Idle Tom’s got a guru …
On Friday, I had one of the most surreal conversations of my life - and I’ve had a few, I can tell you.
Posh Spice going mad at me; Elton John going mad at me; Chris de Burgh going mad at me; Neil Wallis going mad at me; Jonathan Ashby going mad at me; Ivana Trump flirting with me (to promote, of all things, some festering new product by Kentucky Fried Chicken). But …
None of it can quite compare to Idle Tom the Publisher getting Touchy-Feely with me. He called on Friday - which, I later gathered, is the day to make these calls.
"Tom!" I said. "All set for a raunchy weekend eh? Bet you’ve got half-a-dozen dates lined up, you old dog!"
"No," he said. "Think I’ll be having a quiet weekend watching telly. Getting a lot of good stuff on the satellite these days -"
"Glad to hear that Tom. So what’s going on?"
"Oh yes. Anyway - on a scale of one to ten, how would you rate the quality of our relationship during the last week?"
"I’m sorry? The quality of our relationship? During the last week? Bit of a strange question, Tom, seeing as you haven’t been overly concerned about the quality of our relationship ever since I’ve known you."
"Humour me."
"Well …" I paused. An interesting question, though difficult to answer right off the gun. "Can I go negative?"
"No you cannot," he said. Rather testy if I may say so. "No, you can give me marks from zero to ten."
"I’d probably give you a five. Yeah - five out of ten."
"Five out of ten! Well!" Huffy.
"I damn nearly gave you a four."
"OK. OK - now, umm," (and here I could hear the rustling of paper, as he flicked through a book). "What would it take to make it a ten?"
"What would it take to make it ten? What are you on at the moment, Tommy? Where is all this coming from? What would it take to make it a ten? Heyy! Do you know I’ve just seen a squadron of pigs flying past the front window?"
"Can you be serious?"
"Of course I can be serious. But it’s just a little weird you coming onto me like this and asking how you can improve our relationship, when for the past year you haven’t given a monkey’s."
"Yeah, I see that Bill. But I’m trying to move things on, so I want a fresh start. So - how could I improve the quality of our relationship?"
"Well you could read Project X for a start. We cooked up that book idea over two months ago and you’ve sat on the first take for more than five weeks. Every weekend you tell me you’ll read it - and every weekend you’ve done nothing."
"OK. Yes - I understand. I’ll read it."
"What - you’ll read it this weekend?"
"Yes, errr, I’ll read it. This weekend"
"Really? So where’s all this stuff coming from, Tommy? Bit unlike you to be asking for marks out of ten -"
"I’ve got a new book by the Chicken Soup guy Jack Canfield. It’s cool. It’s called "How to get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be"."
"So does that mean I’m going to be hearing a whole load more stuff like this over the next month?"
"I tell you what! I tell you what! I’ll send you a copy!"
Are you where you want to be? Check out Idle Tom’s new guru here