Brollywood

By Frank Burton

After losing his home, then accidentally burning down another one, Frank is reunited with his former cellmate, Noddy. Noddy, despite evidence to the contrary, is still alive, and is very concerned about the disappearance of a set of plans to steal millions of pounds from a mysterious group of British film stars.

Brollywood lifts the lid on the ultimate underground society, the greatest con-trick of all time, and the best-kept secret in showbusiness. It’s a story about love and friendship, as well as a handy guidebook on how to pull off a bank heist during a global pandemic.

Brollywood is a work of fiction. Honest.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Philistine Press
• Release date: Feb 14, 2023

Book preview

Author’s Note

Brollywood is the third novel in the Ragbag series. Ragbag novels can be read in any order. Some of the characters featured in these books originally appeared in the Ragbag podcast, which ran for 100 episodes between 2018 and 2021. This was a very good show, and you should definitely check it out, although familiarity with the podcast is not essential. In 2022, the podcast changed its name to Ragbag Presents, and began by serialising a story called Brollywood, later published as this novel.

Brollywood is a work of fiction. Honest.

Chapter 1.

I met Noddy on my first day in prison.

This was 2005. Until this point in my life, I’d had the luxury of never having to imagine what prison might be like. I’d spent more time wondering what the surface of Mars looked like close up. Whatever vague assumptions I’d made about the place were wrong. The building was very clean, for a start. So many shiny surfaces. I didn’t find this reassuring. During my guided tour of the wing, I started to feel like a rat in a lab. I made a mental note not to say any of this out loud to anyone. I may have been new to all this, but I suspected it was a bad idea to refer to myself as ‘a rat’ on my first day inside.

The place was strangely quiet too. Where were all the menacing whoops and hollers I’d grown to expect from one too many prison movies?

This didn’t reassure me either. The silence of the place was chilling.

The guard led me into my cell, in which a vacant-looking bald man was sitting on a chair in the corner, staring into space.

‘This is Noddy,’ said the guard.

The guard nodded at Noddy, and Noddy nodded back.

‘He doesn’t talk,’ the guard explained. ‘He nods. Hence the name.’

I was reluctant to say anything myself. And so I nodded at Noddy, and Noddy nodded at me. I’d been clenched up, trying my best not to tremble since entering the building. As soon as Noddy nodded at me, somehow it eased some of that tension, almost to the point of regular anxiety.

So, this was the guy I’d be sharing a cell with. An old man, who was so unthreatening he wasn’t even going to speak to me.

I managed to say, ‘Nice to meet you, Noddy.’ I may even have smiled for the first time that day.

The guard left me alone with Noddy. We sat together in total silence for three hours.

Then it was dinnertime. The cell door was opened, and we stepped into the corridor.

At that moment, one of our fellow inmates was walking past. Once upon a time, I’d imagined everyone in prison looked like this man – scars, facial tattoos, missing teeth, an expression that suggested he could kill at any moment. The man noticed the expression on my face, and – in what was clearly a knee-jerk reaction, a force of habit, perhaps – he swerved his head in my direction. It was a clear intimidation tactic – or, it would have been, had it not been cut short. Halfway through the head swerve, the man noticed Noddy standing next to me. As soon as he realised Noddy and I were sharing a cell, the man straightened himself up, and continued walking without looking back.

In the two seconds it took for this exchange to take place, I learned a lot about my new cellmate. In spite of being the least scary person I’d ever met, this man had the power to neutralise a psycho in the space of a heartbeat.

Who was he, exactly? What was his real name? Why didn’t he speak?

At least one of these questions was answered a few days later, when in the middle of the night, Noddy suddenly started talking to me.

‘Say what you like about people in here,’ he said. ‘Call them uneducated if you like, but it’s likely the vast majority of them went to school. They must have. Have you ever met a man who never went to school? Not for a single day in his life?’

‘I don’t think so,’ I said.

‘You have now,’ said Noddy. ‘Let me tell you.’

From that point on, it was hard to keep him quiet – not that I was irritated by his sudden personality change. Far from it. In our six months in that cell together, Noddy told me some of the best stories I’d ever heard.

