A possible answer to social anxiety

Our new service

Supposing your are a lady and so completely dumb that dogs on the streets do not think you are worth of growling at. Ring us and explain your trouble.
You'll be instructed to be in attendance at the foyer of the Gate Theatre that evening, and to look for a tall, distinguished-looking gentleman attired in immaculate evening dress.
You go. You meet him. He advances towards you smiling and in an instant his moustaches are brushing your lips.

'I trust I have not kept you waiting, Lady Charlotte', he says pleasantly. What a delightfully low, manly voice!
'Not at all, Count, you answer, your voice being the tinkle of silver bells. ' And what a night it is for Ibsen. One is in the mood, somehow. Yet a translation can never be quite the same. Do you remember that night, in Stockholm... long ago?'

The secret

The fact of the matter is, of course, that you have taken good care to say nothing. Your only worry throughout the evening is to shut up and to shut up completely. The trained escort is a ventriloquist, and he answers his own manly questions in a voice far pleasanter than your own unfeminine quack, and gives answers that will astonish the people behind for their brilliance and sparkle.

There are escorts and escorts according to the number of potatoes you're prepared to pay. Would you like to score off your escort in a literary argument during an interlude? Look out for further information on this absorbing new service.

'Well, well, Godfrey, how awfully wizard being at the theatre with you!
'Yes, it is fun'
'What have you been doing with yourself?'
'Been trying to catch up on my reading, actually.'
'Ow, good'.
'Yes, I've been studying a lot of books on Bali.You know?'
'Ballet is terribly bewitching, isn't it? Do you like Petipa?'
'I'm not terribly sure that I do, but they seem to have developed a complete art of their own, you know. Their sense of décor and their general feeling for the plastic is quite marvelous.'
'Yes, Derain did some frightfully good work for them; Sort of grisaille, you know..'
'But their feeling is so.. profound, one thinks of Courbet.'
'Yes, or Ingres.'
'Or Delacroix, don't you think?''Definitely. Have you read Karsavina?'
'Of course';
'of course, how stupid of me. I sa her, you know.'
'Ow, hadn't't realised she was Balinesese.'
'Balinese? what are you driving at?'
'But...'
'But...'


Borrowed from Flann O'Brien, the best of Myles