Part Six of The Sensational Shrimpleton Saga: Threefeet of the Yard.

Where were we? Oh yes – we were wondering about the cryptic clue the elusive Khalistan Warriors had left hidden away in their address and the tantalising game they were playing with people who might want to contact them. Did you get it?

In case you didn’t, the answer is:

Hyde & Sikh…

Anyway – a long way south of Cumberside Island somewhere in Middlesex, James Threefeet APE (Association of Private Eyes – of which he was the founding and so far the only member) – was recovering from his latest hangover in the poky bedsit he had been living in for the last three years.

`Tripod’ (Threefeet) – as he was known to his few acquaintances behind his back – groaned and stumbled towards the end of the crumbling attic room which served as his home. This end was the kitchen. And bathroom – because there was a sink.

There, he kicked aside last might’s empties on the floor, being careful not to stand on any bottles again, mindful of the last time he had and ended up senseless on the torn and ancient linoleoum, having fallen and hit his head against the sink. It was still chipped – and his head felt as if it was, too.

He looked for a clean glass on the dusty shelf with the cracked Formica which he reserved for such things. There weren’t any so he took a greasy one from the wreckage of unwashed dishes piled in a fetid bowl half-full of stinking water in the sink. Then he groaned again, gripped the side of the sink and slowly straightened himself up to see his own reflection in the cracked and slightly mouldy mirror which hung from the crumbling plaster wall behind it.

“Looking chipper, Jim!” he told himself. “Need to get your anus in gear Old Boy though! Mustn’t disappoint Her Ladyship later on!”

Then he said the word `Looking” again, three times in succession.

For Jim Threefeet had deliberately cultivated what he thought was a `better’ way of talking than the way he did when he was a child and then a troubled teenager in Hackney way back when.

But every so often – particularly when he was drunk or tired – the illusion slipped and he clipped his endings in a dead-give-away of where he really came from – and who he really was. “Looking” became “lookin’”; “Speaking” “speakin’”; “Thinking” “thinkin’” – and so on.

Politicians are notorious for doin’ – sorry – doing thesame thing too as you’ve probably noticed. Oblivious to the fact that it actually identifies them as the frauds they actually are, they think that `talking posh’ impresses people. And maybe it does, come to think of it – otherwise, presumably they wouldn’t do it

Or would they? If you are totally unaware of your actual impact on the people around you in the first place – as Jim most definitely always had been – maybe you would…

But we are getting distracted and considering various scenarios which almost certainly don’t apply to people as usually shallow as the ones we’re wasting energy thinking about. No such philosophical or even theoretical possibilities would trouble Jim Proudfoot, for a start…

For him, life itself was an illusion; an act; a pretence – a performance. And always had been.

He may not have been the sharpest knife in the drawer when he was younger but by nineteen, Threefeet’s almost jungle-like instinct to not just survive but succeed had taught him that appearances are far more important to ambitious people than trivia such as talent or any aptitude to do any particular job well.

Doubt it? Then have another think about most politicians again. Jim would ask you to consider in which other walk of life were qualifications so completely irrelevant? Where else could someone who had failed GCSE Maths end up in charge of countless of billions pounds of the nation’s precious resources as Chancellor of the Exchequer? All together now – as we think back to a woman who once held that lofty position in the British government not all that long ago:

“That is a disgrace!”

James Proudfoot would wholeheartedly agree. Or how about becoming Minister of Trade without having spent even a minute behind a counter serving people or running their own business?

Yes, Jim had known from an early age that sham and the ability to bluster plus an apparently unshakeably confident front was far better than a University education or actual experience at the coal face of any industry or government organisation such as the NHS.

Why bother studying or slaving away for years when a few key phrases from the Chancers’ Bible such as “Let’s go back to First Principles” would do the job?

“That’s really a matter of semantics, isn’t it” was another cracker.

But the absolute classic: “In my considerable experience” could get you through virtually any tricky situation – in Jim’s very considerable experience of what I believe is now referred to as “the Art of B/S”.