I’ll tell you some of them shortly myself. But first I should mention what happened next. Noddy was released from prison a couple of weeks after me. He helped me out with a few things.

Then he had a heart attack and died in front of me. Just before he died, he took something out of his pocket – a small clickable device, some kind of panic button. I called an ambulance, but before the ambulance arrived, a van pulled up outside. Some men broke the door down, and carried him off. That was the last I saw of him for fifteen years.

I’d always had my suspicions. Noddy’s apparent death was almost as strange as the fact of his existence.

Then, in May 2020, I discovered that Noddy wasn’t dead.

Then I discovered something even stranger than that. More on that later.

Chapter 2.

In March 2020, I was staying in a campsite in North Yorkshire, in the camper van that had been my home since the previous summer. I’d never properly analysed my reasons for moving out of my conventional accommodation, but up until that point it wasn’t a decision I’d had chance to regret. The fact of the matter was, I’d managed to make a living from doing my podcast, which was possible to do from anywhere with an internet connection.

I’d been staying at this particular site for a week or so, minding my own business, taking walks in the hills when it wasn’t raining, and working on my book, Getting Away With It.

There weren’t many other people around, but one woman kept catching my attention. She was staying with five or six friends, all pitched up together in a large tent a little way from my van. They were noisy at night time, which didn’t bother me much. They were just people having a good time. In any case, I couldn’t hear them with my headphones in.

I chatted to this woman a few times. She introduced herself as Glinda.

‘Like the Good Witch of The North,’ I said. ‘Sorry,’ I added, ‘you’ve probably heard that a thousand times.’

‘I don’t know what that means,’ she said.

‘Good Witch of the North?’ I said. ‘Your name’s Glinda, and you’ve never heard that reference before?’

‘I’m actually from the south, so...’

‘Wizard of Oz,’ I said.

‘Oh, I see,’ she said. ‘I’ve never seen it.’

I stopped myself from saying ‘Yeah, but…’ and changed the subject to something less controversial.

The following evening, she saw me sitting outside the van on my deck chair, and came over to sit with me. Literally, she squeezed in right next to me on the chair.

‘What’s that you’re reading?’ she said.

‘It’s a notebook,’ I said. ‘I’m a writer.’

‘Ooooh,’ she said, patting me on the leg.

‘I realise you’re a little intoxicated,’ I said, ‘but I’m not sure this chair was designed for two people.’

‘In-tox-i-cated,’ she repeated playfully. ‘What a brilliant word. Also, rather difficult to say when intoxicated. Speaking of intoxication, do you have any booze to hand? Join me.’

‘I’ve got a couple of bottles of wine in the van,’ I said.

‘Nice,’ she said. ‘You’re here on your own?’

‘Yes.’

‘Easier to write that way, I suppose. What are you working on?’

Glinda made a grab for my notebook, but I clutched it to my chest.

‘I’m working on a book,’ I said, ‘but this isn’t it. This is just a jokey thing myself and a friend have been working on lately.’

‘I like jokes,’ she said. ‘Let me see.’

‘It’s not really a joke,’ I said. ‘It’s actually very serious. We’re planning a bank heist. Not a real one. A hypothetical one. Just to prove that we could do it if we wanted to.’

‘Who’s this friend of yours?’

‘Oh, just some guy, you won’t know him. He comes to visit me sometimes.’

‘Where does he visit you?’

‘Here, in the van. Not necessarily in this location.’

‘Oh, so you move around in the van, do you?’

‘Yes. It’s got wheels and everything.’

‘I mean, you live in this thing?’

‘Yep.’

‘Wow.’ That realisation suddenly seemed to sober Glinda up.

‘I’ll crack that wine open,’ I said. ‘There’s some slightly more comfortable seating inside. Unless you need to get back to your friends?’

‘They’re doing my head in,’ she said. ‘I’ll stick with you. What did you say your name was?’

‘Frank.’

‘Pleased to meet you, Frank.’

‘Have you really never seen The Wizard of Oz?’ I said.

