He slowly lifted the loaded Smith and Wesson to his temple….., hesitated, lowered the gun and shot the telly instead, imploding the screen on which the she-Jack bounced from car to car into a supermarket with Justin, somehow saving the world.

Bits of screen scattered around the room. The handsome yet portly writer sighed, put down the S&W, shrugged into his coat, and went out to wander around and admire the pristine pastoral picturesqueness of his village in the evening. When one lives in Founex, the rest is really just noise…

In a Marylebone townhouse, Madge, a faded pop singer, woke early – just before noon. She walked the hundred yards across her bedroom to the gilt and onyx bathroom, stopping half-a-dozen times to air kick box and punch. In front of the full-length mirror she stood naked caressing and admiring her body. It was exactly as she always hoped it would be at 50, Jack Palance with tits.

Somewhere in a Wiltshire manor, Guy, Madge’s ex and B movie director, had spent a restless night eating cold toad-in-the-hole and drinking a bottle of single malt. He wanted to put the past behind him, forget the weird wife and colourful kids and concentrate on a new blockbuster B movie about London gang life. How many possibilities were there for a screenplay in which Vinnie Jones slams a villain’s head in the car door or Ray Winstone kicks four men in the testicles?

In the pretty village of Founex, a handsome but portly writer and social observer struggled to comprehend why two jejune and obsequious people a thousand miles away should be taking up so much of his time and media space. He slowly lifted the loaded Smith and Wesson to his temple…..