Flirting With Jacqueline Bisset

I very rarely search for my real self on the internet. The last time I did it was probably three or four years ago when a search for my actual birth name thankfully came back largely empty. At the time, I thought I should perhaps grab ‘my’ domain name, just in case publishing fame should come knocking, but I never did. I searched today and discovered that not only is my name (but not me) quite prevalent across the web, there are two or three characters going by my name, one of whom has taken out the domain name, another with the Twitter account and then pretty much anything to which you could connect my name. One is a British somewhat dauby painter who lives not a hundred miles away. The other is brash American around whom the world apparently rotates.

Because I have a relatively unusual real name (I’m not a John Smith) it is relatively rare that I see it in print. There was a stalker, I remember, who had my name and it worried me that people might think I was into stalking. But other than that, my real name has remained out of the public eye, which makes it disconcerting to read people boasting of their accomplishments using my name. It feels like I’m looking into a parallel universe where I didn’t have qualms about working as the real me. ‘Welcome to the Derek Smiles website’ is the way these other me’s are doing it and had our name been Derek Smiles. ‘Read the Derek Smiles Newsletter’ was the another I saw done by the American me. Subscribers: 7, which means he’s also about as successful as me.

I can’t decide if they’re wrong or I’ve been wrong all these years. I hate all that ego culture where the name is more important than the work. I suppose I hate it because it has become the predominant cultural force over the last twenty years. On the occasional times I have to visit Superdrug or Boots, it shocks me how often a celebrity name is attached to a perfume or aftershave. I really don’t want to smell like David Beckham’s armpits but it’s even worse when you’re wearing an aftershave named after a fictional character such as 007 who never actually had real armpits. It’s why I admired the Baconface project so much and why, with a few reservations, I like reading about Banksy.

Yet perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps the only things that matter are the names. Was I any better or more noble when I wrote a book of letters boasting of the celebrities contained within?

Yesterday, I wrote a long rambling email about my experiences writing under a pseudonym. A few years ago, I thought it was the right thing to do. William Donaldson had done it when writing his Henry Root letters and there is no finer spoof letter writer than the mighty Donaldson. In America, the great Ted L Nancy did it to the point that most people though he was Jerry Seinfeld until he was revealed to be a Seinfeld friend and stand-up, Barry Marder. Now I think it was probably the wrong thing to do. It means that nobody knows me or can even attach my name to all of my very disparate body of work.

Yet a pseudonym takes you away from yourself and allows you to create a slightly better world. As Stan I could be a very different person: bold, confident, cheeky, sly, and flirtatious. Very flirtacious. As myself, I could never flirt with a woman. As Stan, I could try to seduce Jacqueline Bisset.

Jacqueline would have featured in Volume 2 of Stan’s letters had I been more determined searching for an agent or publisher. I think they’re the better and funnier letters, written after volume 1 was published. Fearing that the UK might associate my name with a book in the bookshops (how naively optimistic), I wrote mainly to Americans, so the majority of the book are letters to and from Hollywood stars. Bisset was Stan at his randiest, which is perhaps unsurprising because I was the kind of youth moved deeply by The Deep. Not that I was a particularly big fan of nautical adventures of the 1970s, you understand, but because I am a very big fan of nautical adventures starring Jacqueline Bisset circa 1977 and shown repeated on ITV throughout the 1980s.

[caption id="attachment_3266" align="alignright" width="468"] Click to enbiggen[/caption]
If you've not seen the film (and, these unenlightened days, that’s more than likely), let me give you a quick précis. Basically, the plot goes like this: Jacqueline wears a white t-shirt in deep waters before climbing up onto the deck of her yacht whist it bobs around in a cooling wind offshore wind. There’s a certain perkiness about the scene which I won’t dwell on in this family friendly environment and other things happen during the film, even if they don’t really matter so much as the lovely Jacqueline wearing her white t-shirt and bobbing around on the deck of her yacht.

My letter to Jacqueline Bisset was one of my better letters. Jacqueline certainly understood Stan’s humour and wrote a very seductive reply on a nice glossy eight by ten which I now keep sealed in an airtight bag along with her hand-written envelope. Would it sound terribly weird to admit that on days when I feel very low, I unseal the bag and inhale deeply? There are not many men who can tell you what Jacqueline Bisset smelt like on one day in May 2010? I’d try to describe if for you but it’s a bit like pears but with a hint of pomegranate and then some mysterious something that I can only assume is ambrosia… And that’s the heavenly stuff not the tinned rice pudding.

However, I digress. As result of yesterday’s email, I’ve recompiled a new PDF of the entire Volume 2 as it sits in manuscript form. I intend to spend today reading it to see if it’s worth finishing it up with the extra letters I’ve received since I last edited it. I might then try it again with agents or publishers. Sometimes I’m too self-defeating. Here I have a finished book that’s both very funny and filled with big star names. Surely that has to be worth something. Doesn’t it? And perhaps I might even try to get it published under my real name...

Talking Cartoons

My Monday was very busy so I’m afraid I didn’t have time to write anything more polished or shorter than the video I’m posting here. This another over-the-shoulder view of my drawing a cartoon on the Samsung Note 10.1 and I’ve again provided some commentary. None of this is scripted, so I’ll have to ask you to excuse my stuttering, some terrible phrasing, and general ignorance and mispronunciations. However, I try to talk about cartoonists I enjoy and explain why I love the work of Robert Crumb, Ralph Steadman, Gerald Scarfe, Martin Rowson, Peter Brookes, Nicholas Bentley, Alex Gregory, Thomas Nast, Bruce Eric Kaplan and well as some of the old Punch cartoonists of the 1930. Even if watching me draw isn’t that interesting, I hope I at least say something to hold your attention.

