by David Nobbs
‘A mistake I certainly didn’t make.’
‘You most assuredly did not, sir. May I ask how exactly you spotted my qualities for the job?’
‘Instinct, Seamus. Call it instinct.’
Towards the end of July, Reggie called a planning meeting in Conference Room B. Reggie sat at one end of the oblong table and Elizabeth at the other. Seated on one side of the table were C.J., David Harris-Jones, Tom, and Seamus Finnegan. Seated on the other side were Tony Webster, Doc Morrissey and Jimmy. Beside Jimmy, on the floor, was his old tuck box. It was ten-thirty on a shirt-sleeve morning. In front of each person was a blotter and a glass.
Under each person’s armpits were two spreading patches of damp.
Three carafes of water stood in the middle of the table.
Reggie began with a general homily on the success of the firm, and asked Elizabeth to chair the meeting.
Elizabeth explained that she would call everyone in turn to report on their progress. She would start with the Coordinator for European Expansion.
C.J. – for it was he – explained that they had secured shop sites in Amsterdam, Düsseldorf and Paris, and were in the middle of negotiations in Rotterdam, Cologne and Brussels. They were examining the possibility of opening a Eurogrot factory in Luxembourg, with a fleet of Grotmaster lorries, but these developments would not occur until they had at least a dozen European outlets. It was no use putting the cart before the. horse. He gave the meeting to understand that neither he nor his betrothed had ever put the cart before the horse. If they had, he intimated, it might have been a case of the tail wagging the dog.
David Harris-Jones, the Head of Expansion (UK), explained that the British end of the operation now extended to sixty-one shops, with five more in the pipeline. The possibility of a separate Scottish enterprise, with exactly the same range but everything tartan, was being considered. He recommended that a committee of inquiry should be established to study its feasibility. David Harris-Jones summed up the UK prospects in one well-chosen word: super.
Tony Webster, Deputy Head of Expansion (UK), reported on the achievements of individual shops and the lessons that could be learnt from them in the siting and design of future shops. David Harris-Jones had described the prospects as Super. Tony Webster would go further. They were Great.
Seamus Finnegan, Admin Officer, outlined the organizational changes that were needed. Streamlining, Mr Finnegan suggested, was the man who would lead them on their way. Close behind would be those two splendid fellows, centralization and rationalization. Everyone was impressed. The appointment of the greying son of Erin was regarded as Reggie’s master stroke, and Reggie hid his chagrin with difficulty.
Joan brought in coffee and a selection of biscuits, including rich tea, rich osborne and garibaldi.
‘You can see how prosperous we are,’ said Reggie, ‘from our wide range of pumice stones.’
‘Pumice stones?’ said C.J.
‘When I say pumice stones, I mean biscuits,’ said Reggie. ‘What does it matter what we call things?’
Elizabeth, C.J., David and Tony avoided each other’s eyes in embarrassment.
Reggie held a garibaldi aloft.
‘Garibaldi was a great man,’ he said. ‘He made the biscuits run on time.’
Doc Morrissey, Head of Forward Planning, explained his idea for the September sales, and also suggested the creation of Grot trading stamps, enabling the holder to collect a range of even more useless items from Grot redemption centres. The less stamps you had, the more you would collect.
Tom, Head of Publicity, gave some of his ideas for adverts, slogans and publicity hand-outs. There is not space to reveal them all in this modest tome, but perhaps his best effort was the slogan:
‘Grot’s the ideal place for gifts,
Because it’s all on one floor so there aren’t any lifts.’
Jimmy, Head of Creative Thinking, spoke last. The leathery ex-soldier stood rigid from a mixture of habit, sciatica and embarrassment.
‘Not come up with much,’ he said. ‘New business, feeling my way, walk before you can fly.’
‘Come come,’ said Reggie. ‘I know you’ve got one or two exhibits in that Pandora’s box of yours.’
Jimmy’s weatherbeaten face flushed like an Arctic dawn.
‘Couple of things here,’ he said, and he lifted from his tuck box a very complicated, messily constructed machine – a mass of wheels, pulleys and chains, like a cross between the insides of a clock, a pit-head wheel, a mangle, a big dipper and a praying mantis. He placed it on the table and began to turn a handle. The machine clanked, clattered, rotated, slid, rose and fell.
