You'll Never Guess Who I Had In The Front Of The Cab...

So I hailed this passing taxi cab, and who should be behind the wheel but Boris Johnson! Good Lord, I said, you must be a busy man. Oh it's not so bad really, he said - I was sitting in the garden with the children this afternoon. And so the conversation rattled on, agreeably enough. Nice chap, quite self-effacing. Oh did I mention this was a dream?
Anyway, Boris's name came up on the radio this morning in this rather good talk by Lucy Kellaway. For myself, I find the boasting culture utterly repugnant and could no more 'big myself up' than fly to the moon (or indeed New Zealand - it's just too bloody far). This reflex self-deprecation cum self-effacement has no doubt held me back in my various occupations, but that's fine by me. The boasting culture seems to me not only repellent but pointless, as so much of the bragging self-promotion is based on lies or nothing, or a toxic combination of the two. This is why The Apprentice is so addictive - that it is constantly exposing these young thrusters as so many bladders of wind with no talent for anything except self-promotion. In the 'real world', they'll be doing fine, but in the far more real world of The Apprentice they collapse into the pathetic wannabes they really are. The Apprentice is like the best comedy in its tonic work of deflation and exposure. A much-needed corrective too, in our age of windy braggadocio.
(Apologies for my brief absence, by the way - too much activity at NigeCorp and Nige Towers. And now they've gone and 'updated' the technology here at NC, so heaven knows if this will actually 'publish'...)