Posted by Andy Morley on April 02, 1999 at 09:38:21:
If you could have a one2one with anyone you wanted, who would YOU choose..? So goes the mobile phone advert. Some of the famous names parading their choices on TV were only concerned with looking cool. Chris Evans chose John Lennon. He would. The American Indian brought a lump to my throat, even though he was probably just a bit-part actor following a script. He chose his great-grandfather, a famous Sioux tracker.
If I said 'Arthur Ransome' on TARboard, that would provoke an undignified scramble as others sought to be 1st to get the 'coolest' of his friends or his characters. I've already had plenty of one2ones with Peggy, so that's got my bit of boasting out of the way. Nancy's too large for life, the Swallows in the book are too goody-goody. The rest, I'll come to later. At first I thought of Voltaire, who many people will instantly recognise as the founding father of electricity, mainly because he said: "Though I detest what you say, I would defend to the death your right to say it"*. But really, he's just another famous name and I would only be pulling the Chris Evans stunt. Who would really mean something for me..?
Thinking of Voltaire brought to mind my school, an ordinary little grammar school in a sleepy market town in Norfolk, East Anglia.(There is a rustling of atlases as people search for this hitherto unknown and very independent-minded state) One of my school-fellows, though I missed his acquaintance by a couple of hundred years, was called TomPaine. If you wonder why I bother you with this forgotten pamphleteer who knew nothing of Arthur Ransome, it may be something to do with the monkish bones that lie buried beneath the playground we both trod, and which perhaps infected us both with something of their spleen. Tom's postings were often inappropriate. They made people uncomfortable. Indeed, he made it his role in life to afflict the comfortable, discomfort the pompous and ridicule the stupid. He could be described as confrontational, aggressive and many would have called him a traitor. He was indicted, in absentia, for sedition but was smart enough not to come back. Oh yes, and he wrote the Rights of Man. If I could have a one-to-one with anyone I wanted, I would have mine with Tom Paine.
*If I've mis-remembered or mis-translated this quote, please don't expose your scholarity on TARboard. Send me an email if you must and I'll grovel in a suitable manner.
