18. The Sermon On The Wheelbarrow

What Ho Proles!

I’d been given ten minutes to prepare for one of the most significant speeches of my political career!

Now, let me ask you a question. Can you rush greatness? I think it takes only take a moment or two of considered reflection before you’d agree that the answer to this conundrum lies in the region of the negative, or, at least, not too far away from that enlightened place where one finds the reply ‘don’t ask such a ruddy silly question, Murgatroid.’

Yet people will still persist in claiming that heroic bods are being ‘urged’ on towards some great accomplishment as though it were a particularly hard pill to swallow. Is there anything as silly as the thought of having greatness ‘thrust’ upon one? If a chap is anything like me, he doesn’t like to be urged on towards anything. It takes me at least fifteen minutes in the morning to ponder my choice of tie and find my favourite cufflinks.

What I think you’ll actually find is that those of us with heroic spirits eventually get around to doing our great tasks in our own good time. Greatness should be made to wait. Like a hard-boiled egg is made to wait to be cracked open in the morning.

The problem with Larry ‘Bomber’ Harris is that he was not cast in the heroic mould. He’s a classics scholar who happens to have a blue in athletics from Oxford. He can immediately name half a dozen clever Greek types who had one of those eureka moments and tell you how they did it in much less time than ten minutes. I, on the other hand, don’t put much store in breakthroughs achieved in bathtubs. You’re much too likely to break your damn neck slipping on a bar of soap. Nor do I care when he goes about claiming that in the field of sport, immortality is usually won in less than six hundred seconds. I admit that many female athletes have undoubtedly broken one of the shorter distance records in less time than that, but they’ve also had to keep a few minutes free in order to go and have a quick wash and a shave.

So, let’s be quite clear about this. A gentleman needs much longer than ten minute to straighten his tie, brush down his hair, and give a ‘tally ho’ to the world at large. I barely had time to ponder this unreasonable ten minutes deadline before Harris was back, prodding me towards my destiny, urging me on towards greatness, and generally cracking eggs that were not in a fit state to be cracked.

‘Come on Murgatroid,’ he said, rubbing his hands together in excitement. ‘Where’s your speech? I thought you’d be ready to take your place on the world stage? What have you been doing with your time, man? Your public awaits.’

I decided not to mention my theories about bathing Greeks, hirsute female runners, nor, for that matter, hirsute Greek female runners having a wash and shave in the bathtub. Instead, I told My Man to trot along to the Bentley and find my bag of speeches. He carries all my important documents around with him much as a Presidential aide carries the codes to the old atomic whatnots. Though I say it myself, my speeches have proven quite explosive in their time and not without the occasional fallout.

By the time the papers were in my hand, I barely had chance to select myself two pages of well-honed wisdom before I was being manhandled onto a fruit and vegetable barrow that Cyril Henderson had managed to borrow from the local market. It was not exactly the most dignified way of entering into a general election campaign and I felt distinctly more pear than Blair.

‘Don’t complain!’ Larry barked as I uttered a loud curse as my shin cracked against the barrow’s handle. I raised myself up on that unsteady podium and gazed out across the heads of my waiting public.

Now, I’m not going to try to dramatise my speech. I’m going to give it to you in its written form, free of the splutters that overcame me on the day, and free of the interruption when I had to pause to allow My Man to deal with a couple of hecklers who were undermining the democratic process by asking me the price of my bananas.

What follows, then, is the full text of my speech as I delivered it on the day, with a few emendations where I adlibbed in the way of we seasoned political veterans. For the sake of verisimilitude, though, please read it with the proper scene in mind: Yours Truly atop the large flat bed of a green wooden fruit and vegetable barrow, surrounded by a sizable crowd of Wednesday morning shoppers. In the background, paint in My Man dealing with the hecklers and, in the process, make sure you make him look suitably impressive as went about showing off his skills in oriental fighting styles. I think he did a damn good job of demonstrating why I have to register him as a dangerous weapon at the local police station every six months.

