The View from Mount Dog by James Hamilton-Paterson Page B
Authors: James Hamilton-Paterson
Ads: Link
wunderkind. He dutifully underwent a battery of medical tests before each occasion. ‘Carney Normal Say Doctors,’ was one headline. ‘Nothing Wrong With Carney – Official,’ said another. ‘Clean Bill of Physical Health,’ said a third, pointedly leaving open to question his mental status.
And so that brief summer Carney Palafox ran, jumped, hurled and on one occasion cycled his way into the record-books. His attire remained idiosyncratic but he was clearly finding increasing difficulty in varying it without having to fall back on ordinary sportswear. On one of his last appearances as a record-setter he amazed the crowd by turning up in a somewhat bulky crimson track-suit with CP in gold embroidered letters on theback. But things were restored to normality when he unzipped it to reveal a full set of lime-green motorcyling leathers in which he then beat his previous record for the 100 metres.
Close observers also noticed that he was clowning less, that he consulted his notebook more often with a frown of worry. There came the day when, after throwing a discus an unprecedented distance he consented absentmindedly to try to better his own 100 metres sprint record once again. His performance was that of a forty-one-year-old scriptwriter. Badly out of breath he crossed the line in seventeen seconds, missing his number 5 bus by miles. Somehow he must have lost count in his short and hectic sprinting career. Never again would he break the world’s 100 metres record. The crowd loved it, though. They thought he was fooling.
Meanwhile he was being endlessly begged to appear on television shows in exchange for prodigious sums. The more he turned them down and the more he refused to attend any organised debate of his own phenomenon, the more eagerly he was pestered. The inducements would have corrupted a Gandhi, the sums exceeding many a poor nation’s GNP. To all the most prestigious television hosts Carney Palafox said no. To one alone he said yes, and that one had never even asked.
Desmond Lermit hosted a chat show on one of Britain’s least-watched channels. He was a benign, fiftyish hangover from the days when the occasional gentleman was still to be glimpsed in a television studio, slightly unsettled like a dodo sensing the approach of beaters. His shows tended to go out late at night and his guests were mainly people in the world of the Arts and more often than not were decayed knights of the theatre. Carney had met him once or twice over the years, running into him at a party here, in a meeting there, for the world of television is still smaller than it likes to imagine. Beneath the courteous exterior he had thought to glimpse a somewhat cynical nihilism akin to his own. Desmond Lermit, however, had not the least idea that he had made this impression, so it came as a complete surprise when Carney Palafox rang him up one morning and asked if he would consider him as a guest on his show some time.
Privately at a loss as to why he should have been chosen while a dozen celebrities in Britain and America had been spurned, Lermit ruthlessly cancelled a forthcoming guest-list which was to have featured the decrepit and much-loved Welshcomedienne Dame Martha Tydfil and substituted the single name of Carney Palafox. The chagrin in the world of entertainment at this windfall for the Desmond Lermit Half-Hour was unparalleled. Needless to say, in the event nobody watched anything else. From the opening moments the public found itself privy to what seemed to be a conversation between two people who had just discovered they ought to have been close friends for the last quarter-century and who were making up for lost time. It was a very private coming-together which happened to be eavesdropped by nearly twenty million people. And in its wholly unpredicted manner it turned out to be compulsive viewing.
‘Am I right in thinking, Carney,’ began Desmond Lermit, ‘that you find life as exemplified by modern British civilisation
And so that brief summer Carney Palafox ran, jumped, hurled and on one occasion cycled his way into the record-books. His attire remained idiosyncratic but he was clearly finding increasing difficulty in varying it without having to fall back on ordinary sportswear. On one of his last appearances as a record-setter he amazed the crowd by turning up in a somewhat bulky crimson track-suit with CP in gold embroidered letters on theback. But things were restored to normality when he unzipped it to reveal a full set of lime-green motorcyling leathers in which he then beat his previous record for the 100 metres.
Close observers also noticed that he was clowning less, that he consulted his notebook more often with a frown of worry. There came the day when, after throwing a discus an unprecedented distance he consented absentmindedly to try to better his own 100 metres sprint record once again. His performance was that of a forty-one-year-old scriptwriter. Badly out of breath he crossed the line in seventeen seconds, missing his number 5 bus by miles. Somehow he must have lost count in his short and hectic sprinting career. Never again would he break the world’s 100 metres record. The crowd loved it, though. They thought he was fooling.
Meanwhile he was being endlessly begged to appear on television shows in exchange for prodigious sums. The more he turned them down and the more he refused to attend any organised debate of his own phenomenon, the more eagerly he was pestered. The inducements would have corrupted a Gandhi, the sums exceeding many a poor nation’s GNP. To all the most prestigious television hosts Carney Palafox said no. To one alone he said yes, and that one had never even asked.
Desmond Lermit hosted a chat show on one of Britain’s least-watched channels. He was a benign, fiftyish hangover from the days when the occasional gentleman was still to be glimpsed in a television studio, slightly unsettled like a dodo sensing the approach of beaters. His shows tended to go out late at night and his guests were mainly people in the world of the Arts and more often than not were decayed knights of the theatre. Carney had met him once or twice over the years, running into him at a party here, in a meeting there, for the world of television is still smaller than it likes to imagine. Beneath the courteous exterior he had thought to glimpse a somewhat cynical nihilism akin to his own. Desmond Lermit, however, had not the least idea that he had made this impression, so it came as a complete surprise when Carney Palafox rang him up one morning and asked if he would consider him as a guest on his show some time.
Privately at a loss as to why he should have been chosen while a dozen celebrities in Britain and America had been spurned, Lermit ruthlessly cancelled a forthcoming guest-list which was to have featured the decrepit and much-loved Welshcomedienne Dame Martha Tydfil and substituted the single name of Carney Palafox. The chagrin in the world of entertainment at this windfall for the Desmond Lermit Half-Hour was unparalleled. Needless to say, in the event nobody watched anything else. From the opening moments the public found itself privy to what seemed to be a conversation between two people who had just discovered they ought to have been close friends for the last quarter-century and who were making up for lost time. It was a very private coming-together which happened to be eavesdropped by nearly twenty million people. And in its wholly unpredicted manner it turned out to be compulsive viewing.
‘Am I right in thinking, Carney,’ began Desmond Lermit, ‘that you find life as exemplified by modern British civilisation
Similar Books
