‘Shall I take them in afternoon tea?’ said poor fat Sharon, who still cherished a long-range crush on Rupert.

‘No,’ snapped Valerie. ‘You haven’t done your religious study yet. Miss Fidduck said at least an hour a day; nor have you groomed Merrylegs. What is the point of your father buying you an event horse?’

As Sharon waddled upstairs, Valerie could bear it no longer.

‘Afternoon tea,’ she announced ten minutes later, barging into Freddie’s den with a tray.

Declan was striding up and down the room scattering cigarette ash. Freddie was whizzing round excitedly in his revolving chair. Rupert lounged on the sofa, playing with one of Freddie’s executive games, which involved clashing huge ball-bearings against each other. All three of them looked up with ill-concealed irritation.

‘What a fug,’ said Valerie, dumping down the tray and throwing open the window, so all Freddie’s papers blew around.

‘I don’t know how you can stay inside. I hope you won’t be long, Fred-Fred. We’re due at Sir Arthur’s for cocktails at six-thirty and you promised to walk round the grounds with me beforehand.’

She turned to Rupert and Declan: ‘We’re opening Green Lawns to the public in July. All proceeds to the NSPCC. I’m surprised you’re not opening Penscombe Court this year, Rupert,’ she added, raising her voice to cover the increasing clash of ball-bearings.

‘You can hardly expect the public to look at a lot of weeds,’ said Rupert.

‘But you’ve got buckets of time to get it shipshape. It seems so selfish not to raise the money if you can.’ Valerie gave her little laugh.

‘I’m sure the NSPCC would prefer a cheque,’ said Rupert evenly.

‘I don’t expect Maud’ll be interested in opening your garden,’ went on Valerie, turning to Declan. ‘I’ve just read all about your exploits in the Sunday Express. Tony Baddingham is quoted as saying one of the reasons you left Corinium was because you couldn’t face being knocked out by “Dallas”.’

As Freddie gently shooed her out, Rupert and Declan both reflected that not throttling Valerie before December would be infinitely harder than winning the franchise.

The next five weeks were frantic. Many of the bidders for franchises in other territories had spent several years perfecting their applications, raising the cash, and getting their boards together. To speed up the operation, Freddie, Declan and Rupert divided the role of recruiting officer between them.

‘There’s no point enlisting people who won’t contribute anything,’ said Declan. ‘We mustn’t confuse celebrity with attainment, and they must live in the area. Once we land a really big fish, the rest will follow.’

Hubert Brenton, Bishop of Cotchester, whom luckily Declan hadn’t bitched up during his New Year’s Eve interview and who was currently furious with Tony for deciding to televise Easter Communion at Gloucester Cathedral rather then Cotchester, was the first to be signed up. Declan invited him to lunch at The Priory the following week, and, as it was Lent and a Friday, Taggie cooked the most succulent Coquille St Jacques, followed by sole Veronique. Maud, with a cross round her neck and her titian hair drawn back in a bun, gravely asked the Bishop to say Grace, and pointed out the beautiful spring flowers in the centre of the table, which her children had sent her for Mothering Sunday.

Rupert, who, as part of his getting-fit-for-Cameron-Cook campaign, was off the booze, provided the most exquisite white wine. Caitlin, who, unlike poor Sharon Jones, had passed her religious studies O-level, was able to converse with the Bishop at length about St Luke, and particularly the Prodigal Son.

There was a dicey moment when she dropped her bread, butter-side down, and said ‘Shit’, but by then the Bishop was fortunately talking to Maud about his recent trip to the Holy Land. Fortunately, too, he’d been wandering round the Sea of Galilee last weekend and missed the newspaper reports of Declan’s exit from Corinium. Over the lemon sorbet, Declan and the Bishop discussed how thrilling it would be to dramatize Lytton Strachey’s brilliant essay about Cardinal Newman and Cardinal Manning, who had both lived in Oxford, which was, after all, within the franchise area.

After lunch Maud, Taggie and Caitlin discreetly withdrew, and Declan produced Rupert’s venerable port.

‘Not drinking?’ asked the Bishop, as Rupert passed the decanter on.

‘No, My Lord,’ said Rupert gravely. ‘I’ve given it up for Lent.’

The Bishop, who was very hot on sex and violence, had always thoroughly disapproved of Rupert, but perhaps at long last, after such a turbulent past, he was trying to shed his jetset playboy image and forge a more satisfying way of life.

Declan and Freddie steered the conversation round to Corinium Television and the appalling poverty of their religious programmes, and then raised the subject of their rival bid. They very much hoped the Bishop would join Venturer and become their Deputy Chairman.

