While doing the washing up the other night, I was listening to the closing minutes of Radio 4’s news discussion programme PM. The last five minutes or so were committed to an interview with a man named Ivor Ingall, who was not a very happy man at all.
As it turned out, Ivor Ingall had featured quite heavily in the news over the previous year, since it turned out that he was the slightly mental artisan responsible for Sir Peter Viggers MP’s now infamous “duck island”.
For those not familiar with the story, it became apparent during the media/politics clusterfuck of the year, the MP expenses scandal, that Sir Peter Viggers, conservative MP for Gosport, had claimed for the cost of a floating duck island on his parliamentary expenses, prompting those of a sandal wearing disposition to shout a lot and furrow their brows so much that it became unclear where their forehead ended and their ridiculous chullo hats began, and those of us of a more reasonable nature to laugh quite a lot at the fact that Viggers, 71, had felt that his ducks needed a sheltered island.
But then comes Mr. Ingall. He has been claiming on PM and also in a letter to the Telegraph, (excellent form for someone entangled in a conservative crisis), that because of the news media’s coverage of Viggers and his ostentatious pond decoration, people no longer want to buy his “garden follies”.
Oh dear.
RIGHT. If you’re going to complain about something like that, be prepared to reap the whirlwind. “Heytesbury Bird Pavilions”, the company that Ingall either owns or works for or something like that, I don’t really care which, fortunately isn’t QUITE as old fashioned as Ingall himself, and as such operates a fairly concise website, which can be found here, and offers a nicely easy to read price list. The duck island in question is called, according to the price list, the “Stockholm”, and is described thus: “This is based on an 18th century building reconstructed at Skansen, the Stockholm museum of buildings. 56” high and 32 ½” square. £2,200.00 (+VAT)”. Also available are other ridiculous piles of chipboard that look about as well made as your average crazy golf obstacle priced at around about the £2,000 mark. I was also very cheered to see that the photo used to illustrate the Stockholm was exactly the same image as that used in the news coverage.
But I feel I’m digressing. Basically, the problem with this is that Ingall has only been granted this interview because he’s a fairly well spoken person who isn’t going to get carried away and start swearing on air. The interview, which can be heard here listens like an advert for Heytesbury. He moans that while all publicity is good publicity, that’s it’s there for the wrong reasons. He also misquotes Warhol and states that everyone has their “fifteen minutes of glory”. He then goes on to make possibly the most detestable statement I’ve heard in quite a long time. “This is an opportunity for the everyday man in the street to have a folly in his garden.”
OH YOU MASSIVE TWAT. Honestly I’ve not heard an interview in a long time with anyone who is so obviously just an enormous fucking wanker. People like this just shouldn’t be interviewed because they’re very clearly totally socially unaware. First off, most people can’t afford a bird-oriented folly in their garden if they cost at least £1900. Secondly, most people don’t NEED one of those things because they don’t have a bunch of effete ducks who are afraid of bad weather, and thirdly, regardless of what you might think, most people have got more taste than to go and stick one of these fucking abominations in their garden.
Inniskilling Castle, apparently..
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