Join me in Peabody, Massachusetts, where the country music is playing softly in the hotel ballroom. I sit directly beneath the gargantuan chandelier and stare down at the swirly carpet, trying to avoid eye contact with the other 60 or 70 suckers. Suddenly I hear footsteps approaching, and a voice cries: “Ah, and you must be Reg Varney!”
Must I? Oh god, yes, I must. Why do I find it so hard to resist putting stupid names on unimportant forms?
“Reckernised the English accent when you came in”, he explains, with a grin the size of Uncle Sam’s Y-fronts. “Figured that must be you, Reg. I’m Spencer from U-taw, and I’ll be speakin’ this evenin’ “. I shake hands with this outsized cartoon of a man in his expensive suit and gleaming Italian shoes. He produces some bits of paper and a large sticky label bearing the legend REG, which he presses onto my chest.
From which dusty, distant corner of my memory had the star of On The Buses suddenly emerged with no warning as I completed the online form? I don’t feel much like a Reg Varney, it has to be said, nor any other sort of Reg, but I am stuck with the name for the evening, and that is that.
Ever keen on collecting new experiences, I’d signed up to attend a “seminar” that I’d seen advertised on very early morning TV. Sort of four-in-the-morning early morning. The British Summer Time body clock hadn’t quite wound itself down yet, so I’m waking up at about 4 feeling ready to attack a new day. I’m also feeling quite capable of curling up and going to sleep shortly after lunch.
The event offers to teach me how to get rich beyond my wildest fantasies by playing the stock market. It doesn’t actually say so, but this is the barely-concealed subtext. Invisible to the naked eye, but clear enough when our greed goggles are in place. Of course, with the even more powerful cynic goggles on, I know that the real intention of the evening is to make Spencer and his friends rich, and not me. Except that I’m genuinely not in the market for whatever expensive service they will eventually reveal. Geography will, I hope, keep my money separated from Spencer.
So why am I here? Research, partly. I’ve recently started the frightening experience of digging up scraps of pension fund collected down the years, and assembling them all in a S.I.P.P. – a ‘Self Invested Pension Plan’. The meagre total has to be put to work if I’m going to have any eventual retirement to look forward to, and I’m gathering my knowledge where I can – even here in the USA. I want to know something about the technical analysis of the markets, even if it’s enough to make me realise it’s not for me. More than that, it’s the chance of watching someone’s spiel that really appeals to me. Cheap theatre, and I enjoy it in the same way that I enjoy calling into a Crown Court from time to time to sit in the public gallery and watch the barristers perform.
The cheap seats aren’t disappointed. Spencer is quite a speaker when he gets going. I’m suitably entertained, and I even learn a few things about Stochastics, moving averages (“the MACD”) and the importance of institutional money flow. His earnest soliloquy is peppered with expressions like “cow pounding”. I suspect this isn’t really Wall Street jargon.
The introduction at the start means I’m treated like an old buddy. At one point he asks: “Tell me Reg, do you want to die a poor man?”
Later, he plants a heavy, paternal hand on my shoulder and declaims to the room with sermon-like gravity: “Reg is an honest man. I say that Reg is an honest man. You’re an honest man, aren’t you Reg?”
Everyone stares at me, and I feel my cheeks redden.
I nod meekly.