‘Television today,’ said the Bishop warmly, ‘is a key factor for the quality of life and for establishing values.’

For the past ten years, he went on, he had had special responsibilities for communication in the diocese and he saw joining Venturer as a way of extending a work that interested him greatly.

‘We know busy people don’t do fings for nuffink,’ said Freddie, cosily. ‘If we win the franchise, there’ll be a very small director’s fee, say ten thousand a year, which could always go to your favourite charity.’

Signing up Henry Hampshire, the Lord-Lieutenant, was even easier. Freddie and Rupert wooed him over a very expensive lunch in London. Henry, as it turned out, was absolutely furious with Tony for flogging a field ten miles from The Falconry, but only a quarter of a mile from and in full view of Henry’s house, to some property developers. He was also a very old friend of Rupert’s, having a wife too plain for even Rupert to have had a crack at, and had liked Freddie when they’d met shooting at Tony’s.

‘Any money in it?’ he asked, having flogged two stone lions last week to pay a tax bill.

‘Fucking fortune,’ said Rupert. ‘We’d need a bit up front.’

‘Don’t mind that,’ said Henry. ‘As long as you arrange for me to meet Joanna Lumley. Suppose I could always sell a Stubbs.’

‘You needn’t go that far,’ said Rupert, shocked. ‘We only want about ten grand. What about that minor Pre-Raphaelite, the one over the chimney-piece in the sitting-room?’

‘Good idea,’ said Henry. ‘Never liked it. Silly girl lying in the water, covered in flowers. Someone should have taught her the backstroke.’

At the end of lunch, Henry tried to pay.

‘No, no,’ said Freddie. ‘Honest, it’s on Venturer.’

‘Oh well, if you can get it on corsts,’ said Henry.

Strong on his homework, Declan investigated the likes and dislikes of Lady Gosling, Chairman of the IBA. He also discovered that her best friend, Dame Enid Spink, was the composer interviewed so disastrously by James Vereker. Declan called on Dame Enid in her rooms at Cotchester University, where she was director of music, and found her ferociously conducting to a gramophone record of her latest opera, The Persuaders.

‘Worst programme I’ve ever been on,’ boomed Dame Enid, as she and Declan dipped pieces of stale seed cake into tea the colour of mahogany. ‘In fact Corinium’s whole attitude to music is utterly philistine. Last time the franchises came up for grabs, that treacherous little fart, Tony Baddingham, promised to finance a Cotchester Youth Orchestra. Not a penny have we seen.’

Declan said truthfully that Venturer wouldn’t be prepared to finance anything except television programmes until they broke even, but he hoped Dame Enid would advise them on their music programmes.

‘If you get the franchise,’ asked Dame Enid, ‘would you get rid of that little squirt James Vereker?’

‘Indeed we would,’ said Declan.

Once Dame Enid agreed, it was a piece of cake to recruit Professor Crispin Graystock, a rich left-wing English Literature don who had dry, unmanageable hair like Worzel Gummidge’s dipped in soot, wild eyes and a wet formless face, and who longed to be a television star because he thought it would help sell his slim and unutterably dreary volumes of poetry.

Although he was still smarting over not being included in the new Oxford Companion to English Literature, Crispin Graystock was regarded as a considerable heavyweight in the academic world.

Freddie Jones took Lord Smith, the even more left-wing ex-secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union, out to yet another very expensive lunch, where, with his mouth crammed simultaneously with lobster and Pouilly Fuissé, Lord Smith agreed to join Venturer, and provide a substantial cash investment from Union funds.

‘Doesn’t he feel guilty about getting involved with such a capitalist organ as Venturer?’ said Rupert disapprovingly.

‘Not at all. Once I told him the money to be made,’ said Freddie. ‘He feels television is for the people.’

Rupert, seeking a shit-hot money man, rang up Marti Gluckstein, arguably the most brilliant accountant just this side of the law.

‘How’d you like to join our bid for the Corinium franchise?’

‘I’ve already turned down four other groups,’ said Marti in his nasal Cockney twang. ‘I loathe television.’

‘You’d have to buy a house in the area,’ said Rupert. He could feel Marti shudder all the way down the telephone wires.

‘I loathe the country,’ said Marti.

‘Don’t have to live here,’ said Rupert. ‘Just buy a place and sell it the moment we clinch the franchise. Prices are going up so fast in the Royal triangle, you’ll double your money by the time you sell it. I’ll find you one.’