The wrong trousers

You may have guessed from some of my previous posts that I’m not much of a fan of suits and suit-wearing occupations, and you’d be right. So the thought of spending an evening at a ‘do’ in an office with business people ‘networking’ and having coversations punctuated by bizzwords over intricate canopes normally cheers me up as, being a musician rather than middle-management, it is something I don’t normally have to do.

Thankfully I was at the aforementioned ‘do’ as part of the hired entertainment. Surrounded by well-spoken, well-dressed and well-groomed people driving executive cars I felt intimidated. As I played, men and women who owned portfolios worth hundred of thousands, if not millions of pounds spoke with other men and women charged with making sure those millions were put to good use on the stock market.

As three men talked about Microsoft investments behind me, I couldn’t help feeling a little insignificant. My income is never likely to reach six figures. They deal with money in figures beyond what I’m likely to earn in my lifetime. They move in circles of wealth, power and influence whereas, quite frankly, I don’t. I started to feel like some court jester or travelling minstrel in the court of the landed gentry.

Then something quite spectacular happened. Nick Park, creator of Wallace and Grommit, was a guest at the launch party and had prepared a few little sketches to mark the ocassion. Soon a couple of people asked Nick for signed sketches of the loveable relatives of Tony Hart’s ‘Morph’. Suddenly there was a queue of the suits lining up for autographed pictures like children in line at Santa’s grotto. No doubt some were genuinely for children waiting for Mummy or Daddy to return home, but there was something marvelous about all of these powerful people walking around carrying little A4 sketches in little poly-sleeves like a new birthday train-set with big, beaming smiles on their faces.

There you have it. Fame and artistic talent – the universal leveller.