The Bore

By Paddy Bostock

Since birth, Professor Thaddeus Proctor has lacked any attractive qualities, his only asset being a formidable yawn capable of precipitating anyone who comes into contact with it into a state of soporific compliance. The yawn's power remains untapped until Thaddeus is offered the chance of competing in a TV game show, and becomes its champion.

Not even then, however, is the yawn deployed to the utmost of its capacities. It takes Thaddeus's removal to Fairyland, and involvement in the protection of its precarious peace, to test the yawn's true might, and reveal the professor is no mere "bore."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wings ePress, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9781613092897

Book preview

The Backstory

Thaddeus Proctor showed few signs of curiosity even at his own birth. Not a hint of gurgling or crying when the midwife slapped him on the bottom after he’d slithered out of the womb and down the parturient canal like a nine-pound elver. Just a quick squint at his new world, then a protracted yawn and off to sleep. And you know how infectious yawns can be. But Thaddeus’s was in a class of its own, as those around him were soon to discover. The midwife, even his mother, were soon yawning too, and three nurses and a doctor tottered to adjacent beds, where they sprawled and nodded off.

~ * ~

The next three years passed in much the same manner, Thaddeus never squabbling, crying, tantruming or evincing any of the other Terrible Twos’ naughtiness symptoms, which was good news for his parents, Mildred and Nigel. Except when he yawned, that was. Then they had to avert their eyes and clamp their ears for fear of torpor.

What a perfect baby. So placid, neighbours would comment as a snoring Thaddeus was wheeled past their houses in his buggy. "Never woken us up at night even once. You must be so proud."

Which, in the early months, Mildred and Nigel were.

Top of the range genes he must have, Nigel would say every evening after Thaddeus had eaten his supper then been wrapped up in his cot for his regular nine hours of dreamless sleep.

A little angel, Mildred would agree, as the couple ate their dinner before settling down to an evening of their favourite TV shows.

But such parental hubris was not to continue because, although in line with old wives’ tales Thaddeus walked when he was one, he did not talk when he was two. Didn’t utter a word even at three, despite the stories Mildred and Nigel read him and the rag books of animals they showed him.

What does a cow say? they would ask, showing him the picture of an Aberdeen Angus.

Silence.

Moo, Mildred and Nigel would say—with increasing frustration when Thaddeus refused to answer and took to yawning his imperious yawn instead.

"And what does a horse say?"

More silence. Plus a bit of staring off and nose picking.

And so the performance went on through cats, dogs, donkeys, lions, sheep, and the whole of the rest of the animal kingdom, as Mildred and Nigel dutifully neighed, meowed, barked, brayed, roared and baaed at every picture in the hope of any sort of vocal response from their perfect, placid toddler, but to no effect. Just more yawns from Thaddeus, which by then had Mildred and Nigel rushing for caffeine and any other adrenaline booster they could find to keep them from soporific seizures. What the hell, they were eventually forced to wonder, was wrong with this evidently bored, speechless child?

A question they would eventually decide to take to specialists—pediatricians, child psychologists and suchlike. But none had a definitive answer, seeing as none had ever before witnessed so bizarre a case. There were hypotheses and postulates, of course there were. Specialists like hypotheses and postulates. ISS (Infant Silence Syndrome) was mooted by Professor Maureen Maxwell of the Oxford Institute for Child Research, for example, although her diagnosis was vigorously contested by Professor Björg Björgussen of the Stockholm College of Pre-School Education, who swore by his investigation into the only similar condition he’d ever researched, which he termed BCD (Boring Child Disorder). Acronyms here, acronyms there, acronyms everywhere, as is the wont with arguing academics. There were even those who suggested the problem was genetically inherited and might be fruitfully treated by ISCI (Infant Stem Cell Implantation). But Mildred and Nigel weren’t buying that. For one thing, it wasn’t available on the NHS and was far too expensive in private clinics. Much more significantly, however, how were they to admit to family, friends and neighbours that Thaddeus’s silence and boringness were somehow buried in their genes and therefore their fault? No way, that was how. Especially not when, until recently, they’d reckoned their genes to be top notch. And so it was that for several years the issue was left unresolved and unresolvable.

Not that Thaddeus minded. Just got on with a life which all those around him appeared to regard as perverse. What, he would ask himself aged six, was all the fuss about? It wasn’t as if he couldn’t talk; he talked to himself all the time; he just didn’t see the point of doing it in public, that was all. So he didn’t. And if people thought him strange, or, as he’d begun to infer from overheard whispered conversations between Mildred and Nigel, boring, those were their definitions not his.