‘No, but I appreciate your frustration on this matter. I’m constantly saying things like that to people. ‘Have you seriously never heard Songs In The Key Of Life?’ And so it goes on.’

‘Ah,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘I’m not sure if I’ve got through a full Stevie Wonder album. You got me there. You have to see The Wizard of Oz, though. Right now. I’ve got the video.’

‘Video?’ she said.

‘Yes. VHS. They still work, you know. Stick it in the machine and press play.’

‘I can see you’re a real 20th Century boy,’ she said, ‘with your camper van and your paper and pen, and your VHS.’

‘I have a podcast too,’ I blurted out, defensively.

‘Don’t we all?’ she said.

‘What? You have one too?’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘As I say, doesn’t everyone? It’s lots of fun, I suppose. Not that anyone’s listening, of course, but how can they be? They’re too busy recording their own podcasts.’

‘I’m not entirely sure that’s true.’

‘Really? You know that’s what they’re doing right now, over there in that tent. You can probably hear us at night, laughing at our own jokes and shouting over top of each other.’

‘Oh. I thought you were just people having a good time.’

‘Nope. The worst thing is, they all think they’re mavericks because they record the whole thing in a tent. It’s called the Tentcast. Look it up. It’s diabolical.’

‘Why do you do it then?’

‘Oh, I just got roped into it, if you pardon the possible pun.’

‘You make a very good use of language there, Glinda. You should do something creative with it, even if podcasting turns out not to be your bag.’

‘I’ll think about it,’ she said. ‘Come on, let’s get inside and watch this awful film of yours.’

‘It’s not awful. It’s a classic.’

We went inside. I opened the wine, and we sat together on my mini couch, and watched The Wizard of Oz.

Chapter 3.

We woke up in bed together the following morning.

‘Morning,’ she said.

‘God,’ I said.

‘I’m Glinda,’ she said, ‘but yes, I often give out the impression of godliness.’

‘You’re really beautiful,’ I said, as though I’d just realised.

‘Thanks,’ she said.

‘I’m really sorry,’ I said, ‘but I have absolutely no memory of what happened last night. I’m sure you’re extremely memorable under normal circumstances, but...’

‘To be fair, you did have quite a lot to drink, Frank.’

‘Like, how much?’

‘There’s the two bottles of wine over here,’ she said. ‘I was drunk already, so you literally had both bottles to yourself. Then we went over to the tent...’

‘We did what?’ I said.

‘We went to join my friends. It was your idea.’

‘That doesn’t sound like me.’

‘After two bottles of wine?’

‘OK. In that case, it kind of sounds like me.’

‘There’s documentary evidence, if you’d like to hear it.’

‘Oh my God. Really?’

‘They’ve probably put the whole thing out already. That’s what they do. They don’t bother editing. They don’t even listen back.’

I already had my phone out, and was typing in the name of their show, which somehow I’d managed to recall.

Sure enough, Tentcast Episode #456 had been published five hours previously. The file was five and a half hours long.

‘What exactly is Tentcast about?’ I said.

‘Oh, this is the genius thing,’ said Glinda, ramping up the sarcasm. ‘It’s not about anything. It’s anything goes! We’ll just start talking and see what comes out! Because no one’s ever thought of doing that before! They honestly think they’re all going to be millionaires, somehow, some day. Even though no one’s listening. Even they don’t bother listening back. Too busy working on the next one. It’s sad.’

‘Do I really want to be listening to this?’ I said.

‘Don’t listen to the whole thing,’ she said. ‘We turned up at about 1am, which I guess would be about three hours into the recording. Fast forward to that bit.’

‘I have a feeling it’s going to be embarrassing,’ I said.

‘You were actually very funny and eloquent, considering how drunk you were.’

She kissed me.

I realised at this point that Glinda and I were still lying in a single bed together, without any clothes on.

We had sex. Then I jumped out of bed, wrapped the blanket around my waist, opened the door and vomited violently onto the grass.

‘That wasn’t a reaction to what just happened,’ I said when I came inside.

‘I know,’ she said.

She was dressed again already.

