trio of ice creams” (mentioned in the menu) consisted of four portions. I remember that, flushed with success, I then explained to him that a solo was a song by two people and that oral sex was very bad for people prone to asthmatic attacks. You can understand why I never made vicar. Please advise me why my one and only success as a persuader was in the presence of a waiter who subscribed to a wholly different set of religious guidelines. In a nutshell, how can I become a better liar?
Rev. Albert Tatlock ACII A
: Dear R.A.T. - It is never too late to expand and develop your natural capacity to mislead. I am putting you in touch with a number of snake-oil specialists, seasoned exponents of over-the- eyes wool-pulling, renowned masters of deception, chicanery, legerdemain, artifice, hocus- pocus, hanky-panky, special pleading, quackery, jiggery- pokery, bunkum, flapdoodle and disingenuous rannygazoo. Some of them are corrupt expenses- fiddling politicians. Others are mobile phone retailers or the ruthless financial salesmen employed by banks. Some are used car dealers. Others are estate agents, Plod, lawyers, travel agents, utility companies, internet service providers and roofing contractors.
Uncle Alan
: Dear Uncle Alan - For rather more than 20 years, I have been collecting words which are regularly misspelt in the columns of insurance trade magazines. The top ten are: millennium, prosciutto, Cullum, aficionado, collapsible, Hanks, minuscule, desiccated, Krafft-Ebing and Brylcreem. I work for a major loss adjuster and, with hindsight, I believe I may have wasted my middle years. Do you agree? Jacques Le Plonqueur ACILA
Q
A
: Dear Jacko - Yes. Why not waste the next few months putting your top ten into a single sentence, adding only “the”, “a”, “and”, “Peter” and “plenty of political correctness”, as required?
Big Al
: Dear Uncle Alan - I work in a very smelly call centre for a well-known insurer of white goods and my friend Wally... rather cruelly, I think... describes me as boring, immature, ignorant, dismissive and far too reliant on the Data Protection Act as a substitute for commonsense decision-making. I have just received an invitation to appear in a television chat show. Should I accept it and have a bath?
Q H. Steptoe-Clinton A
: Dear Hillary - If I were you, I’d steer well clear of anything that might cause a serious shock to the system. You seem to have all the basic qualifications for a counter-clerk post in a High Street bank... try NatWest. Alternatively, after three months training in personal hygiene and if you were sufficiently overweight, you could become a senior claims person who makes life difficult for those members of her team who do their job exceedingly well but without apparent effort.
Uncle Alan
love dearly, rebuffed my amorous advances after I’d returned quite late from a dinner at Guildhall, where I’d been obliged to listen to a dreadfully inappropriate speech from some minor celeb called Plankton or something. I was mortified, the more so because this had never happened before, even when I’d had to listen to the likes of Sandy the Edinburgh Fringe,
Q
B. Bjelobabbbbbbba, Erik the Galbraith and Andrew Lee Homer II plus a number of rather tired men
: Dear Uncle Alan - Last March, my mistress, whom I
with plastic briefcases and little or no evidence of decent creases in their trousers, i.e. brokers. My beloved Thelma then
called me, inter alia, a sleazy salad-dodging swamp jockey and a superannuated David Shaw lookalike. How do I go about avoiding a repeat performance... or, rather, non-performance... when I return from this month’s Guildhall bash?
Swamp Jockey A
: Dear Swamp - If you’re unlucky enough to be invited this time around, don’t go! Tell ‘em there’s a clash with your rather more important nocturnal activities as a spotter for the Lingfield and District Peeping Tom and Dogging Society. It’s no secret that the “G.D.” is notorious for its mediocre “non-industry” speakers and, perhaps, even more strikingly, for the docility of the attenders, who are invariably extremely pleased with
themselves. Instead, take Thelma along to a well-known Shoreditch strip joint, where most of the diners will turn up sooner or later, half cut as usual. O tempora, o mores!
Uncle Alan Some answers in brief:
Dear Andrew N. - I fear that most of the stuff people tell you in confidence they couldn’t get anyone else to listen to.
Dear Fiona - Please send me a full-length photo and I’ll see what I can do to help solve your little late-thirties problem.
Dear Battered - Whatever you do, don’t attend the funeral. Instead, write a nice letter to his wife, saying you approve of it.
Dear Mick - Never trust a man who speaks well of everyone. He’s only trying to tempt you into injudicious gossip.
MARCH 2011 insurancepeople 19
Dear Judith - An inferiority complex would be a blessing if only the right people had it, e.g. speakers at BIBA conferences and people who work for foreign insurance companies in their British sub-offices.
Dear James - You’re an insurer, so it’s no use telling your troubles to brokers. Half of them won’t care and the other half will figure you probably had it coming.
A few of the questions I’ll answer next time... maybe:
Q Q Q
: My wife screams when she is having sex, especially when I accidentally walk in on her. How can I get her to keep the noise down? It’s disturbing the neighbours, not to mention the other lodgers
: I’m a claims manager and I’m often accused of being an arrogant loudmouth. Last month, I was humble for a fortnight but nobody noticed. Where am I going wrong? What adjustments need to be made?
: I have an unresolved castration complex. How can this best be dealt with?
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