Everybody watched in rapt silence.
‘It’s great,’ pronounced Tony Webster.
‘Super,’ affirmed David Harris-Jones.
‘It makes Heath Robinson look like Le Corbusier,’ said Seamus Finnegan. ‘It is a nag of distinct possibilities.’
‘What is it?’ said C.J.
That was the only snag. Jimmy had no idea what it was.
‘It isn’t anything,’ he said.
‘Brilliant,’ said Tony Webster. ‘Completely useless.’
‘I didn’t get where I am today without knowing a completely useless machine when I see one,’ said C.J.
‘It should be possible to refine it until all its functions cancel out all its other functions,’ said Seamus Finnegan.
‘Well done, Jimmy,’ said Elizabeth.
‘Another idea here,’ said Jimmy, emboldened by his success.
He produced a squat, mis-shapen object like an upside-down kiln covered in huge warts.
This was greeted with less than widespread enthusiasm. The reluctance of the British public to buy upside-down kilns covered in huge warts is a sine qua non in trading circles.
Reggie permitted himself a smile. This was more like it.
‘What is it?’ said Doc Morrissey hoarsely.
Jimmy’s courage, so potent during tactical exercises on Lüneburg Heath, failed him now.
‘Guess,’ he said lamely.
‘I didn’t get where I am today by guessing what upside-down kilns covered in huge warts are,’ said C.J.
‘You have to guess,’ said Jimmy stubbornly, hoping that someone would hit upon a suggestion less foolish than his own.
‘Oh, I see,’ said David Harris-Jones. ‘We call it the “Guess What It’s For”. A sort of extension of our game with no rules. Hours of fun for all the family.’
‘Not a bad idea,’ said Tom.
‘A gelding of an intriguing hue,’ said Seamus Finnegan.
‘Well done,’ said Elizabeth.
Jimmy shuddered. Elizabeth’s phrase had reminded him of Clive ‘Lofty’ Anstruther, and the glory that might have been.
Failure is a perverse mistress. Fear her, and she is in your bed before you can say redundancy. Court her, and she hides coyly behind life’s haystacks.
So it was with Reggie. The greater efforts he made to fail, the greater his success became.
Summer ripened into autumn, and the success of Perrin Products and of Grot continued unabated.
Seamus Finnegan’s reorganizations were already paying dividends. The first European shops were opened, and business was brisk. Tom’s adverts became a minor cult. In a medium where slick rubs shoulders with smooth, his clumsy efforts caused laughter and admiration. After he had been dubbed the McGonagall of Admass, there was no looking back. And Jimmy’s useless machine and his Guess What It’s For proved highly promising sellers. A leading colour supplement reflected – in black and white – upon the relationship between art and commerce. Commerce, it suggested, habitually paddled in the waters where art had bathed. If it found the water not to be too cold, it ventured further in. Thus it should not be surprising to anybody that, two decades after the heyday of Theatre of the Absurd, we should find ourselves with Commerce of the Absurd.
The cruet sets with no holes in them were displayed at the Design Centre.
Other sho
ps copied Grot, but they had not the same aura of exclusivity.
Perhaps the greatest success of all was Doc Morrissey’s idea for January sales in September. Messages like ‘Great January Sale – four months early’, ‘Giant Rubbish Sale’, ‘Huge Increases’, ‘50 per cent on everything’ received saturation coverage on television and radio.
Outside the Grot shop in Oxford Street, Europe’s premier shopping blot, people began to queue two days before the sales.
ITN reporter Fergus Clitheroe interviewed the front runners.
‘Where are you from?’ he asked a heavily bearded giant.
‘Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory of Australia,’ replied the hirsute man-mountain. ‘Do you want a tube of Fosters?’
‘But if you waited a fortnight, you could get all the stuff you wanted for fifty per cent less.’
‘Wouldn’t be interviewed on television, would I? Do you want a tube of Fosters?’