‘Can I make you some breakfast?’ I said. ‘I can make a mean slice of toast.’

‘Can you really?’

‘To be fair, it’s just a regular slice of toast, but it’s made with the expert precision of a man who knows how to work a toaster.’

‘You know your way around a lot of things,’ said Glinda, with a faint hint of flirtatious enthusiasm, although it was clear that whatever spark had existed between us had snuffed itself out when I hurled my guts up. ‘It’s a yes please to the toast,’ she added.

I put my clothes on before making her the toast.

I pressed play on Episode #456 of Tentcast, and skipped to three hours in. The podcast was pretty much as Glinda had described: a bunch of people talking over each other and laughing at their own jokes. One of them had a slightly louder voice than the rest, and he was ranting on about Raiders being better than Temple of Doom, or something along those lines. Then there was a big chorus of cheers, as the door was unzipped. I heard my own voice jabbering away in the background, with Glinda chuckling along beside me. Without even introducing myself, I launched into a rather bizarre interpretation of The Wizard of Oz as some kind of universal state that existed within all of our minds at a subconscious level.

Someone said, ‘Do you like it, then?’

I said, ‘I’m not sure if that’s the question to ask. It’s a bit like saying, ‘Do you like carbon dioxide?’ I mean, yeah, sure, it’s part of the air we breathe, and we need it just as much as we need the oxygen. I don’t see why oxygen gets all the credit for keeping us alive when we’d drop dead if we were deprived of the carbon dioxide in the air.’

‘Is that right?’ someone else said.

‘It’s absolutely true,’ said someone else.

‘Anyway,’ I said. ‘We’ve got sidetracked. I was talking about The Wizard of Oz. And this is Glinda, The Witch of the North!’

‘She’s from the south, actually,’ someone else said.

‘Have none of you people seen The Wizard of Oz?’ I snapped. ‘I thought this was a universal thing, not just in our collective unconscious, but in our ... you know, the opposite of that, the individual, er ... you know ... conscious.’

‘I haven’t actually seen it, if that’s what you mean,’ said the guy who’d been shouting about Indiana Jones. ‘But if it’s anything like Temple of Doom...’

The guy rambled on for a while until I got properly into the spirit of things, and interrupted him with a change of subject.

I rambled on myself for a while about my bank heist plans. At some point it became clear that my friend who I’d been planning the heist with was the actor Benedict Cumberbatch.

‘That’s hardly ‘just some guy,’ as you called him,’ Glinda cut in.

‘To be fair, I’ve called him worse than that,’ I said. ‘Also, I never know whether people have heard of him or not.’

‘Come on, everyone’s heard of Benedict Cumberbatch. You must know that.’

‘I’m just not all that in tune with the whole ‘fame’ thing,’ I said. ‘There are things like The Wizard of Oz, which I assume everyone knows about, then there are people like Benedict who I assume is just a guy that I know, but then it turns out he’s this big movie star. I honestly thought he was exaggerating.’

While I was listening to this recording, a sudden memory of these events popped into my head. I remembered one of the podcasters was checking their phone to see if they could find Benedict’s Instagram account, presumably because if what I’d said was correct, there’d be a few selfies of the two of us. But Benedict doesn’t use social media. So they ended up scrolling through a bunch of press photos that other people had posted to Instagram. And somehow the fact that I didn’t feature in these press photographs meant that I wasn’t Benedict’s friend.

I heard my own reaction played back on the recording: ‘You’re not going to find a picture of me and him on the internet,’ I said. ‘There aren’t any. When I refused to have my picture taken with him, he drew a watercolour portrait of the two of us. It’s actually very good. His management wouldn’t let him release it online, however, because it reveals a little too much of himself.’

‘Is he naked in the picture?’

