Boring for England

Major league bores are of many kinds, but the commonest variety have one characteristic: everything they say, but everything, is either a stupefying banality or a totally pointless anecdote. I know one – let us call him UTF, which happen to be quite close to his initials but might stand for Unbelievably Tedious Fellow – who could combine the two with powerful effect.

The discussion is, let us say, about the injustice of workers losing their pensions when a company goes bust while the directors walk away with millions. In comes UTF:
“Well, I always say, what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander”. Far from being entombed in the wave of glum silence which follows this remark, UTF, having got the floor, presses on: “That’s what a friend of mine called Peter often used to say: What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, he used to say”. At this point he realises that what is called for now is some background information about Peter:
“Interesting chap, Peter, used to live in St Albans, well, at any rate, he was at school there but moved to Harpenden when he married, girl I knew who used to work with me at ICI, actually, that’s how I met him. Anyway, he had this marvellous collection of cigarette cards, must have had, oooh…”.

Here he demonstrates another habit of people who have nothing of interest to say: the long pause while he sits with furrowed brow and pursed lips trying to recall some completely unimportant detail, and we all wait: “...several hundred!”.

And so on.

Like most bores, he is a very nice chap, so no-one says “Oh, for God’s sake shut up, you miserable wretch!”. Everyone listens for a bit and then gradually lets his voice fade into the background while they start conversations among themselves on some totally different topic, or just start showing each other little tricks with matches.

This post is quite a short one but seems to have taken a long time to write; I must have dropped off to sleep in the middle of it.