‘Heart disease in women!’ she’s saying in her strident Belfast accent, but then Sally’s personal bugbear is any topic related to health, with particular reference to the general crappiness of the public health service down here in the Republic.
‘This new report shows that women are now thirty per cent more likely to have a heart attack than men!’ she half growled, waving a piece of paper threateningly the way she always does, no matter what the story. We’re just all well used to her round here by now.
‘I’m sure you all read it over the weekend?’
‘Oh yeah, right. Glued to it, I was,’ said Dermot flatly. ‘Made for an unforgettable Saturday night in. My, my, Sally, what an exciting life you must lead.’
‘And yet most women still remain more focused on their partner’s health than their own,’ Sally insisted, ignoring him, getting redder and hotter in the face and with a vein bulging out of her forehead that looks almost ready to replicate life. ‘This is the kind of story that a show like ours should be covering. Urgently!’
‘And we will, don’t you worry,’ said Aggie placatingly, but then she’d seen overheated performances like this countless times before and knew exactly how they should be handled. ‘It’s just that I’d like to kick-start the week with … let’s just say, something a little lighter, to hook in our listeners. So what else have we got, people?’
A chorus of ‘Well, Christmas is just a few weeks away, what about …?’ and ‘Oh no, I’ve a gem right here … straight from the National Enquirer!’ followed, with everyone battling for the star prize of Aggie’s attention. But none of the pitches really hooked her, so when there was a moment of calm she took a glug out of the Starbucks mug in front of her and said, ‘Holly? You’ve gone unusually quiet on me this morning. So come on, what have you brought to the table?’
Suddenly all eyes were focused my way and I was on.
I took a half a beat just to formulate my thoughts. And then decided, feck it, might as well go for it. After all, this was the sole thought that had utterly consumed me over the past week so why not make the most of it?
‘Well …’ I began tentatively, addressing the room.
‘Shoot,’ said Aggie, pen poised on the pad in front of her.
‘OK, so here’s what I was thinking,’ I said, eyeballing her directly. ‘Given that the stigma which used to be attached to Internet dating has now all but entirely worn off, how about we run a segment about …’
‘Oops! Can I just say something here?’ interrupted Maia, or as she’s known around here, Maia Mars Bars. Reason? Because as Dermot put it, ‘That one is just a bit too sweet to be wholesome.’ One of those women who’s just a degree too over-charming to your face, but then you’ll hear it on good authority that she’s been bitching about you behind your back to other people on the team. She’s done it so often, and to so many of us, that we’re all well wise to her by now.
‘I’m so sorry to interrupt you mid-flow, Holly,’ she smiled angelically across the boardroom table at me, all shiny chestnut hair that I’d swear she adjusts entirely in accordance with how Kate Middleton is wearing hers this weather. ‘But we’ve done it already. Internet dating, that is. We ran with it only last October, in fact. I remember it distinctly because it was actually me who pitched it. So sorry, Holly.’
‘If you’d just let me finish?’ I smiled sweetly back at her. ‘I was about to say that this wouldn’t just be about hooking up with someone online. It’s more than that. Given that anyone can now access these dating sites and get chatting, messaging or even taking things to the next level …’
‘The next level?’ Dermot teased. ‘Ha! You should try Grindr. Where there is no “next level”.’
Dermot, like myself you see, would be a great advocate for online dating. Except in his case, the sites he’d be on would be more like Gaydar, Hotmen and the like. Which, according to him, are all about sex and instant hook-ups rather than long-term relationships, and all the better for it. I gave him a pretend-y slap on the wrist, but kept on going anyway, undeterred.
‘… Well what if you do meet The One, but he lives on the other side of the world? What then? OK, so you’ve got Skype and email and you can Snapchat all you like, but my question is … how easy or difficult is it to sustain a long-distance relationship with someone who you’ve only ever met virtually? After all, this kind of thing is changing our whole dating scene quite dramatically and I’m certain there must be plenty of couples out there who’ve been in that position and yet who’ve made it work, in spite of everything.’
‘Hmm,’ Aggie nodded thoughtfully. ‘It’s certainly a new take on the whole dating thing, alright. Long-distance online relationships; pitfalls and advantages of. Go on,’ she said, eyeballing me beadily. ‘Keep talking.’
‘We could get callers on to chat about how they’ve built up a relationship, even though they’re divided by continents,’ I went on, encouraged that she hadn’t shut me down mid-flow. Not yet, at least. ‘Couples who say they met their soulmate online and refused to be put off by the fact that they lived in different countries. After all, if you’re going to limit the people you date online to just anyone who lives geographically close to you, then let’s face it, you’re fishing in a pretty shallow pool, aren’t you?’
‘You know what? That’s actually not a bad pitch,’ lovely Maggie from accounts with the Rebekah Brooks wild mane of hair chimed in from across the table. ‘Then we could maybe get people to phone in with stories of long-distance relationships which began online, but which didn’t necessarily run their course. In other words, we ask the question is it a case of absence makes the heart grow fonder, or out of sight, out of mind?’
‘It’s interesting alright,’ said Aggie, thoughtfully nodding away. ‘Plus I suppose we could always segue off to quiz listeners about how well they ever really get to know someone online. After all, you’ve nothing else to go on bar what the other person chooses to tell you about themselves. And vice versa, of course.’
‘Are you kidding me?’ I blurted out incredulously. ‘I think you can get a fantastic, three-dimensional picture of someone really clearly online! And take it from me, with a bit of practice, you soon learn to filter out the time-wasters from the genuine article.’
There was a divided chorus of ‘that’s complete rubbish!’ mixed along with a few more supportive, ‘yeah, I’d certainly go along with that,’ till Aggie raised her voice and suddenly there was total silence again.
‘Just out of curiosity,’ she asked, taking in the whole room. ‘How many of us round this table have actually met someone online who doesn’t live geographically close to you?’
All of us instantly shot our hands upwards. That is, all of us barring Maia, who just sat there smugly and muttered something about Hugo, her long-term boyfriend who she met back in college. (And who Dermot reckoned was secretly a cross-dresser. This based solely on the fact that he once caught him stepping out of Miss Fantasia’s. Chances were Dermot just invented the whole thing, as he frequently does, but still at the time, it was grade A office gossip.)
‘OK,’ said Aggie, taking all this in with the confidence of someone who’s been happily married with kids for the past fifteen years and therefore well and truly out of the dating pool. ‘So what are the rules these days? The dos and don’ts? Because now I’m thinking maybe we could segue from long-distance dating to the whole etiquette that lies behind online dating these days.’
‘Well, for starters, there’s your profile photo,’ said Jayne, our production assistant, shoving aside the dry rice cake she’d just been nibbling on, her usual mid-morning snack, while the rest of us were wolfing into bagels. But then, bless the poor girl, Jayne’d been on a diet for about as long as I’d been working here and had yet to lose as much as a single pound.