Cable 7 script - Tom Thumb

TOM THUMB
Transmission: 6 June 1996
Cable 7 - Live
Are we sitting comfortably, boys and girls? Then I shall begin.
Once upon a time, long ago, in a land far away, the ecological warriors had managed to prevent the last forest in the Kingdom being raised to the ground for its hardwoods.
Many people throughout the land bemoaned the fact that they could no longer buy luxury wooden furniture items at the out-of-town Suite Centres. But not the arboreal worker and his domestic partner who lived in a local authority utilitarian unit within the forest.
The woodcutter and his wife, while intellectually challenged, were happy in their subsistence-level life and wanted for nothing. Nothing, that is, except a son.
Whilst they accepted that, biologically, they were past child-bearing age they constantly badgered the local Health Authority to allow them to have IVF treatment. The local Authority, while sympathetic to their needs, had been Rate Capped and decided that, although their case was worthy, there were no votes to be had in allowing a couple of old codgers who lived in the woods to add to the already overburdened population of the Kingdom.
And so it was that the couple reluctantly accepted that parenthood would never be theirs to savour.
One day, however, the breadwinner of the family was out gathering wood when he came upon a person in the forest. This person appeared bedraggled and the woodcutter took them to his matrimonial home and gave them some camomile tea and some counselling.
"Thank you" said the person "I am a fairy and, for your kindness, I will grant you one wish. What will it be?"
The woodcutter only wanted one thing. A son. He didn't mind if it was only as big as his thumb. So long as he had a son.
"Very well" said the fairy "your wish shall be granted"
When the woodcutter's wife came home he told her all about it. "Tell me again" she said "who told you this?"
"It was a sexually ambiguous social worker, I think. At any rate, he said he was a fairy" said the woodcutter.
And so it came to pass that when the couple came down for their breakfast the following morning there was indeed a vertically challenged male child.
"Well" said the husband "he is only as big as my thumb. What are we to do with him"
"Leave it to me, husband" said the wife "I have had plenty of practice with things as small as your thumb"
And this was true. When they had first got married the wife had had to rationalise her expectations and had become quite expert in downsizing.
And so it was that the couple acquired a son whom they called Tom. As Tom grew into personhood his behaviour became more and more idiosyncratic and just a tad anti-social until one day, during one of his frequent roaming-round-the-forest periods, he was kidnapped by a pair of intellectually challenged and socially inept entrepreneurs who wanted to sell him into non-ethnic servitude.
Being sold into white slavery by a couple of bozos was not to Tom's liking so he set about trying, unsuccessfully, to escape.
Fortunately his sexually ambiguous social worker was trolling through the forest, for perfectly innocuous reasons, you understand, when he came upon Tom tied to a twig and screaming blue murder.
At first the social worker was tempted to walk on by. What other people did to each other for their own gratification was not his affair. But something in Tom's voice made him check that all was OK. It wasn't and so Tom was freed and returned to the loving arms of his surrogate parental figures.
I'd like to say that everyone lived happily ever after but this is not a conventional fairy story.
The parents were arrested and charged with infant abuse (which they were ultimately acquitted of), the social worker was charged with dereliction of duty and later convicted of offences against society by the Style Police (the combination of faux leopard skin and silver lame was always a mistake) and Tom grew up to be a right little hooligan but always escaped punishment by blaming a dysfunctional family upbringing.
© Pariss 1996