It was also probably a good idea to record this whilst I can still speak. This post was timed to appear at exactly 9.10am, which was exactly the moment I’m due to sit in the dentist’s chair and have my finances probed. After that, I doubt I’ll be in the mood to blog. In fact, I’m considering getting out of town as soon as I’m out of the surgery. Manchester will be my small reward for actually going through with the appointment. I’m just hoping that I’ll need less than a dozen fillings and praying there’s no need for anything more involved that might mean putting my Samsung Note up for sale...

Just Don’t Call It Spoof

There come days when you just have to shrug your shoulders and accept that you’re having a crisis of confidence.

Today was one such day. Another happened a few weeks ago when that poor troubled nurse killed herself and the media blamed the two Australian hoaxers who had pretended (rather badly) to be The Queen and Prince Charles when they rang the London hospital where the nurse had been working on the switchboard. Not that I believed for one moment that anybody would have killed themselves because they’d been hoaxed. As I’ve always said: there was something else going on and a system that had failed. However, I did (and do) understand the anger and when the spotlight was on the business of hoaxing, I definitely found myself thinking about everything I’d ever done.

And the thing is: I don’t consider myself a hoaxer and I've never considered what I do to be hoax. Yet, even as I say that, I know it’s not an easy distinction to make. This is the first time I've even tried to put into words what I've been doing for these past few years.

My letters are sometimes called ‘spoof’ but that’s actually a lazy description, an easy way to sell them. I’m not even a fan of hoax letters and even the best, by Henry Root and Ted L. Nancy, probably never did enough (in my view) to reveal their true nature. Root was all about a certain sharp but pompous tone and Nancy too often plays a simpleton, with very bad English making his targets sympathetic towards him. And that’s the thing with spoof letters: they are genuinely too easy to write because they tend towards the bland and the simplistic. I won’t deny that I’ve written the occasional 'spoof' on rare occasions. I've had my weak moments when I was so desperate for a reply but my blandest letters have always been to people in positions where they wouldn't reply is they sensed that there was any kind of foolishness afoot. The dullest letter I ever wrote was to General Noriega. He sent me a postcard and I don’t feel too guilty about it.

Every one of my typical letters takes many hours to write and rewrite. They're like small short stories, 700-1000 words long, which are really invitations:  broad, often bawdy invitations to play the fool with somebody willing to take the hits. The ultimate target of my letters is always Stan Madeley; his pretensions, ambitions, and his many failures which are generally indistinguishable from my own. I’m not embarrassed to send my best attempts at poetry, my cartoons, and even copies of my book to people even though it will invite ridicule. In fact, I embrace ridicule! The question of fake or real isn't even a question. I pretty much shout 'Of course it's fake' in every letter I write. My primary goal in any letter is to make the recipient laugh. I remember listening to the great Clive James about about there always being  a moral purpose in  art and the moral purpose of my art, if it’s even an art, is in the laughter which I hope brightens a bad day. Of course, there is always a chance that the recipient of the letter will think: ‘this is a spoof and I’m not playing’. There’s also an ever worse likelihood that the person takes my words seriously and plays along inadvertently. In the latter instances, I feel terrible because, as I say, I lack the hoaxing gene and I always want to make the person aware of the nature of my letters.

The somewhat more complicated truth is that I’m seeking a partner for a dance. I put a face bold and proud in the bottom corner of the letter in the hope they see it for what it is. I want it to be obvious from the very first word that I’m playing it for laughs and I want them to laugh along and respond in kind. And, in that respect, I’ve been very lucky that so many people have done just that. They had the humour and wits to understand the game. In fact, one of the harshest (and, I'd say, unfair) criticisms I’ve had is that there must have been some amount of complicity between me and the recipients of my letters; that they’ve already agreed to return with a silly reply. Well there never has been except for that big ‘wink’ implicit in the letters.

Yet on bad days, I’m still haunted by the words ‘spoof’ and ‘hoax’. It’s something quite different to anything I do. The hoax is the meaning that’s concealed from the reader but apparent to an elite audience who are ‘in the know’. It’s like the prank phone call: ‘okay, listeners, this is what we’re going to do so laugh along as our target makes a fool of himself.’ I really don’t see the point in that. I don’t see the point in humiliating the weak and vulnerable. My motives are very different. It’s about a sense of our shared humanity, all people laughing together and of proving that we can laugh together.

I worked very hard over Christmas sending off about 25 letters, written and rewritten until I could get them more compact or funnier. In many I included original hand-drawn cartoons (they might be worth nothing but they are the product of my imagination, my hand, my labour) and some had copies of my book, inscribed to the recipient. One, to a very public figure for whom I’d been lucky enough to find an excellent address (office addresses mean PAs who filter everything), had a good letter, a book, a A4 comic strip which took me about two days to finish, as well as a hand drawn Christmas card.

As of today: Twenty five letters out and one reply in return.

Friends tell me that it’s still early but I do wonder what happened to all that hard work. Was it discarded because people were too bored, busy, indifferent, or thought themselves too important to play my game? I think I’d rather have any of those just so long as they didn’t simply think it was a ‘hoax’.