“Be my guest,” Vanderdecker said. “You can watch a master liar at work, if you don't mind being an… — Tom Holt

It may not be true, but it provides a much-needed focal point for baffled indignation.

When he left Quincy's he returned to the studios and went to see the man who was going to tell him everything he needed to know about sports broadcasting in twenty-five minutes.

“The main thing,” said the expert, is to turn up on the right day at the right place and keep the sound recordists out of the bar. Leave everything else to the cameramen, and you'll do all right. That's it.”

Jane was a child of the media age, and there lurked in the back of her mind the instinctive belief that if a thing wasn't on the news, it couldn't really have happened after all.