Hustings Speech Given to the People of Smallchurch
by the Honourable Jacob Peas Murgatroid
on Wednesday, 13th April, 2005.

Good people of Smallchurch, I greet you! Bad people of Smallchurch, I still offer you welcome and say ‘What Ho!’ I welcome you all, good or bad, young or old, rich or poor, because this country has been too long divided under this oppressive Labour government of Mr. Tony Blair.

Now, I’m not one of those politicians that like to judge a person simply by his or her sins. For all I know, you might all be the rummiest bunch of thieving prole scum to grace the shire of C---- N----. But I’m not here to pass judgement. I am not here to condemn you. I do that, every fortnight Friday, in my role as a local magistrate. What I am here to do is to stand before you as a humble man. And here I am: a humble man who wishes to tell you why you will be voting for him on Thursday, May the Fifth, 2005.

You will vote for me because in addition to being so extraordinarily humble, I am also your future. I am your promised land! I am the ne plus ultra of hope! And what hope, I hear you cry? It is the hope that is the hope of prosperity. It is the hope of jobs, the hope of safe and clean streets. It is the hope of this once proud country of ours finding its feet on the world stage.

I tell you now, people of Smallchurch: I promise to bring you prosperity. I promise to bring you jobs. And I promise to bring prosperity and jobs to your children, and their children’s children.

Do I hear you ask about Europe? Well, only I can promise to fight for the things you believe in. I promise to fight the legislations that stand in the way of your conducting business. I promise to help lower the taxes that cripple our industry. I promise to put a halt to the crazy European laws.

Only the other day, I was arguing with Europe. I was arguing against Europe when they came here to ban the spring festival that has been held in these parts for millennia. And I said to them. Keep away with your highly spiced sausages. Keep away with your cheeses with their holes. And we don’t want your tiny motor cars with their fuel efficiency. And your unfunny comedians are not welcome here when we have unfunny comedians of our very own. And I also told them what they can do with their filthy satellite film channels.

So, in the coming weeks, as my opponents try to smear me with lies: remember the reasons why they don’t want you to vote for a man who will look out for local interests. Remember why they are afraid of a man who will stand up to Europe on your behalf. Remember why they don’t want a simple humble man of the people to rise to a position of authority. Remember, too, that they want to put one of their activists in parliament to wreck the chances of the good kind decent people of Smallchurch.

If you want disunity, vote for them.

If you want unemployment, vote for them.

If you want to become the chattel of Brussels, vote for them.

But if you want happiness, employment, and prosperity: vote for me. Vote Conservative. On the 5th of May: vote Murgatroid.

I’m sure you’ll agree that it was not bad at all, even though I say it myself. And I don’t honestly believe it could have gone any better. There I was, promising to put an end to the reign of tyrants and criminals, whilst My Man was demonstrating the pragmatism of the Murgatroid plan by beating merry sorts of bell out of the heads of the two loutish hecklers. I like to think whether you liked action or words: my speech had something for you.

‘Now then,’ I said to the crowd, ‘does anybody have any questions? Come on, people! Don’t be shy! We must start to trust each other if I’m to represent you in the mother parliament.’

The usual silence descended over the crowd and I was about to give them a wave and jump off the wheelbarrow when a hand popped up above the heads of the shoppers. It then began to move through the crowd a bit like a periscope trailing a merchant fleet. Eventually it reached the front ranks where a face broke to the surface. Trailing behind it was a thin body attached to another arm, which was trying to handle a dog lead. The man had a shocking mass of white hair but the skin and face were closer to the muted yellows of his cheap anorak and the grisly veneer of his broken teeth. The whole resembled a slightly anaemic torpedo dressed for all weathers.

He was, however, easily identified as one of the most common type of person you’ll meet on the campaign trail. He was the ubiquitous man taking a dog for a walk. They usually have something to say for themselves, being in the whole quite lonely creatures, only what they say usually don’t affect a man’s life in the way Mr. Arthur Bridlington would affect mine. Not since Michael Foot took over the Labour Party has a gentleman in a bad anorak so radically changed the political landscape of Great Britain...