘we’re getting way ahead of ourselves. It’s only Christmas Eve. There are still eight more days for 2020 to get catastrophically worse. And let’s face it, the way it’s going…’
Keanu looked at Monk.
‘Can’t you do something about him?’ and Monk smiled, shrugged, and said, ‘On this occasion, he’s not wrong…’
Barney returned with the pot of steaming mulled cider and began ladling a second helping into everybody’s mug. The smell of hot apples and spices filled the air, Michael Bublé’s first Christmas album of the forthcoming trilogy played on, and outside, as they all turned and looked out at the dark of evening, the snow had just begun to fall.
They watched for a moment, as the magic of Christmas took them, allowing them a fleeting escape from the shitshow of the worst festive season since the third century BC.
‘Merry Christmas, everyone,’ said Keanu, raising his glass.
They shared the look and the sentiment, they lifted their glasses to the room, and they drank in the snowy, spiced, warm contentment of early evening, Christmas Eve.
‘Merry Christmas!’
‘Merry Christmas!’
‘Merry Christmas!’
‘Merry Christmas!’
‘Arf!’
