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Stuart Foot
The
Man, The Legend. The Truth.
One aspect of The Office that receives much acclaim is the program’s appearance. Indeed, many times have I heard stories of people tuning in to the show and not realising that they weren’t watching a real documentary. For one man though, this happened not during the broadcast of the show, but during the filming.
The
beginning 
It started off accidentally of course, an actor hired to play the part of the male secretary, doomed not to have a chance of being hired by Brent, fell ill. Meanwhile, a Mr. Stuart Foot was applying for the job of secretary at Teddington Studios, where The Office is filmed. What happened next has been the source of some little controversy. I have always held that somehow Stuart was purposefully misled, that someone created the fiction of a film crew making a program about the inner workings of Teddington, whereas others have declared that he accidentally walked on set, and was mistaken for the actor.
So how did they manage to stay in character for all the time he was there then??!
The hunt
I rang up 118 118 and asked for the best private eye in the biz. Then the next best. Then I asked about them to just keep reading out the fees until they got to a number I liked. When this came up I asked them if they had the number for directory enquiries and hung up, and laughed for about an hour afterwards. Don’t do drugs.
What follows is the report I received in the post from my so called budget detective friend, along with a suspiciously not very budget invoice.
It wasn’t an easy task as Mr Foot had somewhat altered his appearance, as his life has been...not easy since the show went out. He was also spelling his surname with an extra ‘e’ at the end. Mr Foot was found living in the small village of Watford, situated by the infamous Watford Gap services where he was currently employed as a part time Art History teacher and toilet attendant. The following interview almost took place on a hot summer’s afternoon, around a beige plastic table perfectly positioned to combine equally the odours from both Burger King and KFC.
It actually took place on another beige table, nearer the toilets and fruit machines.
The
interview
“...so as you can imagine, I felt like a right benny.”
“Ahh I see, you’ve got to hold down play AND record!”
“What?”
“You couldn’t repeat that could you?”
“Okay. So in the end it was some TV film crew guy who told me that I hadn’t got the secretary job-”
“Didn’t it seem-”
“Yes, of course it’s obvious now. It’s all obvious now isn’t it? Why would they be making a show about a paper merchants in the first place? What was all that stuff with the Polaroid about?”
“What person really has Des’ree lyrics printed up on their wall?”
“Don’t remind me. Anyway, I thought I had done really well, but the show made it obvious that Brent was only interested in the female applicant and so, when watching it at home, I felt like a right benny.”
“How have you been feeling since then?”
“I still suffer from panic attacks when I turn up for job interviews and there’s a female rival for the post. That damn Des’ree song just seems to fill up my head. You don’t think I could sue for that could you.”
“I er, well, couldn’t really care less.”
“Oh.”There was a long pause at this moment. Mr Foot walked off to the gents to write his name up on the bit of paper that gave the time of the last inspection, if he could hold off the flies for that long. I laid back in of those oddly comfortable chairs and looked around. I heard the noise of a baby crying after it’s parents had dragged it away from the repetitive hypnotic lights of the fruit machines, in which mindless fools plough hundreds of pounds a year one solitary pound after another for the chance of winning most likely no more than they had put into the machine in the first place.
One bastard has clearly just won the jackpot, and the repeat, on his first pound. Bastard.
A sweating overweight middle-aged American couple who had decided to go crazy and see some of England that was outside of zone 6, clanking their metal spoons around cheap china imitation cups, putting more and more sugar into an already perfectly crass cup of tea. Some spotty teenage kid starting putting coins into the machine that had just emptied itself, not knowing there was nothing left in there to win. Idiot.
This cheered me up a bit.
Anyway, with the sound of the last of a medium coke being vainly sucked at through a straw, and with the interviewer attempting the old technique of presenting some false information in the hope that Stuart will have no choice but to break his silence with a correction...“I hear that you’re an inventor then?”
“How did you find that one out?”
“You have that number from those Call us if you’re an inventor adverts written on your t-shirt in felt tip.”
“Oh yeah. Useful though, although next time I’ll have to write it backwards or upside down so that I can read it without having to take of my t-shirt. Got a few good ones going on at the moment, like the micro-chip enhanced bird table that can recognise and scare off the common town pigeon with an accurate ultra-sonic beam, a kettle that allows you to set the temperature for when you want to wait less before drinking.”
“Been there done that.”
“A car stereo that monitors the speed limit and reduces the sound of whatever music is playing if the limit is breached.”
“You know, one big break and I wouldn’t have to be a detective any more.”
“Personal favourite is the combined suicide suppository and laxative pill, to be used on whining teenagers. Sort of a test to see how determined they are ‘to go’.”
“Troubled childhood was it? Parents kept getting your sisters presents and overlooking you? Got lonely and confused and ended up doing a pointless art degree or something?”
“It all started when I was a kid of course, but then it always does. My parents kept getting me girl’s presents so that my sister could play with them, not once did I get an action man or a train set or blue clothes. When she lost my favourite Barbie, had a great little disco number did that one, that just plain crushed me, I was lost. Like when my almost wife left me at the altar for the vicar. But worse.”
“O-k. Have you seen anyone take the jackpot out of that one on the left there lately?”
“I can relate to those reality TV contestants a bit now. A flirtation with fame, everything being paid for so that you don’t notice you’re not actually getting rich yourself, and then the invites stop coming. Except for the getting stuff paid for you deal.”
“There’s meant to be some light on them that tells you how likely they are to pay out.”
“What use is a second in Art History I ask you? I’ve been wandering about, trying to find a temping job that doesn’t attract females to the post, but there’s always one at least.”
“Is it 25 or 30 pence per go?”
“The new face helped me a lot, helped me get a job here. Or at least didn’t hinder me in getting a job here as was the case with the old one. I’ll have to be leaving now. Leaving this place to find a better home, one where people aren’t judged by their looks, but by their typing and filing skills. Although I often wonder what I’d do if I ever found myself truly content, it seems like such a strange concept now.”And that was the end of that. Or so I guess, the tape ran out then, I was lucky that no one had stolen it, I was just eating into my life savings by then, one pound at a time.
So now what?
Well, I for one wasn’t too happy with that report. It showed some promise at the start, but just sort of tailed off into vague observations about service station life, with a fairly insipid subtext attacking the folly of man’s greed. How speculating to accumulate fails when you go for the long shot, the one big win.
That said, it is a rollover next Saturday...