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How I Became Famous

Americans insist that one must “fake it to make it”. As a professional comedian, this is quite likely good advice. Some of the worst entertainers I know have made it to television, magazines and glory simply through putting up big signs with their faces on, buying a hundred thousand Twitter followers and telling anyone who will listen that they are talented, but I am not built that way. I was brought up to learn that boasting was uncouth and as such would far rather be at home watching Netflix than strutting a red carpet dressed in meat.

As a result, I probably should have been surprised a few years back when I was invited to participate in my first celebrity charity golf day. A total of 24 “celebs” – ranging from sports stars to former news readers, and musicians – had been chosen to participate. Each of us was to be teamed with three players, presumably to fill their days with magic and give them someone to beat. I was casually swinging my driver at the tee when the first couple of my group’s players walked up and introduced themselves. We chatted for a few minutes, I threw in some jokes about golf and things seemed to be going off well, when suddenly one of them said, “I think I saw Victor Mattfield up there. I wonder who our celebrity will be.” I took it in my stride, nodded, and said, “here he comes now” pointing to the straggler in our fourball who was just arriving. I spent the rest of the day digging my ball out of the rough and helping the guys guess just who this new stranger might be. “Wasn’t he on Agter Elke Man?” I said at one point. The other two shrugged, and I knew I had probably gotten away with it.

If I were to obey that dictum in the opening line of this article, this would be the paragraph in which I tell you how, since those first humble beginnings, my fame is now shooting into the stratosphere, and brands are clamouring to get a little piece of me at home in my meat suit. I would describe the lavish red carpet movie premiers (I didn’t make the cut for Black Panther, but did find myself sitting next to someone I think I recognised from a TV advert on the opening night of The Emoji Movie), the free gifts (I was once accidentally sent a pair of large brand running shoes, that fell apart long before they saw the inside of a gym) and the lavish book launches (I didn’t go and Chris Forrest still owes me my copy of Jen Su‘s “From Z to A Lister: How To Get on the Social Scene”).

Perhaps if I had collected, and read, my Jen Su book I would now be paid to market product to the various collection of middle-aged male computer game enthusiasts, engineers, train set hobbyists, rock collectors, card game nerds, sci-fi fanatics and neck-beards (collectively known as MAMCGEETSHRCCGNSCFNBs) that, judging by the people who recognise me in public, seem to exclusively make up my viewing public. In a way, I am glad I haven’t been though. If there is one group that can easily see through a cheap influencer Twitter campaign it’s MAMCGEETSHRCCGNSCFNBs and the last thing I want to do is disappoint my MAMCGEETSHRCCGNSCFNBs.

Note the subtle shift in the last paragraph to “my MAMCGEETSHRCCGNSCFNBs”. This was intentional. Lady Gaga has her “litte monsters”, Beyonce has “The BeyHive” and now I have “The MAMCGEETSHRCCGNSCFNBs”. With this one small shift, fame is inevitable. Until it happens though, I will be at home watching Netflix.

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It’s Never Time To Dance

In the 80s classic movie “Footloose” Kevin Bacon plays a super cool teen who moves to a town where dancing and rock music have been banned and teaches them all to cut-a-rug, much to the constant dismay of John Lithgow’s character Reverend Shaw Moore. Audiences cheer when the Reverend gives in at the end and dances at the prom for the first time in years, but that’s where the movie lost me. Much like “Black Panther” is currently being hailed for the fact that it is offering under-represented minorities a chance at on-screen representation, up until that point Rev Shaw Moore had been my T’Challa. Until the moment he gave in and danced, he had been the only character I had seen on film whose open loathing for dancing matched my own.

I simply can’t see the attraction to it. I don’t understand why we as a society feel the urge to move rhythmically to music at almost every special occasion (this is one area where funerals absolutely crush the opposition). Don’t get me wrong, I love music. I like listening to it, and having it on in the background, I just don’t understand the bit where we stand up and sway, gyrate or jerk ourselves around in a predetermined area in time to it. Some people say it’s fun, I say it’s sweaty. And perhaps the last thing I understand is watching other people do it.

Maybe this makes me a troglodyte, but I don’t get what drives us as a species to cavort, let alone pay money to see others prance around. Ballet is quaint, the music is nice, but unless Natalie Portman is artistically stabbing herself before doing it, I have zero inclination to go to watch it – even for free. The fact that women will literally disfigure their bodies and starve themselves for years in order to do it is beyond mystifying. Perhaps in the days before the internet, and “the advertising industry” the dances provided some modicum of titillation? After all the outfits are so tight one of the main ballets is called the “Nutcracker suit” (suite whatever). These days we don’t need it. And we definitely don’t need contemporary upgrades. Most forms of modern dance look like a seizure, and I won’t pay for that, though ironically I may be tempted into paying to watch someone have an actual seizure. “Ah but look at the tango it’s so sexy!” I hear fans cry. It isn’t. It’s two oily, elderly people dry-humping. If I want to see that I will go to the pub.

Dancing is without a doubt the absolute worst of all the arts. If you are a professional dancer, then please stop. You are only wasting our time, and yours.

Perhaps the lowest example of this art form is the dancing reality TV show. Unfathomably in their hundredth season each “Strictly Come Dancing” and “Dancing With The Stars” are like watching the same Youtube video of Larry from accounts getting carried away at an office Christmas party for hours on end. The draw card is supposed to be the celebrities, but MNET’s latest “Dancing With The Stars” has so few recognisable faces they should have called it “Dancing with people”. The line-up includes a former Miss SA, three people who used to be in national sports teams, and a genuine track star’s mother. Look I am all for public humiliation as a TV concept, but dancing? Couldn’t we just throw rocks at Frank Opperman in a town square and call it a day?

I know what many of you are thinking now. Of course I don’t get it. I am a middle-aged grumpy white man, and exactly the kind of person kids have to teach to be happy again with their choreographed dancing in the streets, but that’s where you are wrong. Unlike all those other middle-aged grumpy white men from the movies, I will never surrender. You will never warm my cold heart, I will never dance for the first time in years at your prom. I am the Bane to your Batman of boogie, and you never see Bane dance – unless he is super drunk with a tie around his head.