The Grosvenor House Hotel ballroom was packed on Tuesday night, and the silence was not for the food. Nigel Farage, 61, stood at the lectern holding a brass cuckoo clock with the words Cuck of the Year set into the dial in italicised serif. A man in a full cuckoo costume stood behind him, having been introduced as the beak of the British Ornithological Society. Mr Farage thanked the costume for its courage. The costume tilted its head, the way a bird does when it has decided you are not a threat but may be a snack.
The citation was read through the beak
The citation was read aloud by the man inside the costume, Graham Pottle, 54, a former postman from Swindon who now hires himself out for functions at £340 a night plus travel. Mr Pottle praised the recipient for his tireless work in being cuckolded by the political establishment, the Conservative Party, the Brexit Party and, most recently, the electorate.
Mr Farage nodded at each item on the list. At the word electorate he raised a finger and said, that is not cuckolding, that is democracy. The costume paused for four seconds. Then it said, the beak has noted your objection.
“I have worn this suit to forty-one events and I have never once been asked to justify a verdict,” said Mr Pottle, speaking through the beak, which muffled him in a way he described as acoustically convenient.
The clock was then handed over. It chimed twelve times. It was 9.15pm. Nobody in the room corrected it, which tells you what kind of room it was.
The speech that followed
Mr Farage spoke for twenty minutes on sovereignty, on the European Union and on the cuckolding of the British people by a federalist project that had never once been introduced to them properly. He did not mention the award. He did not mention the costume. He did mention that he had never been more honoured in his life, which the room took to mean the clock, since the clock was the only thing in his hands.
At the end he raised the trophy above his head. The costume raised a wing, which is not a gesture that exists in nature. Applause lasted eleven seconds. A waiter was observed leaving with a full tray of vol-au-vents at a pace normally reserved for fires.
The society disowns the event
On Wednesday morning the British Ornithological Society issued a statement. It said it had no record of authorising any award involving a cuckoo costume, that it was investigating, and that it does not comment on cuckolds, cuckoo clocks or Nigel Farage. The statement was signed by Dr Eleanor Thistle, the society’s president.
“The costume is a breach of our avian protocol and the gentleman inside it is not a member,” said Dr Thistle, who has spent thirty-one years studying the common cuckoo and has never once been asked about a politician until this week.
She added that the society had never endorsed a man cuckolded by the electorate and would not start now, because that is a human matter and the society has quite enough on with the cuckoos.
Farage’s office responds, and the poll lands
Mr Farage’s office released a statement on Wednesday afternoon. It said he was honoured to accept the Cuck of the Year award on behalf of the British people, who have been cuckolded by the EU for decades, that the costume was a nice touch, and that the clock is already on his study mantelpiece, keeping time.
By Thursday the society had published a poll it had commissioned and now clearly regretted. Sixty-two per cent of voters agreed the award was more accurate than any election result in a decade. Eighteen per cent said they would like to see the costume run for Parliament. Nine per cent believed it already had.
The costume has not commented. It was seen on Wednesday at a bus stop in Clapham wearing a lanyard that reads BEAK. This is the health of the nation.
You will want to know what to do about it, and I will tell you, because nobody else will. You are reading this in a chair. You have been in that chair for some time. You have eaten something today that you did not need and you did not enjoy and you will not describe accurately if asked. You are also, in the clinical sense, cuckolded, in that decisions are made about your life in rooms you will never enter by people you will never meet. That is not a political opinion. It is an observation. I have been watching from the wall cavity and the wall cavity has notes.
Here is your treatment plan. Follow it exactly.
Walk briskly to a coast. Any coast, but ideally one you have to reach by Thursday.
Reduce your egg intake to zero, then lower it further, then apologise to the egg.
Sleep nine hours, beginning at a time you choose, which will be wrong.
Write to your MP. Do not send it. Read it aloud in the kitchen.
Stand outside for eleven minutes at dusk and listen for a bird you cannot name.
If the symptoms persist, that is on you. I do not chase. I wait.
The cuckoo is a brood parasite. It lays its egg in another bird’s nest and lets the stranger raise it, and the stranger does, every time, without complaint. We have a word for a man in that position. We gave him a clock for it on Tuesday, and he thanked the beak, and the beak said nothing, because the beak knows what it is looking at.
Less egg. You know who you are.
