| I hide in a log cabin with a large groups of strangers. |
| We don’t know what’s
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| outside, but it’s making us pretty nervous
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| Channel Four make a terrible fuss of appointing a dwarf to present all of their
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| children’s programmes. |
| He turns out to be really rather good, exceptionally
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| engaging and handsome. |
| A long-term documentary of his life is commissioned
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| I go to the park, it’s very bright and looks like plastic, like a cartoon.
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| The grass is very green and the sky is very blue. |
| The ducks have left a lot of
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| duck shit all over a little island in the river. |
| I sit on the grass and explain
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| to George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld how ducks stand on one leg to avoid getting
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| shit on both feet. |
| They’re very interested and ask me to demonstrate
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| I go to the supermarket and buy weird fluffy toys for my little brother.
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| They all have ineffectual little limbs, grey threadbare fur, irregular numbers
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| of eyes and ears. |
| I am delighted that the supermarket stocks them since I know
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| that my brother has real-life creatures like this living in his backyard
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| I wander about barefoot in the duck shit then feel guilty because I promised my
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| friends in the log cabin that I wouldn’t talk to George Bush. |
| And now I have
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| The dwarf on Channel Four has become very old. |
| He resembles a miniature Edith
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| Sitwell, with his headscarf and sunken cheeks and is apparently now an iconic
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| figure in the art world. |
| He has been asked to appear on the catwalk show of
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| Vivienne Westwood’s new collection and Channel Four are covering the event for
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| the documentary, naturally
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| My father and I have a ridiculously melodramatic argument. |
| We’re both like
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| Lawrence Olivier doing Greek tragedy, all flailing arms and accusatory eyes.
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| The lighting is suitably stark: we’re spot-lit from below
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| All the clothes are black and yellow, striking geometric patterns on enormous
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| angular outfits. |
| Westwood explains to the cameras that if she can see the faces
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| of the people in the audience she gets nervous, so everyone has had to come
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| wearing an animal head over their evening wear
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| The camera pans out for the last shot |