A rare interview with Prokter and Ghambol Company Tapir
It sounds like there are removal men in the next room.
I am instructed as to the protocols I must observe before I enter.. His bodyguard come dancing and Bobsleigh instructor leans in on me and stares intently into my eyes.
“No sudden movements” he warns. “There is a bowl of acorns on the coffee table.Never eat any. Never say the word Alvechurch in his presence” he continues.
I am of course going to meet Prokter and Ghambol Company Tapir, simply known the world over as P & G C T.
As I enter his plush office overlooking the great American city of Cincinnati I am struck by his directness. He bounds over to greet me knocking over the furniture in the process. Two men in cow gowns rearrange the office as I begin. This is the sound I heard from outside.
“Check for Pelicans as you put that back” he reminds them.
He stands in front of me covered in mud and leaves. Apologising for his appearance, “I have just been out for breakfast” he explains.
Tell us a little about your upbringing, I begin, under close scrutiny.
“My childhood was idyllic and rural. I was brought up in a Malaysian jungle and spent long summer days happily going on rummaging and foraging trips. My Father was a trained accountant- though I never recall him practicing. In fact, the only numerical calculation I remember him doing was counting how many Truffles he ate in a day and dividing it by the number of legs he had. He was an avid collector of football cards and his pride and joy was his near complete collection of the 1957 Doncaster Rovers team that acquitted themselves so well in the…erm…erm.. frankly I never understood his passion for football, he thought spitting in public was obscene..My Mother was a watch repairer.”
This wasn,t the life for you though.
“Well, I was young and impetuous. I desperately wanted to taste the city life.”
You moved to London.
“Yes. I got a job with the National Westminster Bank extracting Avocado toasties out of ATM,s. They went on a Tapir recruitment drive and we flocked to the city in our hundreds- seeking fame, fortune and we,d heard that British acorns were the best in the world.I really enjoyed it and it kept me busy and I made friends with some of the best Herbivores I have ever known.
To this day, I always make sure that there is an Avocado toastie in the ATM just outside the Nat West bank in Cotteridge on the Queens birthday. It,s like the Shawshank, the lads know who it,s from.”
What did you do with the toasties once you,d fished them out?
“We sent them with our compliments to the BBC.”
You sound happy. How did fate intervene to draw you away?
“By chance.I was walking down a corridor deep in the bowels of the bank when I noticed one of the Beaver,s had got its enormous tail stuck in the door.After doing my extricating best, I peered in on a scene that amazed me.
Inside was total anarchy. There were Beavers everywhere.Running over typewriters,chipping away merrily at word pros,misdialling numbers on the fax machines and occasionally gnawing through an electrical cable.
The whole room hummed with excitement. The noise, the energy the smell of singed semiaquatic rodent.
They were all engaged in what is now termed Relative Quantum Typing.I befriended the Beavers and became their official extractor. But most of the time, I simply sat there chomping on a bag of fruits and nuts contemplating what we should do with the reams and reams of print out data.”
“So let me explain at this point just what relative Quantum Typing is. It is the pursuit of information/knowledge in an actively passive format derived at randomly and collated against the number shoes on sale in September by Beavers.”
“I hit upon the idea of inserting all he data into Keith Chegwin. A presenter on British TV at the time. Then I got the idea of inserting it surreptitiously into the banks interim shareholders report.”
“Like all good fiction, these reports had a beginning (This year was challenging, bullish,exciting,difficult etc), and an ending ( We look to the year ahead with cautious optimism, drug crazed abandon and so on). But the middle needed padding out.”
This is what he came up with.
We are now in a much better position to focus on our long term aspiration — to transform the bank into the number one for customer service, trust, darts team and advocacy. While the signs of this transformation have at times been masked by our wider organisational changes,plus monkeys the core bank has already evolved materially since Buddha invented the inflatable cannon.
Our decision to refocus on the UK has seen our balance sheet shrink
by 229 Starlings since the start of our plan. Tjr9 4j10v e9 a ;ly 3gh, d9gi6[ Wnet2 Cunt! of the continued growth in our Personal and Business Banking and q737dd Commercial and Private Banking franchises. We are seeing the benefits of our service-led strategy dogiug doglug,doglug.
in the financial performance of the core bank, generating £4.2 billion och hoots man adjusted pre-tax operating profit for the year, an average of £1 billion per quarter for the last eight quarters and 4% up on 1988 plus more monkeys.
