The Story of Isaac Tug-Gussett

It had come to Isaac Tug-Gussett in a dream of such clarity that he took it as a revelation. The reason he was doing so badly in life was that he was following to many norms. In other words, he was complying while failing. He was trying to be ‘good at computers’ but he wasn’t. He was trying to smooch and network but he was hopeless at this too. He was applying for jobs and not getting them. You talk too much, they said when he complied with their offer of feedback. You offer too little in your answers, would say another. Really, if they were honest they’d just say ‘Your face doesn’t fit well with us, Isaac Tug-Gussett. And what about that stupid name?’

So, in his dream it was clear. He should do the very opposite of what he’d been doing and here, in this simple methodolgy, he would find success. And, interestingly, it was at this point that the life of Isaac Tug-Gussett became infinitely less turgid and all the more interesting.

Since not being able to get a job had made him anxious and ill he decided he should claim Employment and Support Allowance as its name suggested sympathy and assistance. At his medical assessment which was conducted by an ex-binman named Hermann Monstrous who had surprisingly little medical experience or expertise he was asked what he felt his main health concerns were he replied.

“I believe I am the re-incarnation of popular and eclectic 1970s TV personality Roy Castle and that one day I’m going to die and come back as a shoe”

Mr. Monstrous sat stunned for a while before a cunning smile crossed his face.

“But you and Roy Castle were alive at the same time”

“Yes, I know. That’s what makes it all the more worrying!”

He was immediately put on the Higher Rate of support.

Emboldened, he turned up four and a half hours late for every appointment.

“I have my own time-zone” he would inform any disgruntled party who asked “Yours is a con and I refuse to comply with it. I’ve also banished November and December from my life so don’t try calling”

Isaac gained notoriety for his approach and word spread to newspapers and local radio and television. They all vied to interview him and all learned to turn up four and a half hours late for appointments with him. When they did this he applied new rules and was there in place at the original time they had stated though they, unfortunately, never were. This illusiveness only intrigued him more.

Soon employers offered him interviews that sometimes lasted hours, sometimes merely seconds depending on his whim and he never took the jobs they offered anyway.

He recorded a song ‘I Hate Christmas and I Hope You All Die Horribly’ and it was a solid number one for seven weeks over the festive period.

He found he had a following of people who refused to comply with norms and began to conduct themselves in increasingly quirky and contrarian ways: sitting on the top of trains instead of inside, sneezing in the face of lovers at the point of ejaculation, and one chap from Kirkcaldy even went to the extreme of picking fights with Americans on social websites.

It got to the point where being abnormal became the norm. Weak economies became vibrant and strong economies collapsed, near-celibates became sex-worshippers, church-goers began openly laughing at beggars on the street and the political system revealed itself to be the self-seeking sham it really was.

For Isaac Tug-Gussett the world became boring again. No matter what he did, how abhorrent or divergent his actions, the world applauded him. On Graham Norton he called the host ‘a bland arse-licker, probably literally’ and the camp Irishman roared with pleasure like he was going to orgasm on the spot (which maybe he did). On Newsnight, he asked Emily Maitlis if she had an eating disorder and called Boris Johnson a ‘blustering chump that even the thickest folk had seen through ages ago’. The PMs popularity rating sky-rocketed overnight.

Asked if he had designs on political office he replied that he would if he could sing Proclaimers songs all through Prime Ministers Questions.

Nothing he said shocked anyone anymore and he quickly became passe and disappeared from the public view.

O and he also lost his benefit for proving he was ‘fit for work’. Hermann Monstrous masturbated for the first time in years at the news.