Jim Threefeet was the living proof of this. He had dedicated his life to this art. To such an extent that – during the late 1970s – he had allowed his hair to grow, cultivated a bushy beard to go with it and taken a one-way trip to the Alps (he would ideally have gone to the Himalayas but the cost of the flight was way beyond his means at that time). Impressed by current trends surrounding Eastern Mysticism – and particularly the Beatles’ involvement with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and his mind-expanding Transcendental Meditation techniques – Jim intended to style himself as a new Guru and sell his own second-hand philosophy instead. His logic was that if some cartoon bear character was good enough for John Lennon, who was he to argue? He thought about calling himself something exotic like Mahavishnu and adopting a similar name to Yogi but thought that Boo Boo lacked the necessary gravitas he was looking for.

So he needed a different approach.

Enter Hermann Neutickle. Don’t laugh – no; not even if you are tickled – or even neutickled…

This little-known individual was apparently an Austrian philosopher who Jim purported to worship. Hermann was a latter-day saint whose ascetic existence among the cows on the slopes of the Matterhorn and suchlike Alpine peaks brought him to a physical state in which – just like the Meditation junkies – he could bring himself both inner peace and an understanding of the world that transcended, er, well – even Transcendentalism itself.

Maybe Jim was born at the wrong time. I suspect – that with the World Wide Web and a whole gamut of people out there who might actually fall for invest in this sort of thing, calling himself Maharishnu (a mix between Maharishi and Mahavishnu); Llama; Patriarch; Bhagat; Deacon or something-or-other else with an ecclesiastical ring might work all too well. Then the money would start pouring in – which was the whole object of the exercise from at least Jim’s point of view.

At the time, though, he decided to call himself Pastor James the Elder, even though he feared some people might think he was actually selling some sort of older Italian cuisine given his own initial confusion between the words `Pastor’ and `Pasta’. He even got some hippy-dippy American magazine to film him – dressed only in a loin cloth and sat in his version of the Lotus Position with an Alpine Cow-Bell slung around his neck – in the snow at the foot of a huge, snowy peak as he sought the Inner Wisdom and profound insight that intense cold would inevitably bring.

The technique, he explained as he sat virtually naked in the freezing cold temperature, differed from Mr Yogi’s practice in one fundamental respect. Instead of emptying your mind of all unfocused thoughts, it was necessary to focus on one very specific element of your own mortality in its physical form. A physical form very close to the nerve centre of your very Being – which is what your brain is, when you come to think of it.

The closer you concentrate on these particular points in your own physiology – the quicker these positive vibes could be picked-up by it. Stands to reason, doesn’t it? And what could be closer to your brain than the teeth inside your head?  

Start with the molars in the back of your mouth. Concentrate on them, excluding any other intrusive thoughts. Here lies the key to bring perspective into our modern lives. No more Molars being made out of Molehills. Then move to your Canines. Bring with them a dogged determination to find inner tranquillity. Finally – your Incisors.  Your incisive Incisors. And then just wait for serenity to overcome you. 

If you persist and practice on a regular basis, you will find that this technique will take you to places you could otherwise only imagine.  

Jim, shivering slightly, looked at the film crew and said, his own teeth chattering a little:  

“Professor Tickle’s Technique will help everybody to achieve Inner Peace just by using an unbeatable combination of their personal thought processes and their own teeth. Trust me – and you, too, can find the tooth, the whole tooth and nothing but the tooth. Yes: transcend dental altogether in this utterly foolproof way. Places are limited. Book yours now. Please send crossed cheques to Post Office Box…”  

And then he collapsed. 

Was it some sort of ecstasy brought on by the the deeply spiritual contemplative place and altered state of consciousness he had brought himself to in front of the camera? No – it was hypothermia. 

And that was it – two weeks in an Austrian hospital being treated for the effects of frostbite wasn’t a lifestyle many people would readily buy into.

This had been a pretty good try for the man of usually severely limited imagination which Jim had always been. I suspect the whole idea actually arose from a misunderstanding of a little-known word in English; namely hermeneutical. This concerns a very specialised branch of scholarship which deals specifically with the interpretation of written work; be it a literary, academic or particularly a liturgical text. But what do I know?

