Song 81: Charmless Man

Ok, it's not that I've got a particular thing about the upbeat, slightly annoying, singles from 'The Great Escape'. [see Song 67]

This post isn't really about the song, or music at all, it's just an excuse to first tell what I think is a funny, or at least representative, story, and then pivot to a more general and humourless diatribe.

So, for the song, actually, I had a few options to pin the tale to, as I don't, in truth, associate it with a piece of music. I could have gone with 'I Just Dropped in to see What Condition My Condition as In' as a tribute to Kenny Rogers, I could have gone with 'Fortunate Son' by Creedence (the Dude's favourite band), which is a great song, I could have gone with 'Don't Stand So Close to Me' by the Police (which I think was the trigger, what with the, you know, news, for me writing about this) but I've plumped for 'Charmless Man', because that's really what it's about.

I mean, look, I'm sure I've been the charmless man myself. Plenty of times.

Still, probably, mostly in my life, I haven't been sociable enough to be that type of charmless man. But there was a window in my life where a) I seemed to want to talk to people and b) people seemed to want to talk to me. So I met a few such men, mostly pretty harmless really, but one stands out.

For the years after I started in my current employment, I really enjoyed talking about it to people, who were generally fascinated by it and would grill me for hours on end. It was nice for me to have something to talk about, to be at ease and confident in a social situation. And occasionally that attracted the odd coked-up advertising guy who really wanted to help me take quizzing to the next level and bored on about it with cliches a little too long, but that was all well and good really.

Only twice, actually, in those early years, did I meet people who, when I told them what I did, were completely indifferent, one because, I don't know, he was just a very dull guy, the other because he was so thoroughly, thrillingly, wrapped up in himself.

It is this chap I will describe now.

It was a friend's birthday at a pub in central London. It was early-ish 2009 - I remember this because it was one of the first times I went out into London after I broke my leg in November 2008 - I recall hobbling a little from the tube to the pub ... this will prove relevant as I imagine whatever discomfort I was feeling at standing up for a long time was exacerbated.

I was enjoying the evening, having pleasant conversations with various people including old friends.

Then I suppose I "lost my place", went to the loo or something, came back, there's the host, my friend, by the bar - introduces me to a couple of people, "Here's my friend ### and this is her boyfriend ****". OK, at this point, I vacillate over whether including the name. I've met several very pleasant people with the name so it's not a dig at the name in the slightest ... but I think it helps for you to visualize, so, you know, his name began with T, ended in Y, had four letters. So ___ or not ___, that is the question, i guess.

So, here's the thing, T had a cold, and not a casual, polite cold, but a heavy, smelly cold. But that wasn't going to stop him from employing his usual conversational strategy, which was to lean in close and tell you important things.

My friend and T's girlfriend distanced themselves quickly - it was just me and him.

Here's another thing. T, who is probably at least 5 years younger than me (I'm 30 at the time) is wearing a green tweed suit. I went to university in St Andrews, this kind of thing is not a shock to me per se, but it was a rare look for the young folk of London in those days.

T had the classic floppy hair of my public-school teens, again an unusual look by that point. We quickly moved on to talking about films, he directed it there. He spoke with tremendous and grand authority. He asked me what my favourite film was. I answered 'The Big Lebowski'. Then came the golden line "Yes, that's the answer I'd expect someone with your level of film appreciation to have". Really. And he meant it kindly.

So he explained to me everything that meant 'The Big Lebowski' was a trite and meaningless film, which was good of him. I asked "Do you work in film?" He said "No, I'm just a bit of an expert on it". We talked about film some more and safe to say his expertise was knocking me backwards ...

...well, something was knocking me backwards. It was a decent-sized upstairs room, probably about 15 metres all the way across - I first encountered him near the entrance, at one end of the bar. As he leaned in and in, failing to practice social distancing and breathing his fumes all over me, I, subconsciously at first, but then, in a way that seemed utterly blatant to me but clearly was too subtle a signal for him, took step after after step backwards, till, I do recall, he had me pinned against the far wall, a full 12 or so metres from where we started.

I recall friends gradually leaving the party and waving and feeling utterly helpless to escape and bid them a proper farewell. T was overpowering.

I was being schooled and assailed. Inevitably, a day or so later, I did get my own cold, and no one has ever known more precisely the source of their germs.

Oh, and there's a punchline, which he held back. I recall he held it back deliberately, he waited and waited to tell me the name of the film that was everything that 'The Big Lebowski' was not ... "no, really, if you want a film which is in a similar genre but just much better in every way, you want ....

... Pineapple Express" ...

and there it was, there was the elixir...

...or rather, thankfully there was the spell broken. Some combination of politeness and intrigue had held me there too long, half-wondering if somewhere within there, T did have something to offer. Only then did I have the clarity and courage to snort and say "Thanks, lovely to meet you, I've got to go".

OK, so that's the funny bit (at least I hope it was a bit funny) ...

... the serious point ... ok, this was 2009 ...

Like I said, I went to a public school, I went to University in St Andrews, I'd met Tories, I knew Tories.

And they could be really nice. But they stood out. They were obvious. And they were usually frowned upon, for better or worse, amongst people I knew. The age I was, it felt like, apart from a certain band of eccentrics, my generation had given up on conservativism. I know, it sounds ludicrous now, and other people's experience might be different, but that's what I felt. Complacent.

Well, something Tories could never be was at all cool, whatever cool is.

How does this link to the guy I've described above? I didn't find out his politics, he wasn't hiding, if he was a Tory he certainly looked like one, and he certainly wasn't cool.

It's just, I think something happened between 2004-ish and 2009-ish, something which has let all this happen. They came back, and they were a certain type.

I lived in London then, so I saw it happening in London, and London's where it started. Maybe it started in 2005 when Justin Greening won Putney, maybe it happened in the run-up to the 2008 mayoral race when loads of Londoners were so sick of Ken Livingstone they voted for Boris Johnson. But it happened. Suddenly people were openly telling me they were voting Tory (maybe they always had, but they hasn't said it before), saying Labour hadn't really done anything in their years in power, blaming Labour for the financial crash. And they weren't all the stereotypical Tories, they were people who'd talk about music and films, people who dressed ok, were at parties with cool, nice people.

The editor of GQ was a guy called Dylan Jones whose writing was always to me, a huge emptiness, in ignorance of the substance and an obsession with the style, and then he started putting his weight behind Cameron and saying how Cameron was a cool guy and it was ok for snappy cool guys to vote for Cameron. What difference did it all this stuff make? Enough ...

It was the detoxification, and it was being done by toxic, toxic people.

I never met my green-tweeded film expert again. I asked my friend about him and he just laughed. My guess is he went into politics. Blue sky thinking. Big ideas. Sell the NHS. Mad how many of those big idea youngish right-wing guys I've met in the last 10 or so years. Working for Dominic Cummings now.

Complacency.