Which stance, obviously, was to lead to legion issues during Thaddeus’s primary and secondary school education. Exasperated teachers, playground bullying from classmates, and eventually family social workers being called in to investigate. Mildred and Nigel continued to deny any responsibility for their child’s condition, yet admitted they were concerned about a son, who, despite his top of the range SAT scores, wouldn’t even watch Strictly Come Dancing with them, let alone offer comments on the nicest outfits or best moves.

~ * ~

And so it continued down the years. More social workers, more psychologists, eight abortive sessions with CBT specialist Horst Humboldt with whom Thaddeus, by then aged sixteen, refused to communicate except in writing. And...so...on.

By which time, Mildred and Nigel had given up on the likelihood of corrective therapy and, following the advice of marriage counsellor Hilda Hutchinson, had instead nurtured their interest in ballroom dancing. As a means of averting conjugal dissent and potential divorce over a child whose symptoms you may both finally have to admit are simply beyond your control, was the empathetic way Hilda put it.

A judgement Thaddeus welcomed because, in the hours when both parents were off at the local palais fixing their foxtrots, he was left free to teach himself Latin and Greek, and then read, inter alia, all thirty-seven volumes of Pliny The Elder’s Naturalis Historia, Plato’s Dialogues, and Spenser’s The Faerie Queene in what its author thought of as English.

That was the autodidactic package—to Mildred’s and Nigel’s aghast astonishment—which gained their son his Classics scholarship at St Jude’s College, Cambridge, where, after the obligatory (in Thaddeus’s case largely silent and somnolent) undergraduate years, he went on to complete a Ph.D. thesis entitled Ancients and Moderns, which examined, in excruciating detail with more footnotes than normally allowable and a bibliography longer than the thesis itself, the philosophic interstices between the inscribed wisdoms of the world as it once was, and those of the world as it is now. Its trenchant conclusion, expressed in capitalised Romanesque script on a one-line endpage in terms Thaddeus thought wittily redolent of the game of rugby he abhorred, was: Ancients 98: Moderns 0.

With which apparently facetious statement his examiners didn’t demur for a second. Overjoyed they were to pass the doctorate cum laude at the viva voce as there was nothing the Master of St Jude’s liked less than modern thought, particularly foreign modern thought, of which Thaddeus had provided, for the sake of ridicule only, a single concessionary example: that of Jacques Derrida.

~ * ~

But looked back on years later, prestigious though his starred doctorate and its immediate effect—the offer of the newly tenured position of Regius Professor of All Things Ancient—might have been, such achievements were to pale into insignificance by comparison with the award bestowed on him three years in a row by one of his first St Jude’s undergraduates, Max De la Croix. BOTY (Bore of the Year) it was called, a title Max felt to be fully deserved as he sat through lecture after lecture and watched on while bog-eyed students fell off their seats in narcoleptic trances and Thaddeus mumbled and yawned his way through yet another exegesis of the value of Plato’s contribution to human culture as opposed to that of some Frenchie pseudo philosopher whose name he claimed not to be able to pronounce anyway. Jack de Reader was his best shot.

Yet it was precisely the memory of this experience which was to come to Max De la Croix’s rescue some years after his graduation with a third-class-bordering-on-aegrotat degree when he was given the job as adviser to the BBC’s newly appointed Controller of Saturday Night Entertainment, Hank Horowitz, who’d been poached from the little known U.S. station, NYCLOL—New York City Laugh Out Loud.

Maaan, Hank had told Max in his chrome, white and taupe office on both men’s first day in their new jobs. "Do these schedules need a boost, or do these schedules...need...a...boost? For how long has this organisation been showing this kinda shit on a Saturday night?" he asked Max, flicking derisorily through a sheaf of papers with one hand while clicking a TV remote with the other. Before Max’s eyes on the floor-to-ceiling screen danced images of all the shows he’d been familiar with for at least thirty years: hospital shows, football shows, giggle-a-minute late-night chat shows with fruity presenters and superstars on couches.

A pretty long time, Max admitted, keen not to disappoint his new boss, but equally aware of his duty to Uncle Jocelyn, who had arranged his feeble-minded nephew’s appointment to the BBC through his nineteenth-hole friendship with its Director-General, Sir Montague Matheson, also a keen golfer.

Not so pretty, this long time, said Hank, ripping the schedule sheets and tossing them to the floor while switching channels to an American baseball station. My advice to you, Mike...you said your name was Mike, right?

Max, Max said.

"Ookay then, Max, you wanna keep your job, you get your ass back in my office tomorrow morning with ideas for a new show. That’s how it worked for me at NYCLOL, an’ that’s how it’s gonna work around here for you from now on in. You got that?"

Got it, said Max.

Got it...? Little word missin’ there, Max.

"Got it, boss."

Good. Better. See ya tomorrow. We start at six.