I know that Jim was born James Churchill Proudfoot to staunch but working-class Tories in 1958. The house he was brought up in was a rented brick-built terraced property without an indoor toilet just off Dunloe Street in Haggerston. His Mother – a hard-working seamstress – preferred the term `Privy’ to toilet: it had a far more sophisticated ring about it, just as she preferred ` brick-built terraced property’ to the more accurate word `slum’. He could remember her saying `Privy’ but he couldn’t even picture the house it referred to all these years later. By 1963, he was living in a brand new high-rise tower block on the De Beauvoir Estate in Hackney. Even as a kid, Jim liked the sound of this, particularly when he learned that “Beauvoir” meant “nice view”: he never tired of telling people that “De nice view from my gaffe is exceptionary!” (he meant `exceptional’ – or perhaps `extraordinary’ – but who cared?)

We’ve probably all met someone like James Churchill Proudfoot sometime in our lives. Someone whose unshakable faith in their own opinions bears no relation whatsoever to their apparent complete lack of any discernible intellect. 

Let’s take Jim’s thoughts about the Artemis Space Program as an example.

As we all know, this latest attempt by mankind to reach the stars has made quite a stir in recent times. 

But did you know that it was inspired by the First Man on the Moon – Louis Armstrong – when he took his first steps on our largest satellite in the 1960s? 

That’s when he looked backwards towards where he had come from and was inspired to write his iconic “It’s a Wonderful World”. 

Well – according to Threefeet of the Yard this is what happened anyway.

And did you know that Louis was working for the central character of the 1956 Suez Crisis at the time? Yes – General Abdul Nasser – the Egyptian leader in the Nineteen Fifties – was promoted to lead the American Space Program as a result. 

Doubt it? Then why else would it be named after him? 

Beware though: don’t be taken-in by what President Nasser has told you about Artemis. 

Let me enlighten you further from facts imparted to me exclusively by James Churchill Proudfoot himself:

“The most sophisticated engineering project ever undertaken by mankind? – my artemis! Just how stupid and gannet-like (by which Jim meant `Gull-ible’) does that Egyptian clown think we are? Sophisticated? So why do they tell us in the same breath that it’s ‘crude’? They must take us all for fools!” 

It would be no good suggesting to Jim that the word NASA had actually used was ‘crewed’ – Jim would not hear you. Because to hear other people, you have to listen in the first place, don’t you? 

There’s no doubt about it, though – just an hour or two with Jim could totally change your view of the world. 

I bet you didn’t know that the People’s Republic of China was established by a man whose previous job was collecting rodent poo, did you?

Why else would he be called Mousey Dung? 

James Churchill Proudfoot was a mine of such priceless information. 

Then there were his misheard or misunderstood terms for other everyday things…

Going back to his childhood and his staunchly Tory mother, for example, Jim was immensely proud of the fact that she had certain unshakable standards which she would not drop in any circumstances. For example – he would tell anyone who would listen – she only used the best quality paints in the properties she lived in: Durex. 

And as for a certain well-known ladies’ sanitary product – well, just read on and be amazed… 

Equally, she boycotted certain other products which other people wouldn’t think about twice because of these very high standards. Poor as they were, for example, she would not use HP Sauce in any circumstances on principle.

“HP?” she would snort contemptuously, “Nuffink comes in this house what isn’t paid for! Higher Purpose” (she meant ‘Hire Purchase’ but who cared?) “Higher Purpose is for people what has ideas above their station!” 

Even now, this – one of his Mother’s favourite expressions – still holds an unshakable grip on James Churchill Proudfoot’s outlook. 

He’d heard of earnest philosophers and suchlike pontificating about the Meaning of Life and other old tosh that only toffs who didn’t have to work for a living could waste their time going on about in the first place. He’d almost thrown a chair at the telly one night when he saw some posh blokes chatting about some other stuck-up prat – a poet or something – and wondered where this genius got his fantastical and profoundly meaningful ideas from in the first place.

“Where everyone else does, you morons!” he’d yelled at the screen. “Above Paddington or Euston or Liverpool Street!” 

Yes, even if you get the words confused or messed them up on occasions or sometimes used the wrong ones altogether, if you kept on talking and were oblivious to what anyone else said, that was all that was required to be a success in Jim’s opinion. He doubted that people really noticed as long as you maintained the illusion that you were the expert – and they weren’t.

He chuckled when he thought back to classic faux-pas’ he had made in the past – but got away with. (Why on earth anyone used what he thought was a golfing analogy was lost on Jim but faux-pas’ veneer of foreign sophistication attracted him very strongly.)

