Ken was sitting there in his studio, sweating profusely. "What is it about this tin pot band and why do the audience like them so much?"
"Perhaps it's an expression of their discontent," proposed his engineer, with a wicked grin on his face, never for one minute supposing that his facetious suggestion might have contained more than a grain of truth.
“You really think so?” Retorted Ken, acidly.
"About what?” His engineer queried, absentmindedly.
"About this expression of discontent, of course.”
"Oh yeah, absolutely. You want to hear what your supposedly loyal listener's say behind your back."
"Like what?" He asked, not really wanting to know.
“Are you sure you really want to know?"
"Absolutely," said Ken boldly.
"You're not going to like this," cautioned Billy, as he lined up the next track.
"Go on then, hit me," Captain Birdseye prepared himself for a few potentially ugly revelations to come his way, fresh from the streets, courtesy of his unfortunately named cohort, Phillip 'Billy' Kidd.
"For starters, nobody says ‘hit me,’ any more. That's like saying 'Far Out, Man,' when something surprises you and to put it rather bluntly, nobody is surprised that much by anything these days."
Now he had the floor and after all these years of awkward silence, Billy wasn't going to relinquish this position without a fight, so he just mercilessly tore into Ken.
"Did you honestly think, that them up there," he nodded upwards, towards the offices, "would agree to a daft, oh so sixties, dumb ass 'Battle of the Bands', idea if they wanted you to succeed?"
Ken simply sat there, behind his console, looking incredibly crestfallen as Billy's sobering words sunk in, confirming his worst suspicions.
"I'd say that you've got today to replace The Fester's, with something that 'them up there'," he said nodding upwards in their direction once more, "can see as the light of God, leading this poxy radio station, to a bright and glittering future, or…..,”
Ken looked utterly crushed, as the blatantly obvious dawned on him.
"You mean," he stuttered and looked at Billy with a certain disbelief in his eyes.
“Yep, you've finally got it..... You are meant to blow it, or to put it another way, you're fucked all ways up."