"Six?" said Max, who was unused to rising before midday.

That’s how it is from now on in, you wanna keep your job. Any later an’ I’m gonna be lookin’ for a whole new adviser.

Right-ho, jolly good, see you tomorrow then, said Max, heading for the door, his brain hurting.

It continued to for the rest of the day and most of the night as it was racked and re-racked to within an inch of its life while its owner paced up and down trying to think up new concepts for Saturday night TV apart from hospitals, footie, and foolish gossip. It wasn’t until four a.m. that he finally collapsed onto his bed without an idea in his head but with the better part of two bottles of Marks and Spencer’s Cabernet Sauvignon in his belly.

It was at four-thirty-eight according to his smartphone that, tossing and sweating, he was hit with his life-changing epiphany. As if from nowhere, yet fully formed, it came... probably, he later reflected, as the result of untraceable memories of his recent past at St Jude’s.

And...there...it...was: The Bore, a show antithetical to anything ever seen on British or any other TV outfit, let alone on Saturday evenings.

~ * ~

You’re late, Hank said when Max staggered into his office at six-fifteen the following morning after no sleep.

Sorry, he said. Tube strike.

My ass. I got here just fine. But seein’ as you’re here, sit.

Max peered about. Where? he said.

Anyplace you want, said Hank, indicating a choice of chrome chairs, two white couches and three taupe ones. Only start talkin’. I got a seven o’clock after you.

Max took a chrome number and pulled it up to the petitioner’s side of the rosewood desk behind which Hank was sitting in his chrome-leather swivel.

Ookay, so gimme the big sell, Hank said into the screen of a mega-thin iMac.

So, just as he had seen it in his epiphany, Max did. How the show would be called The Bore and, like football competitions, would have knockout rounds with competing wannabe super-bores to begin with, then quarter finals, a semi-final, and a final to find the champion.

Uhuh, said Hank, fiddling with his superfast iMac.

In the preliminary stages leading up to the final, what I think of as the Numero Uno Challenge, said Max, "I see dimmed lights with two black-leather, high-backed armchairs facing each other. On one sits the bore, dressed very boringly—tweeds would be good—looking very, very boring, and primed to say very, very boring things. On the other sits a perky challenger, who must stay awake for at least ten minutes or else the bore wins. The very flicker of an eyelid, zoomed into by strategically placed hand-held cameras, will indicate a lowering of resistance levels. And, as for even the most cleverly disguised yawns, the big-screen yawnometer will tell its tale, allowing the audience to add their star ratings to the post-performance judgement of the on-stage panel of experts—psychologists, psychiatrists, REM sleep professionals, and suchlike. "Think The Apprentice here, boss, Max said. Think The Voice, only with audience participation. Soo much more democratic. Soo much more dynamic."

Pardon me, Max, only you jerkin’ my chain here, or what is this? said Hank, momentarily looking up from his wafer-thin screen. "All that hassle just to find a bore? Who the fuck, on Saturday night TV, wants to watch some guy boring a whole bunch of other guys?"

"Or girls. Possibly scantily clad, very sexy girls. And who’s to say we couldn’t have them as potential bores too? Think PC here, boss," said Max.

"Well, I guess there is that to it. But couldn’t we have a love angle in here someplace? Like I said, boring just sounds so...kinda...boring. I don’t see audiences buyin’ into that."

"It’s an ironic show, boss. A concept possibly unfamiliar to you guys across the pond. A witty inversion of usual expectations. But you haven’t heard the best part yet."

"There’s more?"

Yes. Like I said, the grand finale. Challenge Numero Due, as I envision it, said Max, wafting his hands about. You want to hear it, or don’t you?

"Aw, for crissakes! said Hank, auto-activating the extractor fans to fire up an unfiltered Marlboro Red. Ookay. I wanna hear it. But make it quick. I got my seven o’clock waitin’," he added, as the fans did the business with his smoke, adding little more than an iota of pollution to Portland Place’s already unbreathable air.

You wanted me to come up with an idea to hike Saturday night ratings, right? said Max with a new confidence, which, like his epiphany, had come from nowhere. Why I was hired, right?

Which Hank couldn’t deny. So hit me, he said.

"Thank you so much. Think you’re gonna lurve it, Hank, said Max, for reasons unknown speaking American and ceasing to call Hank boss."

So here it comes, Challenge Numero Due, the grand finale.

Yeah, yeah, Hank yawned, blowing smoke at the extractor fan.

Which I reckon should be scheduled for Christmas Eve. When the winners of the semi-finals go head to head, but with a significant difference in format from the Challenge Numero Uno competition.

Uh-huh, said Hank, stubbing out his Marlboro Red only half smoked and checking his Rolex.

