The Breakfast Potato

Sogmarsh Wireless Presents — being thirty minutes of a miracle breakfast, which is a potato.

The kitchen, dressed as a "manufactory." A hopeful placard. The bucket drips, endorsing nothing.

ANNOUNCER. Sogmarsh Wireless presents The Breakfast Potato; in which Mr Horace P. Dudgeon, President for Life of No. 4½ Sump Lane, lends his international name to a revolutionary breakfast, and discovers what his international name is worth.

Interior. The kitchen. SOL, entrepreneurial, unveils a sack. HORACE, receptive to anything that sounds like importance.

SOL. Horace. I've a proposition. The realm eats potato for its breakfast, its dinner, and its tea. Correct?

HORACE. Regrettably, Sol, the Potato Standard is the whole of our cuisine.

SOL. (triumphant) So we don't sell 'em a new food. We sell 'em the same food, with a name, an endorsement, and a price. (unveiling) Behold — Dudgeon's Superior Morning Marvel. A scientific breakfast, as endorsed by a personage of international standing. (beat) That's you. The personage.

HORACE. (peering into the sack) ...Sol. That is a potato.

SOL. (smoothly) It's a Morning Marvel, Horace. It's branded. Nobody pays for a potato. Everybody pays for a Marvel. All it wants is your name, your face on the sack, and a few words on how it's transformed your mornings.

HORACE. (swelling, already composing) "I, Horace P. Dudgeon, a personage of standing, do declare that since adopting the Morning Marvel my mornings have been transfigured —" (to Sol) — has it transfigured my mornings, Sol?

SOL. It's a potato, Horace. It'll do what a potato does. But say transfigured. Transfigured sells.

MERCY. (flatly, from the range) It's the same potato I've been boiling you eleven years, Horace. It's out of the same sack. Sol's put a paper collar on it.

HORACE. (loftily) The collar, Mercy, is where the value resides.

Interior. The market square. HORACE, on a crate, endorsing. A small crowd. DOLLY QUICK, sharp, up front.

HORACE. (declaiming) People of Drudgeford! For too long you have eaten the common potato, in ignorance! I bring you — the Morning Marvel! Scientific! Superior! Endorsed by me! A breakfast to transfigure your —

DOLLY. (cutting in) What's in it?

HORACE. (grandly) ...Marvel.

DOLLY. What's the Marvel made of?

HORACE. (faltering) ...Superior... potato.

DOLLY. So it's a potato.

HORACE. It is a potato of destiny —

DOLLY. How much?

HORACE. Tuppence.

DOLLY. (flat) A potato's a farthing. From the same sack. I've seen Sol fill it off the back of Ma Tacket's cart. (to the crowd) He's charging you eight times over for a farthing spud in a paper collar, on account of his name's on it. (beat) What's your name worth, then, Mr Dudgeon? Go on. In potatoes.

A terrible pause. The crowd waits. HORACE, cornered by the one question a personage cannot survive.

HORACE. (deflating, honest despite himself) ...I fear, Miss Quick, that on the evidence of this morning, my international name is worth — (swallows) — the difference between a farthing and tuppence. Which is to say: my endorsement adds three ha'pence to a potato, and the three ha'pence is entirely Sol's.

SOL. (cheerfully, from the back) Two, actually. I take the odd ha'penny as management.

Interior. The kitchen. Evening. MERCY. HORACE, a lone paper-collared potato before him, contemplating it.

HORACE. (quietly) ...I learned my worth today, Mercy, to the ha'penny. A personage of international standing endorsed a potato, and the endorsement was worth three ha'pence, of which Sol kept two. My whole reputation, Mercy — (holds up the potato) — one ha'penny, on a good day, over the market rate of a spud.

MERCY. (mildly, taking the potato, slipping off the paper collar) That's about right, Horace. That's about what any name's worth on a thing that was always going to be a potato. (drops it in the pot) The collar was the con. The potato was always honest.

HORACE. (a rueful beat) ...The potato was always honest. (sighs) There is a great deal of my life in that sentence, Mercy, and, once again, I would rather not examine it.

MERCY. (fond, flat) Eat your Marvel. It's transfigured into supper.

HORACE. (with the last of his grandeur, taking up his fork) ...Transfigured. I knew the word would come good.

ANNOUNCER. Sogmarsh Wireless has presented The Breakfast Potato. Dudgeon's Superior Morning Marvel has been withdrawn, on the discovery that it was a potato. Mr Dudgeon's endorsement was valued, by the free market, at one and a half ha'pence, of which Mr Nipper retained the management. The potato, throughout, remained honest.

The pot bubbles. Slow fade.

— end —