The large-breasted Polish student had got into a terribly amusing mix-up with the Pakistani bus driver over a postcard featuring an extraneous 'i' in the word "pens".

Of course, Sybil liked this sitcom nonsense. Basil looked on it as evidence that they now had three TV channels that would insult the intelligence of a stoned sloth, instead of two.

He suppressed an urge to throw Sybil's bottle of gin at the screen and slumped back into the armchair.

The papers he had deliberately ignored for two weeks were crouching malevolently on the table again.

Sybil must have retrieved them from where he had cunningly filed them, under the remains of the fondue party she had held for the harpies from her Women's Wellness Workshop.

He scratched a dribble of melted cheese off them. Might as well read them or she'd just keep leaving copies in his way.

Sybil was in her bedroom, on the phone to Janet. Their last bill had been the size of the Brazilian national debt. He'd said they couldn't afford it now but you'd more likely get the Osmonds to demonstrate positions from The Joy of Sex than get Sybil off the phone.

"No, nothing yet," she said. "He says non-executive roles are beneath his dignity."

"And so they are," he muttered. He'd been going places until those Japanese bastards had thrown him on the scrapheap.

"I was firm with him, I said 'Basil, dignity is a luxury we can't afford'."

He snorted and climbed the stairs.

The business projections said the hotel was a good proposition. It might take his redundancy money and the proceeds of selling the house, but they could afford to buy it. And Torquay had class.

"Of course I did!" she exclaimed. "I think the hotel's a marvellous plan. He's got plenty of ideas when he applies himself. And he'd be his own boss..."

My own boss, Basil thought longingly.

Reviewers would call his hotel "the jewel of the Cornish Riviera". Pretty soon he would have a chain. Fawltys. When the Sunday Times interviewed Britain's newest hotel magnate, he would say: "I am a self-made man."

Basil leaned against the door jamb, waiting to talk to her. He would sign the papers. As his little barracuda scoffed a chocolate, he felt stirrings of the long-lost glow he had once called happiness.

"... and I could stop his silly tricks." Sybil honked with laughter. "It's his own fault no one wants to employ him. Honestly, if women had sperm, we wouldn't need men at all. Not that Basil's much help in the sperm department lately."

"Could you possibly speak a little louder?" Basil snapped. "There are nomadic yak herders on the Mongolian steppes who didn't quite catch that."

Her stare was shrivelling. "Don't *loiter*, Basil."

"No, dear." He retreated to his bedroom. The hotel looked pretty in the photographs: Fernside Towers.

Of course, the name would have to go.