‘No, but he’s ... it’s complicated. Benedict and I have a complicated relationship. It’s difficult to sum it up really. It’s nice to have someone who loves you so much that they take it upon themselves to paint a picture of the two of you together, but at the same time, it’s a bit too much for me, and I have to kind of keep him at arm’s length for that reason. Don’t get me wrong, he’s not sexually attracted to me, as far as I know. He’s a happily married man. I think, in Benedict’s mind, I kind of represent something that he could never be. He’s from quite a privileged background, privately educated, all that stuff. His parents are both actors. In a way, success for him was inevitable. Maybe that’s why he’s so fascinated with me – a guy who, by comparison, is a commercial failure, but because of that I’m free to do whatever I want, artistically speaking. Also, he’s reached that level within showbusiness where literally everyone he meets tells him how great he is. It’s possible that I’m the only person who doesn’t do that. I insult him quite a lot, not on purpose necessarily. I just talk to him the same way I talk to everyone else. Sounds strange to say, but I think Benedict enjoys my company because I’m the one person who doesn’t suck up to him.’

‘Keep on dreaming, pal,’ someone said.

‘Listen,’ I said, ‘I’ll get him on the phone if I have to. He doesn’t usually appreciate being woken up at this time of night. Although, that being said, he did mention being in New Zealand at the moment, so it’s probably mid-afternoon over there.’

‘Tell them about the bank heist!’ Glinda’s voice chirped in the background.

‘I can’t tell them about the bank heist,’ I said. ‘It’s a closely guarded secret. Well, it isn’t really, but I’m not sure Benedict’s PR guys will like the idea of me blurting it all out. There’s written evidence of it. That’s all I’m saying. I’ve got all the details in the van with me. You’ll just have to keep on guessing.’

‘You gonna call him then or what?’ said the Indiana Jones fan.

‘I don’t fancy splashing out on an international call, thanks. He’s probably in the middle of a shoot, anyway. He’s there for work.’

‘I’ll be more than happy to pay. Tap the number in there.’

Suddenly, I remembered the guy thrusting his phone into my hand.

In the background, someone was Googling the international dialling code, and dictated it to me. In the recording, you can actually hear me saying Benedict’s mobile number out loud as I dialled it.

The recording went silent for a few seconds. Then my voice said, ‘Alright, mate? Sorry, you know I wouldn’t usually do this but … Yes, mate, I am very drunk. Thanks for noticing. Listen, I’m going to stick you on speaker, and … I don’t know. I’ve met some people who don’t believe the two of us know each other, and this is my petty attempt to prove them wrong, so … Right. There. You’re on speaker. Say something, mate.’

‘Hello?’ Benedict’s distorted voice popped through the speaker.

‘Say something else!’ someone called.

‘OK,’ said Benedict’s voice. ‘Er … something else!’

‘Say a famous line from one of your films!’ Indiana Jones Boy demanded.

‘Oh,’ said Benedict. ‘Now you’ve got me stumped. I’m never quite sure which lines are the famous ones, and which are just lines.’

‘How about ‘I could have done better’?’ someone said. ‘That should do it.’

My voice could be heard up close to the mic, laughing hysterically. ‘Sorry Benedict,’ I said. ‘I didn’t realise there were going to be hecklers.’

‘It’s from Doctor Strange!’ they said.

‘That’s literally just random words to me,’ I said.

‘I remember that one,’ said Benedict’s voice. ‘I could have done better.’

A round of applause followed.

‘That’s not even your real voice!’ I protested amidst the rabble.

‘We have so many questions!’ declared Indiana Jones Boy.

‘No you don’t,’ I said. ‘This was literally just to verify this man’s identity. Now that’s done, let’s let him go.’

‘At least let him tell us about the bank heist!’ Glinda called out.

‘Frank,’ said Benedict. ‘What the hell have you told these people?’

‘Nothing, mate. It’s banter.’

‘Take me off speaker. I need to know what’s been said.’

‘Nothing, mate. Absolutely nothing. Chill out.’

‘It’s not a regular bank though, it is Benedict?’ said Glinda, moving closer to the mic. ‘It’s a private bank, right? That’s the intriguing thing.’

‘I have to go,’ said Benedict, and ended the call.

I listened to a few moments of muffled mumbling from the group. Then, having heard enough, I turned the podcast off.

‘Oh dear,’ I said quietly.

‘It’s OK,’ said