Two schoolboys explained that they were playing truant from school and if they bought Christmas presents in the sale people would know that they loved them because they’d spent so much. A cockney lady said, ‘It’s a sale, innit? That’s good enough for me,’ and a dark sallow melancholy Welshman said, ‘Queueing’s in my blood, see. My mam missed the whole of the 1936 Derby. She was queueing for the ladies, see. Minding her P’s and Q’s, you might say. The war was the time, you queued to join queues then. Nowadays it’s just the Bolshoi and the sales. People are friendly in queues, see. Like the old days. Can’t get the queueing in Lampeter, see. Under-population, that’s the bugbear.’
And of course, when the triumphant September sales ended, and all the prices were reduced by fifty per cent again, there were further queues from bargain hunters. Doc Morrissey had invented the fifty week a year sales.
Clearly, more desperate measures were needed from Reggie, if Grot were ever to be destroyed.
A golden opportunity for self-destruction soon presented itself.
Chapter 24
On Monday, October the fourth, as Reggie was getting out of bed, Simon Watkins, MP for Climthorpe, collapsed and died after an all night sitting in the House of Commons.
The weather was cloudy but dry. Breakfast was perfect. Ponsonby was listless. The newspapers were gloomy. Reggie’s motions were adequate.
One of the less gloomy newspaper articles was in the Guardian. It was an in-depth interview with Reggie Perrin.
‘I’ll show them,’ thought Reggie, as he read of his success. ‘I’ll give them “middle-aged fairy story”.’
Climthorpe Albion lay at the top of the Southern League First Division South, having beaten Dorchester 4–1 , with goals by FITTOCK, CLENCH (2, 1 pen) and new signing BLOUNT. It seemed that Reggie’s powers as a fairy godfather were not yet waning.
The post brought a letter from Mark. It said: ‘Dear Mater and Pater, I still love you. One day you will understand. Your affectionate son, Mahmood Abdullah. PS Love to Ponsonby.’
It also brought two invitations. He was asked to address the Climthorpe Ladies Circle on ‘Women in a Man’s World’ and to discuss the proposition that ‘The Profit Motive is a Dirty Word’ with the Climthorpe Manor Hill Boys School Debating Society.
That morning Perrin Products announced record profits, and Reggie dictated a letter to the Climthorpe Manor Hill Boys School Debating Society, saying: ‘I do not wish to discuss your illiterate proposition, but I am prepared to debate the subject: “The Profit Motive is Three Dirty Words.”’
In the afternoon he was approached by representatives of all three television channels, Guardian readers to a man, and asked to give an exclusive interview.
What an opportunity!
What a showcase!
He accepted all three invitations.
On Tuesday evening he appeared on BBCl’s magazine programme Pillock Talk. The eponymous interviewer was Colin Pillock.
They sat in elegant armchairs with a circular table behind them.
Colin Pillock introduced Reggie as the man behind the High Street miracle.
‘Less than three years ago,’ he said, ‘Reginald Perrin opened a shop called Grot in the dreary London suburb of Climthorpe. In its window was a sign saying: “All the articles sold in this shop are useless.” Now Reginald Perrin has more than sixty shops and is well on his way to becoming a millionaire.’
Reggie raised his eyebrows and smiled pleasantly. Upstairs, in the control box, Elizabeth was astounded by his self-confidence.
Colin Pillock described some of the objects sold in Grot shops. A faint ridicule could be detected beneath his surface sarcasm.
Then he turned to Reggie.
‘Reginald Perrin?’ he said. ‘Are you a con man?’
Reggie paused, thinking out his reply, determined not to be thrown out of his stride by this interviewer’s inhumanity to man.
‘I announce clearly that every item is useless,’ he said. ‘Con men don’t usually wear sandwich-boards that say: “Watch out. I am a con man.” No, I think I’m one of the few shopkeepers who isn’t a con man.’
‘But you sell people stuff that is useless. Doesn’t that worry you?’
Thousands of people sell stuff that’s useless. I’m the only one who admits it.’
‘In other words, Mr Perrin, you have hit upon a gimmick that enables you to sell worthless items at high prices, without anybody being able to do anything about it?’
Those certainly are other words.’
‘What words would you use, Mr Perrin?’
‘I am providing a valuable social service.’
