'So,' said Jack. 'What do we do now? Do you want me to bluff and bluster my way into Little Tommy Tucker's dressing room, so you can have a few words with him?'

'Let's do it after the show.'

'Why after? Why not before?'

'I was thinking that perhaps he might not be too keen to speak to us. It might even be necessary for you to rough him up a bit.'

'What?' said Jack.

'We need information,' said Eddie. 'Any information. So we might have to, you know, lean on him a little. And things might get ugly and he might call for his security men and we might get thrown out of the building. And then we'd not get to see the show.'

'Makes perfect sense,' said Jack. 'Let's push into the studio and get a seat at the front.' Jack's stomach rumbled. 'What about some food?' he asked.

'Exert a little self-control,' said Eddie. 'We're professionals, aren't we?'

'We certainly are.'

It is a fact well known to those who know it well, and indeed to anyone else who has ever been dumb enough to apply for tickets to a TV show, that the interior of TV studios, the very interior, the sanctum sanctorum, the heart of hearts, the belly of the beast, the studio proper, is a real disappointment, when you've finished queuing up and finally get to see it.

It's rubbish.

The audience seating is rubbish. It's Spartan, it's uncomfortable, it's crummy. The stage set is rubbish. It's cardboard and ply-wood and not well painted at all. And there're wires everywhere. And there are cameras that get in your way so you can't see properly. And there are rude crew persons who behave like pigs and herd you in and bully you about and who won't let you get up during the show, even if you desperately need the toilet. And it always smells rough in there too, as if some orgy or other has just been going on -which tends to make the disappointment you feel even worse, because you know you must have just missed it.

And the other thing is that the show is never the way you see it on TV. The show always goes wrong and there has to be take after take after take. And although for the audience this does have a certain novelty value to begin with, by the tenth retake the novelty has well and truly worn off.

There is nothing glamorous about TV studios. Absolutely nothing glamorous at all. They're rubbish. They are. Rubbish.

'Isn't this brilliant?' said Eddie.

'Certainly is,' said Jack.

As they were the first into the studio, they were 'escorted' to the very front seats by one of the 'crew'.

A crew pig in fact. All bendy rubber and portly and scowling, he had the word CREW painted in large letters across his belly. He huffed and puffed in a bad-tempered manner and jostled Jack and Eddie along.

'Sit there,' he ordered.

Jack and Eddie hastened to oblige. The seating was toy-sized and Jack found his knees once again up around his shoulders. But he didn't care. He was loving it all.

Jack sniffed the air. 'You can even smell the glamour,' he said.

'I can definitely smell something,' said Eddie.

More rude crew pigs were now herding the rest of the audience in.

Jack looked all around and about. Overhead hung many stage lights. To the rear of each was attached a sort of half-bicycle affair: the rear half, with pedals, chain wheel and seat. And upon each seat sat a clockwork cyclist, whose job it was to pedal away like fury to power up the light and move it this way and that when required so to.

The instructions for the requiring so to do were issued from a booth set directly above the stage: the controller's box. The controller already sat in his seat of control. Evidently purpose-built for this role, he was undoubtedly the most remarkable toy Jack had so far seen. He was big and broad and constructed from bendy rubber. His wide, flat face had six separate mouths set into a horizontal row. From his ample torso sprouted six separate arms, each hand of which held a megaphone. As Jack looked on in awe, the controller bawled separate instructions through four different megaphones. Clockwork cyclists to the right and left and the above of Jack pedalled furiously away and swung their lights here and there at the controller's directing.

The lights swept over the low stage beneath the controller's box.

The stage set resembled a woodland arbour, painted plywood trees, a blue sky daubed to the rear, with the words Tuff it on the Tuffet painted upon it in large and glittering golden letters. The floor of the stage was carpeted with fake grass, on which stood a number of stools fashioned to resemble tuffets and arranged in a semi-circle. To the right of the stage was a small clockwork orchestra.

'I'm really enjoying this,' said Jack, 'and it hasn't even started yet.'

Before the stage, clockwork cameramen were positioning their clockwork cameras, large and bulky affairs of colourful pressed tin which moved upon casters. The clockwork cameramen appeared to be positioning their cameras in such a way as to create the maximum obstruction of the audience's view of the stage.

Eddie was looking over his shoulder, watching the rude crew pigs herding in the audience of toys. 'Hm,' he said.

Jack pointed towards the large and glittering letters that were painted upon the pretend sky backdrop. 'What does Tuff it on the Tuffet mean?' he asked Eddie.

'Miss Muffett's show is one of those talk show jobbies,' Eddie explained, 'where toys air their embarrassing personal problems on primetime TV. I once wrote a little poem about it; would you care for me to recite it to you?'

'Is it a long poem?' Jack asked.

'No, quite short.'

'Go on then.'

Eddie made throat-clearing growlings and then he began:

'Scandalous secrets and shocking surprises,

'Secreting their persons with silly disguises,

'Or proudly parading their sexual deviation,

'With clockwork and teddy and even relation,

'Recounting their rumblings with famous Toy folk,

'Or confessing the need for the herbs that they smoke,

'All in the hope that the show will bestow,

'Media absolution.'

'Very good,' said Jack.

'Did you really think so?'

'Not really,' said Jack. 'I was being polite. But why would anyone want to come on a TV show and air their dirty laundry in public, as it were?'

Eddie shrugged. 'That is one of life's little mysteries,' he said. 'My guess would be that either they're actors making it all up, or they're very sad individuals who crave- their moment of glory on TV. But who cares; it's great television.'

'And Little Tommy Tucker is going to be "tuffing it", is he?'

'I doubt that. He's probably promoting his new hit single. He's a big recording artiste, is Tommy. He doesn't have to sing for his supper any more. Well, he does in a manner of speaking, but his singing has earned him enough for a million suppers in the City's finest eateries.'

Jack's stomach rumbled once again. But at least his hangover was beginning to lessen. 'Famous singer, eh?' said Jack.

'Top of the charts,' said Eddie. 'Not my pot of jam though. I'm an Elvis fan, me.'

'Elvis?' said Jack. 'Who's Elvis?'

Eddie rolled his button eyes. 'He's the King.'

'Well I've never heard of him.'

'No, 1 suppose not. He's a bear, like me. My cousin, in fact. Tinto has an open-mic night on Fridays. Elvis sings. He's great.'

'What sort of stuff does he sing?’ Jack asked.

'Tommy Tucker songs,' said Eddie, dismally. 'There aren't any others.'

'What, none?'

'Tommy sort of has the Toy City music industry in his velvet pocket. Tommy's always number one in the music charts, because the charts don't have a number two. And Tommy owns the only recording studio in Toy City, and the record company.'

'That's outrageous,' said Jack. 'So you're telling me that the only records you can buy in Toy City are Tommy Tucker records?'