He once told prospective clients – a young couple from Maidenhead – when he was selling apartments in Benidorm which he knew would never be built – that the complicated leasehold and an indecipherable contract in a foreign language was `just a question of Spanish Sam antics’. The couple he was selling to looked understandably puzzled – “Spanish Sam?” they asked.

“You’ve heard of Fireman Sam, haven’t you? This is his brother from Cadiz!”

So what? you might ask – that doesn’t even make sense. But Jim knew that nothing had to make sense providing you kept on talking confidently. People had voted for Brexit, hadn’t they?  That was all the evidence Jim needed to prove that this selling strategy actually works: the bigger the lie; the bigger the bus you might choose to write it on in huge letters, the more some people seemed to be prepared to believe it. Fact of Life. 

Anyway, the young couple seemed to believe him – and that was all that mattered. They still signed on the dotted line, so what did it matter if he was actually robbing them?

“Serves them right for being so gannet-like!” (there was that word `gullible’ again) he thought as he shook their hands apparently sincerely – and pocketed their five grand deposit at the same time.

He then recalled another occasion when he was sitting in the study of an Oxford Don, persuading him to part with ten thousand pounds for a Holiday Share in the Bahamas which had never actually existed. People like this – with their cosseted Ivory Tower lives which insulated them from the real-world jungle where predators like Jim Threefeet lay in wait – were always easy to con. But this one asked him an actually sensible question about international law and the validity of a Bahamian freehold contract, the answer to which Jim hadn’t the foggiest idea. “Let’s go back to First Principles, Professor!” he had said, to be surprised by the academic’s reply: “I think the first Principals of this College were Sir John de Balliol and Dervorguilla of Galloway around 1263, if my memory serves me well.” He signed on the dotted line too – and also kissed goodbye to his ten grand in the same instant.

By this time, Jim had changed his name by Deed Poll to James Thirtyfoot. This was partially to give police and insurance fraud investigators the slip. But it was also because he thought it was clever. In fact, he thought it was so clever, he had it printed on his Business Cards. Alongside it was the really brainy bit: a slogan, albeit lost on people born after the age of Imperial measurement: “Thirtyfoot – Always Going the Extra Ten Yards.”

It had worked for him – up to a point after he had decided to re-invent himself for the first time as a twenty-year-old and chosen to dump his given name. He was known as James Sixfoot for a while when he was involved in some pyramid selling scheme during the 1970s but reconsidered when prospective victims seemed disappointed by the fact that he was barely five feet eight in height. Little strategic gaffes like that could cost you a lot of dough. So he changed it again.

But even professional conmen finally run out of road. Bluster and B/S was all well and good if you are so inclined but it all finally caught up with Jim. The mortgage he had on a very nice house in Guernsey’s Castelparish on the Channel Islands was foreclosed in 2015 when his past caught up with him and he was banned by the Guernsey Financial Services Commission (GFSC) for “failure to meet the minimum criteria for licensing”.

He may well have been chased off the island anyway. Although he was acquitted when the trial duly arrived, he had been charged just before being effectively debarred with sexual assault after fondling a young student’s bottom when she had been working as a waitress in a cocktail bar at Wembley Stadium. Jim had blagged his way into the executive suites at an international soccer game between England and someone-or-other and had unilaterally decided that no nineteen-year-old woman’s day could be complete without unwanted intimate contact with the grubby hand of an overweight man with halitosis and poor general personal hygiene who was old enough to be her father.

“I was drunk!” he said to the police who carted him away, as if this justified what he had just done. Later, of course, he denied it.

He may have been finally acquitted but the suspicion was that no woman in their right mind would make up such an accusation and then re-live the humiliation and trauma all over again publicly in a Crown Court if there wasn’t any basis to what the unfortunate student had accused him of. The locals on Guernsey were not happy about this. So Jim Proudfoot – disgraced; disliked; banned; shunned and basically unemployable – decided to move back to the mainland.

His next attempt to use the skills of misinformation; bombast, spurious `facts’ and basic incompetence where they would naturally prosper: British politics – didn’t work either. He failed to be selected as the Conservative candidate for Harlow – where he gave an impassioned speech about the need for nationalisation to the interview Board. He was also unsuccessful as the potential Labour candidate for Epping four years later, where he had insisted that the only way forwards for the economy was to privatise everything in sight. He got a bit closer to being shortlisted with the friends of Sir Keir Starmer who interviewed him this time, but he ultimately failed again and decided to do something else instead.

