* WE have a department at Nerd House which supplies economic pundits
to the television news bulletins. The TV people phone us up and say:
''This run on the yen today. We need to know what it means to someone in
Pinner who requires spares for his Toyota.''
''Fine,'' we say, surreptitiously looking up Pinner
in the gazetteer and keying
find string . . . yen into
our computer to discover
exactly what it is. ''We have just the man.''
Our pundits sit in a sort of duty-room, like World War Two fighter
pilots waiting for the order to scramble. Except that they are wearing
suits. They pass the time with inconsequential banter, drinking coffee.
They are actually quite nervous, anticipating the call ''Bandits at two
o'clock''; or more usually at 6.25pm.
When the call comes, the chosen one blasts off to the TV studio in a
taxi, rehearsing his spiel. There are but two rules he must obey when
the camera light comes on: look confident and don't pause to draw
breath. It doesn't matter what you say.
It has worked very well. Then this week, we supplied a pundit to
explain in eight seconds why the pound had plummeted following a
newspaper report that the PM and the Chancellor had fallen out. A report
which, we were later assured, wasn't worth the enormous reels of paper
it was written on.
A plummeting of the pound is hardly a new sensation, so we didn't
choose our most experienced pundit. Instead we sent The Cherry (Vietnam
grunt-speak is also popular here) and when the question was put to him,
live on-air, he dried. He couldn't think of any logical reason
whatsoever. His mouth gaped; he spluttered to a halt.
It was one of our worst moments. The pound might just recover, but I
don't think The Cherry ever will. We have put him into analysis. If the
pound continues to fall, we'll blame ourselves for sending him. All we
can say is: Oops, sorry.
* In the Nerd House commissariat, we were puzzling over the latest
fashionable Department of Transport bullshit phrase. ''Shadow
franchise?'' pondered The Braces. ''Probably from the verb to shadow.
That must be what you'll get when they hive off MI5.''
This was greeted with general derision. All sorts of other derivations
were explored, from shadow boxing to eye shadow. Then up spake Ms
Angelica Banana-Skyne, the High Whitecraigs polymath.
''A shadow franchise,'' she predicted, ''is undoubtedly one that looks
very strong indeed when the sun is shining, but which mysteriously
disappears in overcast conditions.'' A hush fell over us. Sometimes you
know instinctively when someone has made a profound and prophetic
observation. Moments like this are rare, but worrying.
* A farmer of our acquaintance has just welcomed his son home from a
world tour, during which the lad gained a proficiency certificate in
scuba diving. The boy's timing might have been better. ''We could have
used him in the tattie harvest,'' said my friend. ''With a scuba diver,
we wouldn't have had to leave half the tatties behind in the bottom
field. Mud? I bet there were spiny sea-urchins doon there.''
To rub it in, potato prices have ''rocketed doonwards'' (as he
eloquently put it) this year. He started off by selling several tonnes
for pig food, watching with poorly-concealed irritation as they were
sprayed with green dye to make them unsaleable for human consumption.
Then he thought: that green dye. That's the market to get into. The
way things are they'll need it by the hundred-tonne. We left him looking
speculatively at the bottom field and wondering how to develop green
mud.
These guys are survivors. Remember that when you find the tatties they
sold at 2p a pound have rocketed doonwards to 17p at the supermarket.
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