If it looks like the Governor of the Bank of England…
The suavely dressed man was running his finely manicured fingers along a rail of my t-shirts at the Wilderness Festival when my forensic-like radar clocked him. He reminded me of someone I’d seen before. His effortless urbanity and cool demeanour suggested we could be playing out a scenario from a Nescafe advert if only I hadn’t been eating a banana sandwich at the time. Note to myself: if I’m ever going to star in one of those commercials I need to avoid banana slime trails in my beard.
When the mysterious customer edged closer to examine my ‘V.I.P reserved rail’ at the back of the stall, I made my move.
“People probably say this to you all the time but you look just like the Governor of the Bank of England”.
He smiled to himself before answering in a low but confident voice “That’s because I am the Governor of the Bank of England”.
“That’ll be why you look like him then” I cleverly observed.
“Yes” he said, accepting the salience of my point.
It started to make me wonder what things would be like if Mark Carney didn’t look like the Governor of the Bank of England. He would have enormous difficulty getting into his office every day instigating unseemly and unprecedented wrestling matches in the Bank of England’s foyer. Nobody wants the man in charge of setting the country’s interest rates to begin each working day in painful arm-holds and headlocks. “This bastard is going nowhere” shouts Garth the doorman with his knee in the small of Carney’s back barely ten minutes before an important statement is due on the Third Quarters’ lower than expected growth rates.
It would also be disorientating for the assembled ranks of the media if Carney actually made it to the Press Conference and started speaking. Why is this man speaking into the Bank of England’s microphone they would ask. Is he testing the sound system? And the end of Carney’s brilliant and devastatingly insightful speech he would invite questions and only one would emerge: “Where is the Governor of the Bank of England?” they would ask. Embarrassing.
Luckily none of that is the case and Mark Carney looks every inch the current Governor of the Bank of England. He chose the Che Guevara ‘Touche’ t-shirt in a fetching red with black print. As we did the money thing I turned on my famous charm.
“Do you get recognised a lot” I asked him, hinting at my brilliant powers of detection.
“It depends whether I’ve been in the news lately” he answered.
“I see” I said sharing a small of moment of empathy about the lack of privacy in his life.
Five minutes later some slimy fart pretending not to be working for the Mail on Sunday came into the shop and fooled me into imparting key information about my exchange with the Governor. A story duly appeared the next day in that disgusting shit stream of a news rag commenting upon Carney’s ‘bizarre’ purchase of a t-shirt celebrating revolutionary socialist Che. Of course they missed the point. It wasn’t celebrating one Che. It was celebrating two Che! And it took the man in charge of the country’s counting to notice.
