Dwarf Documentary - Simon Bookish

I hide in a log cabin with a large groups of strangers.

We don’t know what’s

outside, but it’s making us pretty nervous

Channel Four make a terrible fuss of appointing a dwarf to present all of their

children’s programmes.

He turns out to be really rather good, exceptionally

engaging and handsome.

A long-term documentary of his life is commissioned

I go to the park, it’s very bright and looks like plastic, like a cartoon.

The grass is very green and the sky is very blue.

The ducks have left a lot of

duck shit all over a little island in the river.

I sit on the grass and explain

to George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld how ducks stand on one leg to avoid getting

shit on both feet.

They’re very interested and ask me to demonstrate

I go to the supermarket and buy weird fluffy toys for my little brother.

They all have ineffectual little limbs, grey threadbare fur, irregular numbers

of eyes and ears.

I am delighted that the supermarket stocks them since I know

that my brother has real-life creatures like this living in his backyard

I wander about barefoot in the duck shit then feel guilty because I promised my

friends in the log cabin that I wouldn’t talk to George Bush.

And now I have

The dwarf on Channel Four has become very old.

He resembles a miniature Edith

Sitwell, with his headscarf and sunken cheeks and is apparently now an iconic

figure in the art world.

He has been asked to appear on the catwalk show of

Vivienne Westwood’s new collection and Channel Four are covering the event for

the documentary, naturally

My father and I have a ridiculously melodramatic argument.

We’re both like

Lawrence Olivier doing Greek tragedy, all flailing arms and accusatory eyes.

The lighting is suitably stark: we’re spot-lit from below

All the clothes are black and yellow, striking geometric patterns on enormous

angular outfits.

Westwood explains to the cameras that if she can see the faces

of the people in the audience she gets nervous, so everyone has had to come

wearing an animal head over their evening wear

The camera pans out for the last shot