"Yes. In place of the armchair scenario in which the bore anaesthetizes a perky person, which would be illogical when both challengers are already bores, instead I see each of them standing behind lecterns U.S. presidential election-style."

I like it when you say U.S., Mike.

Max.

"Max."

"Both of them attempting to bore into catatonia two specially selected audiences, each pre-vetted for perkiness, gender equality, and demographic similarity, and—think you’re gonna lurve this too, Hank—also including the exact same number of invited glitterati from the worlds of show business, politics, and sport. The same hand-held-camera-zooms and yawnometers as for Challenge Numero Uno, but this time without expert or audience participation, just uniformed assistants to identify those in the studio who’ve started snoring, to whom smelling salts will be administered before they are helped from their seats, each absence recorded on a digital boreometer. The winner of the contest—our champion—will be the one whose disquisition leaves the fewest seats occupied at the end of each half-hour boredom session. Spectacular, huh, Hank? Max said. Nation on tenterhooks as it watches. Tension building through the Numero Uno Challenge knockout rounds as we head to the zenith of the festive season and tap into the mood of good will for all creatures except turkeys."

It was a powerful pitch, no question about it. And Hank bought it through what in later years he would describe as his killer instinct for a top show, although in truth all he had really wanted was Max out of his face before his seven o’clock with Suzanne L’Aimable, who was a whole lot prettier than Max and had this idea for a show about how nudity could help with psychological disturbance.

Man, he said, thinking how Suzanne might look naked, Gotta give you credit where credit’s due. Kind’ve a weird idea...but, hey, whyntcha run with it? You just bought yourself a half mill budget.

Yup? he then said in response to a beep on his desk. Okay, show her up.

My seven o’clock, he told Max. So, like I said, run with it. An’, hey, good luck.

Delirious with anticipation, Max ran, almost but not quite colliding with Suzanne L’Aimable, who was dressed in a flesh spandex mini-dress and not much else.

~ * ~

Fully against his better judgement but having been persuaded by Max De la Croix to take part in Series One of The Bore for the good name of St Jude’s and its alumni (i.e. Max De la Croix), guess who wiped the board during the Numero Uno Challenge such that no contestant was able to stay awake for more than two minutes. Yup, you’ve got it: the Regius Professor of All Things Ancient, Thaddeus Proctor, who bored challenger after challenger into comatose states never before witnessed on Saturday night British television. Such was the power of BOTY, and it served Thaddeus well during eight successive prime-time Saturday night shows, through the quarters and semis leading up to the climactic grand finale, during which audience ratings jumped from a mere handful to several million.

Max De la Croix, Hank Horowitz, and Sir Montague Matheson were astonished but ecstatic.

The Challenge Numero Due programme aired on December the twenty-fourth at nine p.m. before an estimated home TV audience of thirty-two million, eight hundred and six thousand, four hundred and thirty-seven, and two specially selected studio audiences each consisting of one hundred demographically similar people (including glitterati) per contestant. It was Thaddeus who won the toss and tactically opted to go second, leaving his opponent, St John (Call Me Sinjun) Jeffries, member of parliament for Hapless-on-Thames (East), with the daunting task of opening the show. Wild applause from the first audience as Sinjun, attired in tweeds, stumbled to his lectern looking droopy and hangdog.

Soo... wailed Emcee Max De la Croix, garbed in a snazzy, tight, blue, shiny suit and an unbuttoned pink shirt so sprouts of chest hair showed. The moment we’ve all be waiting for. Time for swords to cross. And may the best bore win. Thaddeus the Thinker against Sinjun the Soporific. Wow, some contest, folks! Take it away, Sinjun.

And Sinjun did his damnedest. Spoke resolutely about himself—a topic he’d selected from the experience of listening to others speaking about themselves as likely to be a surefire winner.

But, to his chagrin, the strategy failed. Not because the life he depicted in such lugubrious detail hadn’t been boring. It had. Terminally so. No, no, his mistake was in its recounting, which lacked such rhetorical devices as zeugma, periphrasis, litotes, and anadiplosis, leaving his audience unpersuaded by his thesis and thus not in the least bored but instead irritated and fidgety at being addressed by so poor a bore. Far from dozing off, eighty-nine percent of the selected audience, many standing from their seats, responded to his presentation not with the hoped-for snores, but instead what they considered witty ripostes, and in some cases eggs, three of which landed on Sinjun’s head just at the moment Max rang the bell to close his half-hour session.

"Well, folks, well. How about that?" said Max, leaping back onto the stage with his microphone as Sinjun stumbled away, wiping albumen from his sparse locks and the salt-and-pepper beard which had twice won a prize for the best facial growth in the Westminster village.

Watching on at his Portland Place monitor, Hank Horowitz laughed out loud. And