School Leaver
A CAREERS MASTER interviews BOGGIS a school leaver.
CM: Now then Boggis, what sort of job had you in mind for yourself once you’ve left school?
BOGGIS: Please sir, I want to be a hero.
CM: A hero?
BOGGIS: Yes sir, like those ninety-seven armed policemen trained in unarmed combat who without a thought for their own personal safety beat up a kid waving a cap pistol at the Queen that time, sir.
CM: Very laudable, Boggis. But I feel I must point out that heroism is becoming a very overcrowded profession these days. What particular aspect of the job attracts you most?
BOGGIS: Well sir, it’s the publicity. I mean, you get your picture in the papers don’t you, and you get on Blankety Blank and things, especially if you’ve been injured.
CM: Yes, there’s a lot of money to be made if you can get the breaks, Boggis, ha ha ha.
BOGGIS: Ha ha ha, sir.
CM: Have you been injured recently, Boggis?
BOGGIS: Well sir, I bruised my knee rescuing a cat from a tree the other week.
CM: That doesn’t really count, does it Boggis? A bruised knee isn’t all that debilitating. You haven’t lost any major limbs in the service of your country by any chance?
BOGGIS: No sir, don’t think so.
CM: No hand or foot gone missing?
BOGGIS: No sir. But I am colour blind.
CM: No good, Boggis. Doesn’t show up in the news reels. This cat – you couldn’t make it a rabid fox could you?
BOGGIS: No sir, just a cat I’m afraid.
CM: Good, you’re modest. Public can’t abide a cocky hero. Well Boggis, what else have you done that the press might latch onto?
BOGGIS: Well sir, yesterday I rescued this chap from a flooded pothole just minutes before the shaft gave way, sir.
CM: Ah, now this is more like it. How far down was he?
BOGGIS: Only about a hundred and twenty metres, sir.
CM: Don’t overdo the modesty, Boggis. Did he have a heart condition by any chance?
BOGGIS: I don’t think so, sir.
CM: Pity.
BOGGIS: He had a couple of broken ribs, sir.
CM: Well, you see, again Boggis, it’s not good enough is it? It’s been done. Loth as I am to admit our Italian brethren beat us to anything, but their little dwarf has already got the potholing market cornered. Press, TV. I think there’s even an album and an exercise video in the pipeline.
BOGGIS: But didn’t their rescue attempt fail sir?
CM: That’s not the point, Boggis. You see, the media need an angle before they can make you a hero, you need a gimmick. Now if you’d come in here with, say, half a pound of shrapnel in your leg – or even your trouser pocket – picked up while, I don’t know, saving Master Peter Bloody Phillips from a booby-trapped conker, I might have been able to help. That would have been news you see.
BOGGIS: Oh sir, isn’t there anything I could do?
CM: You’re really into this hero business aren’t you, Boggis?
BOGGIS: Oh yes sir. I’ve even changed my middle name to Trevor in honour of PC Trevor Lock, hero of the siege of –
CM: Saint Trevor Lock, Boggis, show some respect.
BOGGIS: Sorry, sir.
CM: I’ll tell you what. You nip up to the Chemistry lab now and see if you can’t burn off a couple of fingers mopping up some spilt acid or something.
BOGGIS: A couple of fingers, sir?
CM: It’s a start. You’ve got to get some good solid suffering behind you before the media will even look at you. Meanwhile I’ll have a word with one or two people I know on the tabloids, they’re the experts on creating heroes. By the way Boggis, have you got a girlfriend?
BOGGIS: No sir.
CM: Good god, you’re not – ?
BOGGIS: No sir.
CM: Thank God for that. A gay British hero…let’s not try to mince before we can walk, Boggis. Well, see if you can’t get yourself a woman as well, will you? Blondes are usually the most photogenic.
BOGGIS: I’ll get onto one right away, sir.
CM: Good lad. So, when I see you again I expect there to be less of you than there is now. And Boggis?
BOGGIS: Sir?
CM: Make sure you can still write after the holocaust. Don’t want you signing autographs with your toes, doesn’t look terribly British you know.
PS
Don’t know what axe I was grinding here, but it must have been inspired by some recent tragic rescue attempt in Europe which now makes me feel uneasy. Suffering should never inspire anything other than sympathy and the desire to help if you can. All you have to do is imagine yourself or someone you love in the same situation. But I can hand on heart say that at least it wasn’t the heroes themselves I was going after here, it was the awful bloody media circus that comes squawking around like rabid seagulls looking for copy. (Do seagulls catch rabies? If they did, a media circus is what they would look like.)
I also suspect the tone of this piece might have been partially inspired by the kind of people I was mixing with at the time. The Playwrights Company, who put on a couple of revues in the mid-eighties and even commissioned a play from me, were rather more actively political than the kinds of people I usually mixed with, and because they were left wing, they tended to be rather serious about it. Maybe they felt they had further to travel to get even. I remember one workshop exercise I participated in. I hate workshops at the best of times – if a thing of mine works then I want all the credit, I don’t want to have to acknowledge someone else for putting me on the right path – but anyway, we were meant to write a scene about a divorcing couple and how they went about dividing their goods and chattels. I think the idea was, we men were being asked to see things from the woman’s point of view for a change and try to write them more sympathetically. I wrote my scene in the form of a panto: “I’ve worked my ass off for this marriage.” “Oh no you haven’t.” “Oh yes I have.” They took a dim view.
I certainly remember PC Trevor Lock, a key player in the Iranian Embassy siege of 1980. In fact, the famous SAS storming of the building to free the hostages was televised live as it happened, the May Bank Holiday, a Monday. My brother and I returned from watching Apocalypse Now at the cinema in time to catch the reruns on the evening news. My dad pointed out one SAS man hopping over a balcony just before the charge he’d thrown inside went off, showering the road outside with glass and debris. “Nearly blew his ass off,” Dad said wonderingly. He knew bravery when he saw it. He had been in the war, a radio operator on Liberator bombers. But did the hostages care whether half the world was watching their daring rescue? I’m sure the only thing they wanted was to get home safe and whole to their loved ones. Some of them didn’t. So I guess the awfulness of that is only bearable if we are able to balance it against the resolve and professionalism of the soldiers sent in to save the rest. Just don’t expect the press to adopt any kind of sober or objective tone.