Hilary Armstrong pretends to know people

Just spotted a rather amusing post over at RecessMonkey's blog about Hilary Armstrong making a fool of herself. Given RecessMonkey pulled a post recently that might get him in trouble with people above I've decided to replicate here because it is very funny.

Politicians have an uncanny knack of remembering a name and acting like they know you, don’t they?

It’s how they manage to convince the great unwashed that they are worth voting for. A little bit of over-familiarisation here, that Friday surgery chat with ‘good friend’ Miss Smithers-Jones there. That ‘ooh, great to see YOU here!’ nod and wave to the (often non-existent) person in the crowd as they descend the stairs to the stage or walk the red carpet amid puzzled crowds. That sort of thing. They may not be people-people but they sure can fool us into thinking they are, eh?

But Hilary Armstrong doesn’t need to rely on such presentation frivolities, does she? She’s from the north-east. She’s a former care worker. A true woman of the people. Not for her these foolish and stage-managed ‘pretend I know you’ debacles.

Transcript from recent launch of a social enterprise initiative at Number 11…

Hilary: ‘Thanks for that introduction – and how nice to see so many familiar faces here today. Why look, there’s…er…um…er…John? [Points to man in crowd]

[Stony silence]

Hilary: ‘No. It’s not John, is it?’

[Further stony silence]

Hilary: ‘Oh…you know…he inspected me when I was a case worker in Sunderland? Geoff?

[Embarrassed look-at-shoes moment amongst the entire 70-strong audience]

‘Well…[attempts to remember the name one last time, to no avail]…it’s great to see you all here. You get familiar with this sort of audience.’

Clearly.

(Cynical Simian)

She's such a professional!