My Favourite Mistake.


The other day, as I was working in my office, I could hear a woman outside the window discussing “…that film where Tom Hanks has AIDS, called Twelve Monkeys”.

I was tempted to shout out to correct her. Would that have been bad cricket? It wasn’t my place to step in. I wasn’t party to the conversation. Not directly, anyway. It would have made her jump to hear a voice from on high, correcting her filmic mistake. She might have thought I was some kind of God with a penchant for movie trivia.

I enjoyed the offensive undercurrent. Did she think that monkeys gave people AIDS? If so, she could do with a little reeducation. Perhaps she thought that Hanks contracted Human Immunodeficiency Syndrome after a dozen-monkey gangbang.

I found myself in a similar situation last night, whilst on the train back from London (not a gangbang). The people in front had been to see Jeeves and Wooster in the West End – and kept mentioning that Mark Webb was in it. Not Mark Heap (Jeeves), Robert Webb (Wooster), but a Heap / Webb amalgamation.

I think I’ll wear earplugs in future.

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