‘Miaow,” says Robert Maxwell. “Miaow,” replies Ghislaine. “Miaow,” says daddy. “Miaow,” says daughter. Maxwell’s longsuffering secretary, Carol Bragoli, typing nearby, hears both sides of this conversation as Robert, being a master of the universe, always had his phone on loudspeaker so lickspittles could savour every blah. The miaowing went on for minutes and, so far as I could tell, Bragoli didn’t have a sick bucket.
It’s almost impossible not to see this vignette through the prism of Succession, with Ghislaine as a precursor of Siobhan Roy, decorous daughter with no evident business skills, swanning around as though she owns the place and yearning for daddy’s validation; while daddy, when not peeing from the top-floor office of his lamestream media business on to the peasants below, barks at jellyfish underlings in his wake.