Colin Pillock smiled his ‘ho ho ho, viewers, we’ve got another one here and you’re all going to be on my side, aren’t you, because I’m the champion of your rights’ smile.
‘Come, come, Mr Perrin. You’re not trying to tell us that you provide a social service, are you?’
‘I’m not trying to tell you that. I’m succeeding in telling you that.’
Colin Pillock smiled his ‘give a man enough rope’ smile.
‘All right then,’ he said. ‘In what way are you providing this social service?’
‘Have you half an hour? Then I’ll begin. People like to buy our stuff for many different reasons – as a joke for instance.’
‘A rather expensive joke.’
‘Jokes are splendid things. Why should they be cheap? And people buy my things as presents. A lot of people are very self-conscious about giving presents. They fear that their presents will seem ridiculous. No such fear about my goods. Everybody will know the presents are ridiculous and were meant to be ridiculous.’
‘But surely people often buy your products for themselves?’
‘Of course.’
‘Why?’
‘Perhaps you ought to ask them.’
‘I’m asking you.’
‘Well, Mr Pillock, maybe they like to have useless objects lying around. It shows they can afford to spend quite large sums of money on useless things.’
‘Quite large sums of money!’ repeated Colin Pillock gloatingly. ‘Would you agree, then, that your prices are high?’
That isn’t the word I’d use,’ said Reggie.
‘What word would you use, Mr Perrin?’
‘Exorbitant.’
Colin Pillock was actually speechless for several seconds. In the control box, the director had a feeling – part horror, part utter delight – that he would never speak again.
But he did.
‘Are you seriously suggesting that people like throwing money away?’ he said.
‘Of course. People certainly love spending money. It’s one of the few enjoyable things you can do with it. Have you ever been to a race meeting, Mr Pillock?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you noticed many people racked with greed as they try to get their grubby little fingers on their ill-earned lucre? Oh, some, of course, but I notice far more people flinging money around recklessly, cheerfully admitting how much they’ve lost. It shows what men of the world the
y are, what good chaps. There’s no point in having money to burn if nobody comes to the fire. Would you say that most restaurants in this country, if not all, are bad?’
‘Yes.’
‘When people go out to dinner, are they more likely to go to a cheap restaurant or an expensive one?’
‘An expensive one.’
‘Well there you are then. The point is to show that you can afford it. “One pound eighty for that,” people say when they buy my things. “What a liberty. It’s only two bits of paper. I could have made it myself for 5p.” It gives them a wonderful feeling of superiority over the makers. Wouldn’t you say that was performing a social service?’
Colin Pillock couldn’t remember when he had last been asked five questions without getting a single one in himself.
He ought to fight back, but he just didn’t feel up to it. It was the end of a long series, and his holidays were coming up.
‘Reginald Perrin, thank you. And now a man who farms worms. Yes, worms,’ he said.
On Wednesday it was the turn of ITV. Reggie met the producer of The World Tomorrow Today in the hospitality room, where enough drink is dispensed to make the interviewees indiscreet without being indecent.
The producer seemed narked.
‘You didn’t tell us Pillock was doing you,’ he said.
‘You didn’t ask.’
‘It’s spiked our guns.’
‘Use different guns.’
‘We’ll have to put you back to the end. We may not even get to you if Ethiopia over-runs.’
‘Wonderful.’
But Ethiopia did not over-run, and they did get to him.
The interviewer was Sheridan Trethowan. They sat in elegant armchairs, with a glass table between them.
Sheridan Trethowan gave a brief résumé of Reggie’s achievements. He took great care not to sound scornful or patronizing. He didn’t want to fall into the Pillock trap.
‘Tell me, Mr Perrin, how did you get the idea for all this in the first place?’ he said.
‘It’s not really such an extraordinary idea,’ said Reggie. ‘Most of our economy is based on built-in obsolescence. I just build it a bit further in. The things are obsolete before you even buy them. I haven’t gone as far as I’d like to. Ideally I’d like to sell things that fall to pieces before they even leave the shop. What a gift to capitalism that would be. “Oh, it’s fallen to pieces. I’ll have another one.” “Certainly, sir.” “Oh, that’s fallen to pieces too. I’ll have another one.”’
