Mirth and Woe: Bullshit

Mirth and Woe: Bullshit

Bullshit detector ON.

Meep meep meepmeepmeep meep!

Everybody knows a pub bullshitter.

The kind of pub bullshitter who somehow fixes himself on to your social group, trying his best to impress you and (especially) your lady friends with the not-entirely-believable details of his wonderful life.

The kind of pub bullshitter who puts it about that he was once in the SAS and can kill a man with one simple flick of the wrist; when, if fact, he was thrown out of the Army Cadets for wanking on parade.

The kind of pub bullshitter who tells you that he lives in a penthouse flat in the office complex where he operates his multi-billion pound City trading company; when in fact, he still lives with his mum, and gives her half his dole money as rent.

Our pet pub bullshitter was called Mark. He knew absolutely everything about everything, claimed to ride a Triumph motorbike and live in a stately home in the Berkshire countryside. True, he would always turn up in motorcycle leathers and a sixties-style helmet, but it soon became apparent that he parked his moped round the corner from the pub, a moped he had ridden from his shared council flat. In Bracknell. The stately home in question turned out to be the nearby council-owned South Hill Park Arts Centre, where he was allowed to clean the floors.

Still, he was mostly harmless, and we let him ponce drinks off us for sheer comedy value, and the knowledge that any political argument would end with Mark's frenzied assertion that he would "sort the whole thing out with Michael." That's Michael 'Tarzan' Heseltine, who was a family friend.

Any sporting argument would hinge on whether his personal buddies England manager Bobby Robson or Wales rugby legend J.P.R. Williams would be called into the fray; whilst "Where are you going on your holidays?" wouldn't get past the fact that Onassis was letting him use his pad in Monte Carlo for the week of the Monaco Grand Prix.

My arse, he was.

God help any woman who attracted his attention. The bullshit-o-meter would go off the scale, as he tried, unsuccessfully, to impress her into a date, or onto the end of his (so he said) ten inches of meat.

"The bloody liar", said Eddy, "I saw it in the Gents' the other week. It's tiny."

"So, what were you doing looking at his cock, you enormous Gaylord?"

"Umm… Good question."

So, when he asks of a not unattractive young lady that appeared in the Lounge Bar of our local the question "What do you do?" he gets the answer:

"I'm a student. At St Andrews University in Scotland."

"Really? I can come up to see you in my helicopter, and I'll take you out on the Old Course for a round of golf. I'm a member there."

"Err… it's a public course."

"Did I tell you I've got a helicopter?"

We next saw him three weeks later, a broken wreck. He had taken his 50cc "helicopter" up to see his prey in St Andrews, only to find himself completely stood up, and the throbbing monster between his legs deciding it didn't fancy the 460 mile return trip to Bracknell.

We might have started to feel sorry for Mark there and then, if he had not got it into his head that he was some sort of dashing James Bond secret service figure. The only dashing he ever did was if he was late for the Dole Office, and it was a James Bond operating deep, deep undercover as a hairy biker in a council flat, taking on the evil genius bringing down Western Civilisation by not wiping their feet at South Hill Park.

Q Division hadn't been particularly kind to him. There were no rocket launchers on the front of the moped, and it only transformed into a helicopter in his dreams. But he did have one thing to impress the ladies - his new penis extension.

"I've got a gun," he told anyone who would listen.

Challenged to prove it, he produced an attaché case (not unlike the one I got free with Texaco fuel stamps) and produced a realistic-looking shooter.

"What did I tell you?" he gloated, "Licensed to kill."

The only thing he was licensed to kill, it turned out, was kittens, as the gun was no more real than his helicopter, and he was still a wanker. Proved positve by the other object in his attaché case: this month's copy of Razzle, the gentleman's leisure magazine for skanks.

This didn't stop Mark from whipping his weapon out in public, and it was not long before he was spotted on a spy mission outside Barclays Bank in Bracknell with the thing stuffed in the belt of his trousers.

WOOOMPH! went a dozen very large and heavily-armed coppers, as our poor bullshitting friend was jumped on by several extremely angry and heavily-armed police officers, who set about him in no uncertain manner until he had finished pooing himself.

Eyewitnesses reported increasingly large stains both at the front and the back of his trousers as he was led away; and a short argument between various officers of the law as to who was going to sit in the back of the van with "that smelly bastard" and who would rather walk back to the station, thank you very much.

After that little episode, Mark stopped being James Bond.

Bullshit detector OFF.


Apropos of nothing

This little story appeared in this week's Popbitch mailout:

>> Bond news <<
From 007 to security guard

Patrick Bateman writes:
"You said last week that Gunnar Shafer of Kalmar,
Sweden managed to change his name to James Bond.
I used to work in a dole office and my Monday
morning clients included no less than four James
Bonds, all by deed poll. One of them told me he
wanted to be a secret agent. I got him a job
as a security guard. He seemed well pleased."

I could not possibly comment on the true identity of Mr Bateman. Plz to pass the chainsaw.