P & G T brays heartily when I show him this old passage.It reveals his immaculate pearly white Tapir teeth.Spotting my gaze, he explains. “All due to our vast array of products, he beams triumphantly. Mostly Oral Z toothpaste and Tyde washing powder.”
We didn,t know what we were doing he confides. You will notice how it gets more random after Buddha has invented the inflatable cannon. We just put it out there and crossed our trotters.
“The reaction to this single paragraph was sensational. City analysts believed the bank had moved into a new corporate realm leaving all behind in their wake. The general public though sceptical generally followed the City.”
“You have to put this into the context of the time” continues Gnashers. “It was outrageous .
We could never have anticipated what would happen next but we were nominated for a FIRG award. That is the Financial Institutions Writers Guild. I know that should be FIWG but the W is silent as in Writing. In any case, an industry that makes a living out of misleading the public is bound to have its little jokes.
Not only nominated but nominated for the top FIRG LIG (Literally Indecipherable Garbage) prize.”
You were pitted against the General Accident boys. Tell us about that fluoride features.
“I was sure we had no chance of winning. I only went to the ceremony for the free acorns. G.A. had just written the fabulous Whole of Life Terms and Conditions pamphlet. A tome of a pamphlet.A piece of work employing the pioneering type face that decreases 2% in size with each turn of the page and believe me, it wasn,t all that large to start with. A document so dull and monotonous it is believed that it has never been fully read to this day! So I am told, Tina Turner is mentioned 17 times yet no one has ever noticed.”
“When we won I nearly choked on my wild berry compote.
Of course it all took off from there. We were soon slipping this nonsense into all sorts of documents. We were making a fortune.”
You moved to New York where you had a rocky spell I interject.
At this his nose moves sharply to the right and the mood in this plush office sours. He fixes me with a cold porky stare. Taking a large swig of Scottish Daljimmy 12 year old Malted Sporran, he continues with a furrowed brow in guarded tones.
“Yes . We joined the Lehman Brothers. Well, they already had 2 Chimpanzees in charge of marketing and they were very hostile to our new scientific approach. They hated the Beavers and would scream and perform whenever they met. One morning we ambled in and it all kicked off. We suspected that a Chimp had defecated into one of the Beavers coffee cups. There was a hell of a punch up and Clarence stormed out and hurled his filthy mug and his Samsung E12XV mini tablet into the Hudson river.
oeighjghhghyiokbv g9gjij o o3448gj455 He had typed earlier.”
Roughly this translates as|” From tiny Samsung E12XV mini tablets and defiled drinking vessels, mighty Beaver dams grow”
Are you fluent in Relative Quantum Typing?
Nodding wisely he dazzles me once again with pure white enamel.
“I have a basic working knowledge of Theoretical Relative Quantum Typing, and, coupled with my limited understanding of BBP ( Beaver Behavioural Patterns), I can imagine what they might be writing and thinking.
The working relationship was irreconcilable. Nobody could perform and prosper in such an environment.
But that is water under the bridge. Look where they are and look where I am. They are probably in a zoo masturbating furiously in front of old ladies and young children.” The Chimpanzees, not the Lehman brothers he hastens to add.
The Beavers with their considerable wealth embarked on a mammoth yet sadly doomed project to dam the Hudson river with Birch trees and Samsung mini tablets.
About that time the Prokter & Ghambol CEO was accidentally eaten by a Pelican and I was apparently the ideal replacement continues Bee Gee teethed P & G C T.
So what are your duties here?
“Well, they are many and varied,I am responsible for the good corporate governance, product range and marketing strategies, emerging market growth patterns,R & D, fiscal financial and futures policy and making sure there are no Pelicans in the building.” He looks around nervously.
“I love the place. Cincinnati is a wonderful city. There are plenty of parks and forests for me to rummage around in, and a broad smile reveals those damned choppers again.”
Alvechurch!