From the Properties Dept, BBC, White City.

Dear Mr Wright,
Re your secretary’s recent requistion request for Partridge (one) in Pear tree (ditto), I feel it incumbent upon myself to advise you that the suppying of props to Radio Departments has hitherto existed outside our remit. I note further that no time-frame has been specified, nor, moreover whether said items are intended for temporary use or else permanent acquisition, and I am obliged to ensure that you are aware that the book of guidelines, Page 24, Para. 3, Subsect. (ii) specifically forbids the presence of livestock within the portals of BH. However, since you are a Head of Department, and must by implication know what you are doing, I feel I must acceed to your request: therefore, though not without trepidation, I acknowledge your order as follows:

Perdix perdix (Linn.)(One  off)
Pyrus communis (Linn.)(One off)

(To be delivered by internal courier to the stated address: please ensure that you have advised reception of their imminent arrival, and that a member of staff will be available to convey them to your own part of the building.)

I am at a loss, however, regarding how exactly to follow your instructions to the letter and have said Partidge in said Tree, other than by means of wiring its feet to the branches. I fear it is otherwise unlikely to stay put and will thereby cause considerable nuisance; loose wildfowl within an enclosed environment are a recipe for disaster. There are also the small matters of feeding and watering (not to mention the concomitant results).  Upon the assumption that these items are required merely for a brief display (and on the firm understanding that you and you alone will be answerable to the RSPB and any other organisation taking exception to my solution re your requirements) I will proceed.

Unless advised to the contrary, I will assume that you require our standard five (5) working days delivery.

I look to being of service in the future, and I hope that you will understand my insistence on your strict adherence to these conditions: I'm no killjoy, but experience has taught me that at this time of year it pays to be cautious.
 
Yours sincerely,

Noel Coward
Birdcage Walk

Following the popularity of the "48 at 8", Radio 3's Breakfast presenters will each day introduce one repetition of Satie's Vexations. These will be played at 8.40 each morning, the full performance finally ending in March 2010.

Dear Roger,

Happy Christmas from us all.

Dear Mr. D,

Thank you for your announcement. We have to say that it would appear that the Note de l'auteur is being wilfully ignored for the purposes of blatant populism. Furthermore, we beg to point out that the date of the ending of "the full performance" (whatever that may mean) would result in a number of repetitions considerably over and above that suggested by the composer.

Yours,

Ape Dan T.

Dear Mr Wright,

I hope you’ll excuse my confusion: having already prepared an order for you only yesterday I have now received a second requisistion which appears to duplicate the first plus the addition of two turtle doves. Is this an addendum, or a completely separate order? Do you really want another Perdix perdix (bearing in mind that I thought we'd already agreed that you'd cancelled the existing order anyway) and Pyrus communis, with a single pair of Streptopelia turtur as well?

With regards to the latter I should advise you that as a species they are not only becoming considerably rarer in the UK, but since they are by nature migratory, those that might have been found in season will long since have flown South. (Bet you wish you hadn't made that jibe about them being on the horizon now: they're not just on the horizon, they're over it.) Over the next 24 hours my team will endeavour to locate a living brace for you, failing the which I fear our options will include toy, decoy, stuffed or hand-painted collareds (they won’t be out in the wet, will they - our dyes are strictly water-based.) I notice that you are becoming satierical, which I have to tell you I don't much appreciate: such behaviour to associates may rank among the sports and divertissements of you radio people, but it's not the way we TV people go about things; it's not a very agreeable observation, but there we are. I've booked air tickets for our doveman Jonathan, and I hope that his flight will have been successful. I'll let you know as soon as we have an answer.

On the subject of jobs, I'd like to remind you that I, at least, literally have a 'prop'er one...

Yours departmentally,

Noël

 

Dear Mr Wright,

You will be pleased to know that we may have answer on the replacement Streptopeliae turtur front. Our catering subdivision, who make up the prop food for serials and cookery programmes, have suggested that since they are already proficient in providing mock-turtle soup, they're willing to have a bash at mock turtle doves.

You will be less pleased though, I fear, at my news regarding the three French hens: I feel it my duty to remind you that there are emergency procedures in position vis-à-vis the importation of poulty from the Continent, and that therefore, once again, it may be necessary for you (and M. Rameau) to make alternative arrangements. I realise that as far as your composer is concerned, this may be just a load of Castor and Pollux, and I agree it's not Nais, but I'm afraid his protestations will be treated with indifference. Fresh hens would be no problem, or (dependant on exactly how live you require them to be) I'm sure we could rustle up a pack of poussins from Waitrose; otherwise your goose, as they say, is cooked.

Dafydd, our Welsh dresser, has asked me to check how exactly you require your pear-tree decorated. He specialises in fruit, both cooked and fresh: recently he's had a big hand in Alan Titchmarsh's plums: a labour of love, apparently. 

Best wishes with Doveorgy, by the way; I must say I'm quite excited by all these composer's names: it's a whole new world to me.

Must dash: another Christmas Special to arrange,

Noël

Dear Mr Wright,

This is woeful, if I may say so. Are you telling me that you have received the hens already? In which case your orders are getting out of sync., since I now have two partridges and a variety of pear trees of different sizes sitting in my 'Goods In' bay ready for checking and despatch, yet no documentation whatsoever for chickens in triplicate from any source, apart from a DEFRA certificate permitting import of Breton Bantams after they've been vetted (by a vet). I trust your programmes are going out in advance, because we have a tricky situation here, if BH is indeed harbouring potentially dangerous poultry. I've alerted the authorities to the situation, and must warn you that if even a single hen has crossed your threshold, then we will need to quarantine the entire building immediately, and set up a cordon sanitaire about it. There will have to be disinfectant footbaths at all entrances and exits, and a complete embargo on the ingress of anyone with avian connections.

So our Jonathan, even now on Eurostar with a brace of turtle doves, Mr Parrot-face Davies and Anne Robinson (to give but three examples) will not be allowed inside, and for safety's sake, the music of William Byrd and Charlie Parker will need a certificate before playing, as would documentaries concerning, say, Sir Christopher Wren and Simon Raven. How fortunate for you that Tom Crowe is no longer among your presentation staff....

I really could manage without all this extra worry at this time of the year, particularly since another emergency has cropped up. Our latest TV reality show involves 20 disparate and desperate celebrities forced to live in isolation in order to produce and perform a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. I have now been informed that, due to the remoteness of their location, they are unable to source props, and have therefore been deputed to drive the length of the country and back, in order to deliver a van-load of miscellaneous junk for them to play with, leaving this evening. I trust that you will appreciate therefore that for a period of approximately forty-eight hours from this evening, I may be rendered temporarily incommun(m)icado.

Yours,

Noël