GENESIS OF A GAG

An autobiography is not a novel. It doesn't have a cast of characters who are playing out a plot from start to finish (obviously there are some characters, and there are some dramatic parts which may read like a novel, but it doesn't have the same narrative thrust). So it may be difficult to hold the reader's attention through many successive episodes which don't necessarily connect with the one before or the one after.

When I wrote FESS I tried to put a 'hook' on every page: something funny, sad, surprising, graphic, or just plain interesting that might go ping in the readers' minds and grab their attention, retain their interest, or just keep them awake. I didn't manage it in every case, but I think it's a good policy to implement if you can. Here is how one gag developed.

There is a section which describes a long and happy relationship with Shropshire, where we had the great good fortune to be able to rent a small and dilapidated cottage for next to nothing (see  FESS  #49:  To Gallop in Salop). As a very important part of my life it was a 'must' for inclusion in the book and it was a nostalgic pleasure to write. But maybe not to read: the potency of the scenery and the people might not work 'second hand' even though they were vivid and full of emotion for me. I started to search for things that would make it more graphic.

Shropshire is proper rural. Our part of it was as rural as it gets: open country, only two tiny villages in the vicinity, a clutch or two of houses, a sprinkling of people, many sheep and cows. So I wrote:

"In the area around the two hamlets in South Shropshire I came to know, farm animals definitely outnumbered humans"

Somewhere in there is quite a graphic image of the few people being submerged in a sea of sheep and cow. There was an implicit threat, which I had not meant to communicate, but clearly sensed by my eldest daughter in this shot (note: that is not our cottage)

In my head there was the notion that the cows might one day takeover. This would be an appalling prospect for any number of reasons, not least the disappearance of milk, beef and burgers from our diet. But given their numerical majority in the area, some kind of more inclusive democracy, maybe even bovine suffrage would perhaps be in order. That was the way I was thinking - well, possibly not thinking so much as freely-associating in a whimsical, even surreal way. (These kinds of flights of fantasy often become absurd, or lead nowhere, but occasionally they make bizarre connections which work and which you probably wouldn't have made in any other way. So the second formulation of the 'hook' was:

"In the area around the two hamlets in South Shropshire  I came to know, farm animals definitely outnumbered humans; and had they been given the vote, the first cow MP would have been returned to Westminster"

Maybe this was enough to convey this cow-dominated bucolic scene? No, the lily must be gilded. There was still something unformed, nagging at me, a natural connection that had to be made. Finally it came, just dropping into place like a piece of a well-worn jigsaw puzzle: I could make the point about Shropshire animal life I wanted to, and deliver a nasty sideswipe at my number one political bete-noire:


"In the area around the two hamlets in South Shropshire  I came to know, farm animals definitely outnumbered humans; and had they been given the vote, the first cow MP would have been returned to Westminster since Mrs Thatcher".


Not Mrs. Thatcher's time, Mrs Thatcher herself.



OK, maybe it's a gag which is not going to bring the house down at Live at the Apollo, but it works well enough to amuse and do what it's supposed to do: encourage the person to read on.