The first thing to note about showing off is that it’s pointless without an audience. The desirable audience is gullible, easily impressed, comprising dumb gawpers and slow witted smart remark makers with laryngitis. The ideal audience is vocal – ooh! aah! wow! – but not eloquent: ‘Think that’s clever? My dog can do better than that!’
Having assembled a remunerative audience, this being the sponsored bit in the title, the showing off can begin. The perfect paying audience is unwitting and not paying with money at all. It takes a lot to impress people who have turned up expecting it, such as a circus audience; so much, in fact that if there is no showing off of a major and practised variety, they will go away disappointed, may complain and even demand their money back. This primer is not for those who wish to be one of the crew on a ship of fools; if you want to go to stilt walker’s school, pay up, turn up and get up. Such lofty ambitions are none of my concern.
Here my focus is upon the traditional, unwaged but hugely rewarded show off. The one whose feats will still be the topic of conversation when he is dust. The one who attracts scorn from rivals, opprobrium from the press and sets tongues wagging round the world: in short the creator of shimmering emerald envy. The outstanding human being, the noticeable one, the successful show off. Often not the one with the highly paid job, and not necessarily the great thinker but the one who gets noticed. We all want to be noticed, but not for something bad. Being noticed as the idiot whose shopping bags burst at the top of a steep hill, or the clot who walked out of his shoes in a sewer, or a person with spectacularly public underwear failure is not the kind of attention we’re after. We want head turning with a gasp, and then a smile. A concerted rush with autograph books would be nice. So, how to achieve this?
The element of surprise.
This is essential. You cannot show off with a skill you regularly trot out for all and sundry. Done often enough, even the most stunning feats will generate meagre enthusiasm, waning to snitching and a telling off.
‘Mummy! Mummy! Billy is juggling the cat again.’ is a remark unlikely to induce admiration in any form.
If frequent repetition will cause actual irritation: ‘Baby Hercules, put the fridge down at once, I need to get the milk out!’; publicly practised perfectionism will produce outright anger: ‘If your father catches you demolishing the house and rebuilding it a foot to the left one more time, you’ll be in for such a slap, Montmorency, I’m telling you now.’
Steer clear of feats of mental derring do with all but total strangers. In somebody you meet for three stops on a railway train the feat of knowing the exact length of the great wall of China* is one of the three marvels of the journey. The others would be not losing the ticket and getting off at the right stop. To be related to someone who knows the exact length of the great wall of China** is more annoyance than a soul can bear and to marry such a prodigy will result in a lifetime wearing the epithet – ‘Oh she’s the one who married that know all that’s always going on about the length of the great wall of China.’
“Quite. Well, who cares?”
‘Who indeed?’
“So how long is it then?”
‘I’ve no idea***’
“Me neither. Anyway he could be wrong.****”
Where to practise.
So it is clear that an essential ingredient for truly successful gasp creating showing off is somewhere private to practise. Bear in mind that for the really good show off this can take years. No one begins by spinning a double decker bus round their head; the normal path is to see if you can lift your scooter up and wave it around without hitting your sister or breaking your thumb and then work up. For this, privacy is necessary, otherwise it becomes boring: ‘Have you seen my car keys?’ “Oh Alan will have them, he’s in the back garden, car twirling, as usual.”
So depending on the scale of the physical or mental feat, you may find you require the sole use of anything from a lock-up garage to the British Library at regular intervals.
Practise, practise, practise.
It’s no good if it fails. No good at all. The only person who ever got anywhere with ‘Hang on, it’s all gone a bit wrong,’ was Tommy Cooper, funny failed magician and he did it by accident. Normal show offs have to get it eye poppingly right first go. Magic, it has to be said, is a form of sponsored showing off that requires years of rehearsal that can only end in scorched eyebrows, trapped fingers and a lifelong hatred of rabbits, doves and the flags of all nations. Seasoned magicians have been known to develop peculiar hairstyles due to mirror aversion and, in extreme cases, glitter rash.
Don’t be ordinary.
Pick your skill with the care you would pick an alligator’s nose. Ordinary not only does not cut the mustard, it attracts scorn: ‘Oh can you make your handkerchief into a bunny rabbit indeed? So what – I can make mine into a herd of elephant crossing the Serengeti; watch while I make the baby on the end take a bath in the river – there.’ It can attract rivalry and actual challenge: ‘Oh the good old eighteen times table, what fun! Shall we alternate in the cubed version, in Latin? I’ll begin; VMVCXXXVI. Now you…….’ It may even result in injury: ‘Could you cycle back along the tightrope and fetch the cougar while I stay here and plait the pythons?’
Don’t copy television.
All the food showing off that can be done has been done by previous practitioners, who wrote books about it and got rich. You can blowtorch the top of your sugary pudding all you like, all that will happen is restaurant critics or an increase in your insurance. No one who matters is interested anymore.
Sickly body parts in all stages from dropping off to dissected are so passé and merely bared bodies have been known as fashion for aeons. Currently the invited audience on the spindly gold chairs probably has more flesh on show than the models and, moreover, set with bigger diamonds, which they actually own themselves. So forget showing off by dressing up; been there, made the teeshirt with the boob holes in and now selling the third billion of them back to the sweat shop factory workers who made them, as a uniform.
Show off jobs.
The ultimate in sponsored showing off, you may think. But what do they actually do?
Airline pilot – bus driver in the sky.
Astronaut – same thing, higher bus.
Television presenter – ten a penny and not your own words unless you’re a shopping TV presenter and trying to show off by being a shop assistant. We think not.
Politician – looks like the ultimate in showing off. People will vote for you to show off. They will want you to show off more than similar show offs in other countries. They will pay you to show off. You can out show them off by voting yourself more pay to show off even more. You can show off by being corrupt, by being straight, by being gay, by talking to the press, by not talking to the press. The opportunities for showing off are constant, endless, 24 hours a day. It’s the show off job for show offs…
………………………….and first against the wall come the revolution because no matter how much notice we take of show offs, nobody loves a smartarse.
Coming soon: How to be modest and self effacing. The essential guide for parliamentary candidates. £425 (tax deductable) per set of two slim boxed volumes.
* 3,890 miles.
**exactly 3,890 miles
*** the idea is 3,890 miles
**** the actual mileage is in dispute, if, however, you count all the side walls and supports it’s 3,890 miles.
JaneLaverick.com – showing off with silly jokes on Monday morning, ner ner nee ner ner. Taa daa!