Back in France from South America , trimmer due to a touch of Montezuma's Curse along the way , crumpled Peter Burleigh is cruising the canals and proving to be a bigger hit than President Marcon. He modestly explains his sudden rise to fame exclusively for our dishevelled readers thus:
I can now announce that I, your reporter, has recently
become one of our planet’s elite celebrities. This is my story, totally
unembellished by exaggerations from the rumour mill. Most International
celebrities have a personal story to tell, but because they are among the
world’s most beautiful people they protect their “brand image” with carefully
crafted public relations campaigns. However everything you will read here is
true.
I was born in…but wait, rivetting as it is, that part of
my personal history must wait for the release of my autobiography, to be
run in 347 chapters in The New Yorker magazine.
Instead let us start a mere several days ago, in the town
of Montceau les Mines (in English, Mean Monsters) in Burgundy,
France. Every June, in virtually every town and village across France, the
nation celebrates the Festival de la Musique. On every corner, in every
restaurant and bar and in every public space music competes with itself : rock and
classical, rap and romance, musical comedy and hip-hop are blended at high
volume, energising crowds of people.
I attended an open-air concert in the square in front of the Town Hall, and was grooving along with an unknown band until I noticed something amiss. I thought it was the lead singer’s groin which held the crowd mesmerised, when suddenly I realised the vocalist was not the centre of attention, I was. People were staring at me.
I attended an open-air concert in the square in front of the Town Hall, and was grooving along with an unknown band until I noticed something amiss. I thought it was the lead singer’s groin which held the crowd mesmerised, when suddenly I realised the vocalist was not the centre of attention, I was. People were staring at me.
I am a person who attempts to entrance others through the
written word, not through my physical appearance, so when people appeared
gobsmacked by my mere presence at the concert, as if I was an angel at a
Satanist annual meeting, I was almost speechless.
No one said anything to me, or
asked for my name or my spare change: they simply stared at me like a school of
stunned mullet staring at the Messiah. The vocalist finished his groin-thrusting
interpretation of Julie Andrews’ “Doe, a deer, a female deer” to an absolutely
silent crowd of several hundred, all of whom were fixed on me. Alarmed, I left
the scene immediately. No one followed or pawed me.
What had I done to warrant such a reaction? The crowd looked like it had been asked to explain the Theory of Relativity to an amoeba. What had happened? I checked my reflection in a shop window: no halo, just the usual alcoholic glow. No obscene tattoos had appeared on my face, and I was not wearing my Chicken Suit.
Days of deep puzzlement later, while our canal boat turned
south into the canal between Digoin and Roanne (towns in southern Burgundy) I
concluded that it was my innate ‘foreignness’ which had attracted attention. But
how could they have known I was a foreigner?
That night at a canal-side halte, I
sheltered from the rain under the eaves of a public toilet, cooking our dinner
on our portable BBQ. The weather had turned comparatively cold after the heat
wave, so I wore a raincoat, tracksuit pants and socks to keep my feet warm. Then
it struck me. I had worn the same ensemble at the concert. People might have
interpreted my clothes as an expression of style. It was possible.
The crew (Rope Girl and son Marc) posted on
Facebook a photo of me standing there in the raincoat, shoulders
hunched, hoodie up, socks gleaming through the straps of my sandals. Obviously
nothing abnormal there, I hear you say. Yes, but no matter how strange,
thousands of potential trends must have gone unrecognised in the past.
When I am in France I always prefer to drink my money rather than wear it, so fashion must have reached out blindly to touch me at a nodal point where my innocent choice of hooded rain coat, socks and sandals had caught the imagination of a youthful audience.
When I am in France I always prefer to drink my money rather than wear it, so fashion must have reached out blindly to touch me at a nodal point where my innocent choice of hooded rain coat, socks and sandals had caught the imagination of a youthful audience.
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Burleigh socks it to stunned French trendies .
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The photograph generated major traffic. Links to YouTube
featured a French rap group called Alrima whose gang members/band
all wore sandals and thongs with socks, matching their downtrodden slum-dwelling
appearance with the supressed poetry of the street artiste. No doubt accelerated
by my appearance on Facebook I had awoken an international vibe.
The trend was
so new it didn’t yet have a name. I watched the clip on YouTube but couldn’t
understand all of Alrima’s words. In fact I still don’t know what the
song is about. Would one of my
French-speaking readers please send me a translation, warts and all.
At one point the lead
vocalist raps on about “the smells of summer” and this may be a reference to old
socks. Sandals are called ‘claquettes’ in France, which sounds a
little like ‘tap-dancing shoes’ or ‘clapperboards’. It’s not a big step of
logic to see that fashion trends are linked with entertainment.
Now I have been a celebrity for almost a week.
It’s amazing how an ordinary nerdy guy has turned full circle and become ‘cool’
and a ‘fashion icon’. My virtual friends ask me “Which hedonistic calculus
applies to your revolutionary sock selection?” and “I call your style
round-shouldered chic. What do you call it?”
These are hard questions to
answer. I try to be as enigmatic as possible and reply ‘Keith Richards might
know’. In truth, I’m mystified. Up to now any clothes that need to be
dry-cleaned or worse, ironed, have been banned from my wardrobe. Some responses
suggesting what I could do with a suit of Lycra have been rude and
cruel.
Only this morning Pippa Middleton was reported as jealously saying that what I wear is “only clothes”. In reply I ask would she describe a van Gogh painting as “only paint”?
So, how long will my celebrity endure? Doubters who quote
the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes with me cast as Emperor will be proved
wrong. Why do we continue to know the names of the Egyptian Pharaohs, actors
like Mickey Rooney and Jayne Mansfield and characters like Billy Bunter and
Noddy, not to mention authors like Enid Blyton and Mariah Carey? Because they
all had something to share and they shared it. That’s the key to successful
celebrityship : sharing yourself for all eternity.
So it’s no good looking for expensive endorsed products
with my name on them. As long as I can afford socks, I will share them with all
who ask me and at a very reasonable price, too.
Celebrity is fleeting and I must soon look inward for my
next big thing. My taste of fame
which YouTube predicts may
endure until tomorrow afternoon, hasn’t aroused in me a wild animal ravenous for
his next ’15 Warhol Minutes’, it’s made me sincerely humble, self-effacing and
unpretentious.
