Monthly Archives: December 2007

“Twenty”, said Dirty Dave, “if you had to be Santa, a reindeer (any one of the magic ones) or Jesus which one would you be?”

“Dave”, I replied, “that is a very good question.”

“Really, do you think so?”

“No, you hapless cretin, it is up there with the worst of the ‘Which one of these three things would you be questions’ but nevertheless I shall do my best to answer it for you.”

“Santa. There’s the whole workshop full of presents thing which is very appealing, isn’t it? All year round you’ve got your North Pole sweatshop working overtime and, given the fact you have magic and stuff, you could employ somebody like Willie Walsh to administer, leaving you lots of time to play Pacman and the like.”

“I can sense a ‘but’ coming up here.”

“You know me too well, David, you know me too well. Having to deal with screaming kids for a month is not exactly my idea of fun. It’s a job that Gary Glitter and Derry O’Rourke would love. Little children sitting on your lap all day but like Achilles I have one weakness and that is my lap. Perhaps one day in the future ‘Twenty’s lap’ will enter the lexicon in place of ‘Achilles heel’ but child after child would leave me destroyed so that rules out Santa. Plus I hate dwarves in all their various flavours and working with elves every day would make me sick.”

“It is hard to argue with your reasoning there.”

“Now, Jesus. It’s tempting, isn’t it? Son of God = serious power. However, I do not want to be the King of Jews. They’re such an exacting bunch of people that there’d be queues of rabbis around the corner as they’d come to me and say ‘Look here, we don’t think it’s appropriate for the King of the Jews and the Son of God to get that drunk and to vomit in that holy place and to beat up that 12 year old for simply pressing the keys on his mobile phone a little bit too hard’. I don’t need that kind of guff and it would be all I could do not to turn them into frogs with the awesome powers I would have as the Son of God. The last thing the world needs are enormous bearded Jewish frogs.”

“Once again I am finding it difficult to find a flaw in your argument.”

“So, that leaves us with reindeer. Now, they would not be my favourite four legged forest dwelling animal. That honour goes to the badger but if one were to be Rudolf, for example, one could make a very good living as an Alex Ferguson impressionist. That red nose, those cloven hooves, the peculiar stench. The demand for after-dinner speaking appearances would be tremendous and you know well enough that my Scottish accent is near perfect after that time I had to infiltrate Big Country back in the late 80s. As well as that the ability to fly really does appeal to me. Can you imagine me flying through the air, big fat cheque in my inside pocket having just done a half an hour gig at the Dublin Manchester United Supporters Club Christmas party in Out on the Liffey, and spotting somebody I didn’t like below me. I could swoop down and cover them with reindeer piss and shit before zooming skywards again and laughing at them as loudly as I could? Outstanding. So that’s it. I’d be a reindeer.”

“Thank you for taking the time to answer that.”

“You’re welcome. Which one would you be?”

“Santa.”

“Why?”

“I’d sexually harrass all the little females elves. I have a thing for female elves. I’d like them to give me a good gobblin’.”

“Ron, axe please!”