By Dave Watt.
Fat Dave Visits the Colonies.
Hello oiks.
In the spirit of my Big Society, I thought I’d bring a little sunshine into your drab, tiny proletarian lives by writing you a few lines. After all, it can’t be much fun working down coal mines and up chimneys with only the prospect of racing pigeons, whippet-breeding and drinking gin at the weekend to look forward to. “What would I want to read about after a hard evening shovelling coal into the bath,” I thought to myself, so I decided to tell you all about me.
Anyway, here I am in the colonies yet again. I was here before as a child when one was obliged to rough it with J Paul Getty’s family on holiday back in the 1980s – so much for those troublemaking lefties saying I had a pampered childhood.
Things were pretty enjoyable for our shortened visit to our colonial capital, Washington. The one minor disappointment was in not meeting the colonial governor himself. On my first day, when I thought I was due to meet Her Gracious Maj’s rep in the new country, I was left for ages in a room attended only by the suspiciously-dusky butler. Whilst I was waiting for our man in the colony to appear, the brown fellow approached me, and held out his hand saying, “Obama”.
This puzzled me somewhat. Was this some sort of greeting in one of the Bongo-Bongo tongues? Did he wish to take my jacket off for a wash and brush-up? Was I being offered a drink? Damned puzzling. Not wishing to get on the wrong side of the serf, what with my having just arrived in the place, I decided to converse with the fellow whether it got me blackballed at the club or not. After all, it’s not like I’m a racist or anything. Ask anyone. For example, I was chatting away like nobody’s business for ages to Baroness Warsi last week and I must say she brought up a beautiful shine on my shoes.
Anyway, back to the cocoa-coloured one. I pointed to myself, “Me Great White Chief. Me come across Great Water in iron bird to visit Great White Mother’s children. Bring many shiny presents and much wampum from land of White Mother. Me want speak big massa, chop-chop, tout-de-suite.”
This had little effect as he just stood staring for a couple of minutes before stalking out of the room – presumably to fetch his master who one hoped spoke the Queen’s English. I sat patiently for a few minutes until a strangely-ashen Nanny Clegg appeared, told me the governor couldn’t see us as he wasn’t well, and that we had to go back to the hotel immediately.
We set off towards the front door but as we passed one of the big rooms we saw the tar-brushed butler again; this time he was arguing with some white men – obviously his overseers. It really was strange, but when he saw me he made a lunge straight for us shouting and swearing and the overseers had to hold him back. I was astounded. There I was speaking to him, master to slave and almost treating him as my equal, and here was all the thanks I got.
As Clegg hustled me out to the car, I could hear him still shouting insults in a manner no servant in my house would dare use. Phrases such as, “interbred Limey motherf___king chickenshit rest room Romeo…..better off with that wall-eyed Scotch b______d”, followed us down the driveway and I reflected that a surfeit of democracy had bred an extremely difficult type of servant in the colonies. Thank God we don’t have any truck with that sort of thing in the land of John Peel and Hearts of Oak.
As soon as we reached the hotel, Clegg told me we’d have to leave for the airport immediately as a crisis back home needed my urgent attention. He’s such a treasure, young Nanny Clegg. I thanked him, putting my head on his shoulder, telling him what a gem he was in endearing terms as we obliterated the last of the champers in the airport lounge. This effusive display of affection seemed to attract the attention of a fair proportion of the other customers, so I thought I’d disarm them by telling them that he’d been my fag at Eton as I patted his cheek. That didn’t seem to go down too well either.
Odd bunch, our colonials. No sense of humour.