Fat Boy Slim and the Blue Horizon

Of QVC and Carrots

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 21:27:59 +0200

I can't help myself. It isn't something of which I'm proud. The carrots come later.

My "set top box" receives UK TV stations, perhaps entirely illegally, here in the Irish Republic where I live. When I say receive, what I mean is an unreliab inter pte signa that ca star quit str ng but brea up badl . You get the idea. Quite frustrating at times.

Strangely (or probably not at all strangely) the only stations unaffected by this fractured reception are the selling channels of the QVC and BidTV type. Sometimes that is all that there is to watch that has any coherence, and I've become ever so slightly addicted to them. I have never bought anything from these channels and should news reach you that I have, then you have my permission to track me down and fell me with a single shot from a whale gun (great value at £99.99 and it is on Easy Pay too. UK P&P £14.80...a purely arbitrary sum as I'm sure you know).

What transfixes me is the entirely spurious sincerity of the presenters. When I used to watch "Middle Class Big Brother"...er...I mean "The Apprentice", I was initially amazed at the salaries claimed by many of the contestants, some of whom weren't possessed of towering intellects. What they did possess was that killer instinct; that ability to sell whatever it was to whoever would buy it and regardless of the morals involved. What we should recognise as "cunning". Making sales was all and it is scarily Faustian in many ways. I do not doubt that this is a skill, but I do question a society that places such a premium on it (especially when nurses, social workers and others doing infinitely more worthwhile jobs attract such paultry rewards).

An old girlfriend and I reconnected, in a generally chaste way (there were undertones of our past relationship but she was by then the mother of three grown up children) after a hiatus lasting nearly thirty years. In the last ten years she has risen to a very well paid position (and boy wasn't that an important detail!) in a "cosmetics party" organisation. She had started as a simple "party host" but had, by sheer hard graft, climbed the pyramidal structure (make no mistake - this is pyramid selling) and ended up doing very well thank you. The words "six figure salary" were ones oft repeated. I know what you're thinking, but you'll have to trust me when I say that my eyes have stayed resolutely blue.

She had changed, as I'm sure I have, in the years in between our earlier liason and now. What I noticed about her most was an impatience and a need to live in the present. She took decisions quickly, didn't consult and, if it was wrong, moved on with barely a backward glance and little evidence, outwardly anyway, of regret. She seemed to be slightly embarassed by the "lowly status" of her policeman husband and keen that I should know that she was the main wage earner in their house. In some ways elements of this were admirable and she had certainly reaped the material rewards for her approach, but most things in her life were obviously measured against a scale where aquisition equalled worth. You can read about my reflections on measuring worth in a previous blog of mine which I entitled rather unimaginatively "For What Its Worth".

Where does the carrot come in to all of this? Well, as some of you might know, the carrot is not naturally orange. Left to it's own devices it would rather be purple, but the Dutch, in a fit of patriotism, bred the now more familiarly coloured root vegetable of today. Marketing, plain and simple. It had to become something different, in a permanent way, to succeed. How many of us have seen a purple carrot at "Alec Rose - Greengrocer"?

It is sometimes hard to hold on to who one truly is. Many forces lay siege to us and any of us might be tempted to trade ourselves, or a part of ourselves, in pursuit of success, however we measure that. The mistake is, I believe, in using an external scale - the bigger my car/house/salary, the more value I will be seen to have as a person. The folks on QVC, Alan Sugar's apprentices and my ex-girlfriend are not necessarily inherently bad people. Probably they're not. What they have achieved could be seen as some kind of victory in fact. They are well paid and enjoy the trappings of monetary success.

What worries me is what I percieve as their lack of personal insight. How the degree of comfort that they have in manipulating the rest of us for, essentially, there own ends is so complete. Targets, targets, targets. Do they believe that, when the time comes that it is no longer required that they maintain it, the persona can be dropped like a mask, revealing the true, original them? Alas, I fear that this is not the reality. When one acts a part for a sufficiently long period, one becomes that person.

So carrots - revel in your purpleness, just in the way that a very flaw-filled me intends not to trade my imperfect centre for something (probably monetarily based) that others might judge me well by. When I reach my final rest it is important for me that I reflect, not necessarily on a life well lived, but at least one that did no harm.My acquistions will mean nothing - only the methods I employed to obtain them will be of note. On the other hand - £25.60 for a 3 litre, non-stick, tabletop, electric skillet that will revolutionise all of my cooking requirements...and it's got an indicator light...

"Sell, Sell, Sell" by Alan Price from his brilliant soundtrack for the Lindsay Anderson film "O Lucky Man!", the sequel to "If".

Fat Boy Slim and the Blue Horizon

Of QVC and Carrots

Jumping Off, Jumping In

A Barrack Room Ballad

Plagiarism, South Dakota. Popn.1

Dinosaur Blues

For What Its Worth

"Seen Anything Good?" - It's A Wrap

There Is A Happy Land

He's Not My Best Friend Now

"Seen Anything Good?" Episode Three

"Seen Anything Good?" Episode Two

Seen Anything Good?* Episode One

My Dance Is Over

Not Another Flaming Juggler!

Lost and Foundered

My Journey of a Thousand Miles

Blue Boat, Pink Bus

Happy Birthday Woodstock!

My Country 'Tis of Thee

Points North

It's Always Winter

Tears? No, A Smut in My Eye...

The Perils of 'Getting a Man In'

Come In To My Parlour...

B Day

B Minus One

B Minus Two

It's All Good, Even The Bad Bits

Mother Had a Tea Chest by the Bed

This One's for Charlotte