“Daisy, you daft little baggage! What’s this I hear about you wanting to become a novelist? Nobody on God’s green earth is ever going to pay for the foolishness that comes out of your emaciated brain. Isn’t that right, Miss O’Brien?”

“Right as rain. I’d rather read the scribblings of a diseased farmhouse chicken than be subjected to Daisy’s scatterbrained tales. What’s with all these bloody people thinking they’re talented, these days? Not everybody can be good at something just because a buggery notion flits through their head. It’s ridiculous.”

“You lower classes really are quite harsh with each other, O’Brien. It’s most unseemly. Why, everyone has a marketable talent that could take them straight to the top. Even me! Let me take off my hat and show you …”

“… See?”

“That’s rather impressive, Your Ladyship.”

“Yes, I know. I first showed Lord Grantham this little trick on our wedding night and it was separate bedrooms for us ever after! If that isn’t artistry, I don’t know what is.”

“But that’s not real talent, is it Granny? You only took your teeth out again and pulled your wrinkly old lower-lip over your nostrils.”

“I call that a rude remark, coming from a girl whose deformed feet ruined every pair of ballet slippers ever purchased for her. Forget about finding a skill in life, Edith. You can’t even grow toenails properly.”

“You swore never again to bring up the subject of these unsightly clubs I’m cursed to stumble around upon, Granny. Go ahead and laugh at me, all of you! Daisy will write her stupid novel and I’ll go through life as a hideous outcast with no more talent than a lowly kitchen maid. Is that what you want?”

“What is all the bloody fuss in here? I’m upstairs trying to seduce the telephone man, thank you very much.”

“It’s Daisy who started it, Lady Mary. She thinks she’s talented enough to write a novel and it’s caused your Granny to do disturbing things with her skin.”

“Well, of course Daisy is talented enough to write a novel. Every human being on this earth is gifted, and those that aren’t can always leak a totally private tape of themselves writhing beneath the urinary blast of a hip-hop minstrel!”

“Good heavens. Now there’s a skill they didn’t teach us at charm school.”

“The point is, Granny, if Daisy starts ‘writing’ and discovers that she has the cognitive ability of a Rhesus Monkey on crack, there’s always a respectable back-up plan in her quest for fame. We simply must look to the Americans for creative inspiration in these competitive times.”

“Mrs. Patmore, if it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll stick with suet and kidney pies. Fame sounds a bit wet for my taste.”

As for me, I wonder where I might find one of these hippity-hoppity fellows? It sounds a rather golden opportunity …

“I know what you’re thinking, Edith, and you might as well forget it. You haven’t got any talent for that, either.”

“Buuhaagh! [sniff. sniff.] “Not even good enough to be peed-on by an American, like the pretty girls …”[Buhhaaghh!]”

“Knock, knock. Mrs. Hughes? I say, I’ve just been listening to the ladies chat in the upstairs drawing-room and I think I have a tantalizing little proposition for you. Are you free?”