The Luncheon Club

posted on 4 September 2011

Mariann muses: Fifteen Minutes of Fame?

No, that's not what I'm talking about, though Andy Warhol did foresee the future in this fame-obsessed culture we have today.
What I mean is within the first fifteen minutes of meeting someone new, many of us will make a comment which denotes our status. We label ourselves for the other person's approval, or even disapproval if we're feeling stroppy.
I first noted this when a father of one of my student lodgers visited his son.
"Sorry," he said to me," but I am rather tired as I had dinner in Oxford last night. At the university, you know." Whoopee, important man.
Recently a new member turned up at a group I was chairing (note my status). Upon asking him to introduce himself he stated.
"I am Robert and I am bi-polar."
My initial reaction was to ask if he wished to see my operation scars but I deemed this too personal and liable to being misconstrued.
I wanly mentioned Stephen Fry, as the group appeared somewhat nonplussed, only to be told that, no, Stephen Fry has an entirely different condition. So this guy not only is bi polar but an expert!.
Another member of the group will, without fail, inform new members of her past achievements, but it did not happen in this session, perhaps because she was outstatused?
However, undaunted she brought forth her usual stuff at the next meeting. This is me and this is what I have achieved. Bless her, as she is in her eighties and does not wish to be lumped into that amorphous mass of 'the elderly.' I can appreciate that as I, too found it difficult when work ended for me, as I had lost my status. Who was I now?
But the art of name-dropping gets to me the most as, even though I have done it in the past, (we bought a house from a 60s film star, don't you know) I now see the unimportance of this, especially as no one will recognise her name today.
Last week a youngster was trying to impress a few of us by this method. She had appeared in a television programme as an extra. She mentioned the star's name and asked me if I knew him.
"Yeah, I screwed him." says I in true tired teenager style. The look of astonishment on the faces of my friends, before they dissolved into laughter at my joke, was priceless. She continued to look amazed saying; "Really????"
It was time for another glass of wine.

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The Luncheon Club