Tuesday 16 August 2011

A salutary lesson to one and all

From a Public Information Film dating (from the evidence of the fashions sported by the players) from the early 1980's, rather than the 1970's as advertised; a lesson we should all learn.


And the lesson is this; never discuss your business, louche or otherwise, in front of the landlord of a public house whose accent vacillates all over the various regions of England, and who likes to dispense moral platitudes whilst serving you drinks. It should not surprise me if he were he who furnished the intelligence which landed the unfortunate "Jeff" in trouble with the foreign gendarmes in the first instance. That is obviously how he managed to afford the multiple trips to Spain to which he so gleefully alludes; he is a paid informant who has been placed into that public house as a cover for his grassing.

Notice, also, how the slippery so-and-so feigns concern for "Jeff's" girlfriend when the RADA-trained  flat-capped Liverpudlian, who appears to be "Jeff's" brother, walks in to break the bad news apropos the sentence ("oh, look... it's always the scousers, isn't it?" - Kelvin Mackenzie).

"I wonder how his girlfriend's going to take it?" , indeed. He knows perfectly well how she's going to take it, because he has been "trimming it" to her ever since "Jeff's" incarceration, inveigling his way into her affections using faux concern for "Jeff's" plight whilst she was at her most vulnerable, and then ensnaring her into a life of dependency using cocaine and heroin supplied by his handlers down at the station.

She's going to take it up the aris. As is "Jeff", in some stinking foreign nick. And it's all thanks to our friendly "mein host".

If you ever have the misfortune to have a landlord like this installed in your local hostelry, do not waste any time engaging him in small talk; just cut to the quick and glass him at the earliest opportunity.

Still, I suppose one thing has changed since the 1980's; "Jeff" got four years in a faraway foreign prison, in a land whose judiciary were far more severe than their counterparts in the United Kingdom, for possession of "a small piece of dope". In the present day democratic United Kingdom, it seems that he would get the same sentence for saying "let's have a riot" on Facebook.

Do others feel that "Jeff" got off lightly, in hindsight?

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