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‘I don’t know why she’s bothering – it’s pretty funny already,’ her makeup artist had said.

‘It’s about Kane Hunt,’ Justine had said. ‘We can’t make it work.’

‘Oh?’ Morgan had said, her voice edged like a razor.

‘Production are in agreement. There’s just too much risk. If it’s any consolation, the vote was very close.’

Morgan had turned back to her makeup. Started touching up her hair. She eyed Justine in the mirror.

‘Fuck your vote,’ she’d said.

And that was that. Justine had slunk out to find the studio owner.

‘He looks hot,’ Justine said.

‘Hot?’ Allan replied.

‘Not “sexy” hot, I mean he’s sweating.’

‘I’m not surprised, he’s only five feet away from the quartz lamp.’

‘Quartz? I didn’t know we had any left. Why aren’t we using LEDs?’

Quartz lamps had been an industry staple for years, but they gave off a lot of heat and used a lot of juice. They’d been superseded by LED lights, which essentially did the same job but without the excessive heat or drain on the electricity budget.

‘Morgan wanted them,’ Allan said. ‘Only on Hunt’s side, though. She wanted him pale and sweaty.’

Justine considered that for a moment. ‘Damn, she’s good,’ she said.

They were in the gallery, the room where the composition ofThe Morgan Soames Hourtook place. The ‘glass cockpit’ – the virtual monitor wall displaying multiple sources of information – dominated the room. Justine and Allan preferred being on the studio floor, leaving one of the assistant directors to oversee the gallery, but tonight they wanted to be near the vision mixer. He was called Yosef and he was seated in front of his control panel, selecting which camera to use. Justine and Allan usually let him work with minimal oversight. Morgan trusted Yosef to get the right mix of her and her guest, to know when she wanted to be on screen when she asked a question, or whether it was the guest’s reaction that was more important.

Tonight was different. Justine, as the only person with the authority to shut down a live show mid-broadcast, had to be there to give Yosef the instruction, and Allan wanted to be with her in case she needed to talk it through. Shutting down a live show was the biggest decision a director could make.

They were half an hour in, and it had been so far so good. Morgan had kept it tight and Kane Hunt had been fairly uncontroversial.

They watched as Morgan reached behind her desk and brought out the only prop she was scheduled to use. It was a book. Independently published, but with high production values.

‘He doesn’t look well, does he?’ Justine said.

Hunt was over-gelled and under-dressed. He wore a pilot’s jacket and ripped jeans, like he was auditioning for an amateur production ofRebel Without a Causerather than appearing on the most prestigious chat show on television.

‘He doesn’t, actually,’ Allan agreed. ‘He’s drinking a lot of water and he can’t stop rubbing his eyes.’

‘As long as he doesn’t die during the next thirty minutes,’ Justine said.

‘Tell me about your new book, Kane,’ Morgan said. ‘It’s calledThe Chad Manifesto. I understand “Chad” refers to attractive, popular men who are sexually successful with women?’

‘That’s right,’ Hunt said. ‘Chads are the sheer dumb-luck winners of the genetic lottery and a recent study suggests that although they make up just twenty per cent of men, they’re having eighty per cent of all sex. That’s a mathematical problem for the rest of us – there simply aren’t enough women left.The Chad Manifestoaims to redress this rigged game.’

‘I see,’ Morgan said. ‘And this theory forms part of the incel movement?’

‘Yes. Involuntarily celibate.’

‘The ideology that women’s bodies are natural resources?’

‘Exactly.’ Hunt leaned forward, looked engaged. ‘At the minute, men, through no fault of their own, are finding themselves locked out of what is now a deregulated sexual marketplace.The Chad Manifestoadvocates a fairer distribution system. No man in the twenty-first century should be deprived of sex.’

‘Deprived of sex?’ Morgan deadpanned.