WOOHOO. I’ve just seen a guy doing my dream job.
I want to be Eric the Roadie. He’s fat, bald, ugly and appears to have no special skills.
I looked at him and thought: I could do that.
But I’ll get back to him later.
This column is actually about a visit to the World’s Greatest Celebrity Ever (This Month).
My youngest daughter told me that she had NO INTEREST WHATSOEVER in seeing cute junior pop star Justin Bieber but Daddy MUST buy tickets because all her friends were going.
I then met her friends, who said exactly the same thing.
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Arriving at the stadium, we met 10,000 other young women.
Every one I spoke to made the same claim: Not one of them had the slightest interest in being there but were forced to go because all the others were going.
"In that case, why don’t we all just go home?" I suggested.
Ten thousand females ignored me. No change there. That’s the story of my life.
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We found our seats. We waited half an hour. Suddenly, the audience shrieked. Pointing to the stage, 10,000 girls leapt up, screamed and fell over.
I peered at the stage. "That’s not Justin Bieber," I told the girls near me. "That’s Eric the Roadie."
A nondescript male had strolled onto the shadows on stage and pressed a button or two. (I’ve only ever met two roadies, and both were called Eric, so I refer to all roadies as Eric.)
The girls who had been overcome with emotion were picked up and revived.
Six minutes later, everyone screamed and fainted again.
"It’s Eric the Roadie again," I said, spotting the same guy.
In fact, Eric the roadie came out of the wings twice more, no doubt enjoying the screams of adoration pointed his way.
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By the time Mr. Bieber appeared, the girls were screamed out and could only make rasping gasps like death rattles.
Mr. Bieber announced that he was going to show us a video of himself "when he was young". This struck me as odd, since he looks about 11 years old now.
On the big screen behind him appeared a film of him as a Canadian toddler singing the ABC song.
The audience sang along.
The words went like this: "A, B, C, D, E, F, G…" etc.
I don’t want to be a nitpicker but I found the lyrics a tad predictable.
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Then Mr. Bieber, who is clearly the single most adored male on earth, told us that he was lonely.
Yeah, right. This dubious claim was the set-up for him to ask a question: "Are any of you single?"
Since the entire audience, except for me, consisted of girls aged six to 13, one could not help but wonder why he was unable to make an educated guess at the answer himself?
At what age do Canadian girls marry? Five?
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Escorting a bus-load of girls home (I had five in my care), I mused that Mr Bieber had achieved fame through the usual means, ie, he’d been born pretty.
But Eric the Roadie gets 20 minutes of fanatical adoration every night without that advantage. Now that’s impressive.
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