B/S; starting every sentence you uttered with the word “So”; always being on some sort of `journey’ and the use of buzz words such as `no jeopardy’ or `curating your life’ could get you a long way but Jim finally seemed to have run out of road.

It was at this point, penniless and down to his last crate of vodka, that he decided to re-invent himself once more. This time – with his obsession with words related to `foot’ and `feet’, he called himself James Threefeet. That’s right: Threefeet of the Yard as it now said on his latest calling card. Three feet equals a Yard: this was absolutely top-notch and simply brilliant wordplay in Jim’s not entirely learned opinion.

His contact address was just off College Road in a Business Park in Hayes, west London, not a million miles from Heathrow airport. He made out that this was his office – but it was just a mail-drop facility in reality. He got round this by insisting that part of his personal approach to clients included interviews at their convenience and location. It was so much easier for busy professionals – he would assure them over the phone – for him to provide this service. Even though it would naturally be reflected in the eventual fee.  And his fees were very large indeed. Sadly, his portfolio was correspondingly very small indeed and his success rate even less. But when he was contacted by a Peeress of the Realm out of the blue, Jim’s animal instincts told him that his luck had well and truly changed. He would be meeting this woman in person later in the day. So now he just needed to transform himself from drunken, scruffy down-and-out wreck to consummate professional in a mere four hours.

Meeting a Lady of the Realm held no fear for Jim. He’d seen pictures of Lynne Shrimpleton in the trashy magazines on sale in the local supermarket. She wasn’t the stereotype of a un-worldly Bimbo of the self-styled `aristocratic’ sort he’d hoodwinked and ripped-off countless times in the past. But even so…

He smiled to himself slightly as he re-played that last thought: she was a woman first of all and foreign at that. What sort of challenge could someone like that pose to a man of his considerable experience and animal cunning?

He bent down and took a carton of `fresh’ orange juice out of his tiny fridge and groaned even louder as he stood up straight again. Then he whipped together a raw egg with the orange juice and added a generous slug of vodka to the mix and gulped it down, running a hairy arm across his mouth to wipe it which he then dried on the already stained string vest he always wore in bed – the same one.

There was an ancient contrivance by the side of the sink with a single thin tap pointing out of it and a battered case with the faded sticker CONVERTED TO NORTH SEA GAS just about legible on the side of it. He turned a big porcelain knob on this contraption which caused a minor explosion within powerful enough to make the crockery in the sink rattle. This was followed by a strong smell of said gas as a trickle of lukewarm water started to seep from the tap. Then he had a rudimentary wash and shaved-off four days’ stubble before he remembered to brush his teeth – something he frequently neglected to do.

He went to the clothes rail – a length of copper pipe clumsily hammered into the wall at one end and supported by a rickety plank of wood which he had liberated with the pipe from a skip at the other. And selected his best shirt and the Armani suit he reserved for occasions like these. It was a genuine one which he’d bought for sixty quid in a charity shop inFrinton-on-Sea, far away enough from London on the Essex coast not to attract the capital’s fancy prices. With it, he had pocketed a school tie from the local Academy: it was navy blue with a complicated Coat of Arms on it. It looked impressive – and just about obscure yet fancy enough to mean potentially anything to the unwary observer: a former Regiment perhaps; a posh Golf or other club – whatever you wanted it to be, basically. He also had one really good pair of hand-made shoes, which he polished carefully before putting them on. He then swallowed a handful of Paracetamol and headed for the nearest Greasy Spoon for an all-day slap-up breakfast: the perfect top-up for his hangover cure as well as ideal preparation for the day he was about to face.

Because that day would have a transformative effect on the future progress of James Churchill Proudfoot’s life. Not in the way he anticipated, admittedly. But his impending meeting with Lady Lynne Shrimpleton at the House of Lards – as Jim contemptuously referred to the Upper Chamber of the self-styled `Mother of Parliaments’ – would have ramifications for this low-level chancer and swindler which he lacked the imagination to even foresee. So don’t miss the next enthralling episode of The Saga of Shrimpleton Town FC; a tale of simple footballing folk to find out how…