Every time a character in Snatch repeated the film's catchphrase, "I fuckin' 'ate pykies", Tim, sitting next to me, gasped with mirth. "Me too, me too," he tittered. Which struck me as strange, considering that, having grown up in Hampstead, neither of us had had, to my knowledge, any direct contact with "pykies". For those not used to the language of Guy Ritchie and wannabe hard-boy film-makers, the term "pykie" refers to a catch-all racial group that seems to include travellers, tinkers, gypsies, Romanies, circus folk, fairground workers and women with thick Irish accents begging on the Underground. The urban middle classes may have embraced multi- culturalism, but we seem unable to treat mobile-home dwellers (or even their holidaymaking kin) with anything other than contempt.
There is a neo-prejudice all around us and it wears the black cloak of "humour".
Bob is an actor, recently returned from an unsuccessful stint in the United States, and his bitterness towards everything and everyone American is going down a storm right now. The laws governing language and tolerance that apply to other groups do not pro- tect Americans. Yanks, like "pykies", are currently society's pariahs.
Bob is disgusted - like his idol, Bernard Manning - that "you just can't speak yer mind any more. THEY stop yer." So Bob has had to tailor his natural bigotry to include those still laughed at in public, as opposed to privately. "Chris Evans, Cilla Black, Ken Livingstone, Mick Hucknall," he exploded in the pub, "spawn of the devil! Proof? The colour of hell is . . .? Red, of course. RED!"
Years ago, I lived in Golders Green. Walking through the Jewish Orthodox crowds on a Saturday afternoon really pushed Bob close to the edge of insanity. For a natural racist, the Sabbath is not a time to walk around NW11. At the lights, several Jewish Orthodox families crossed the road on their way to the synagogue. Bob was muttering under his breath the whole time. "Ooh, that's bad. Ooh, you bleeder. Not another one . . . Look at that!" he exclaimed, as the lights changed. "That's against nature, that is. Ginger Jews!"
Not that Americans and Jews are the only targets of Bob's prejudice. At a film premiere party in the West End last week, Jill, the wife of the writer/producer, was being chatted up by a very short man. He had come over with a tray of trinkets to sell but, stunned by her beauty, he contented himself with staring lovingly up at her face and repeating "beautiful, beautiful" over and over again. As the short man wove his way through the legs of the actors and audience, Bob never took his eyes off him for a moment.
"He hates dwarves," giggled Jill. "He told me that in Italy, he was shaking one around like a little child until the dwarf's mates joined in. They grabbed his arms and legs and then the midget gave him a real beating."
Later, I couldn't resist bringing this up. Sitting down with a bottle of wine, Bob turned his angry eyes to me and blazed: "Dwarves are just vicious bastards, Lauren. Short people are psychopathic, just take Napoleon."
Any phrase repeated often becomes stuck in the subconscious mind. Later that week, I met Paul, a middle-aged midget, at my hairdresser's. He was helping to move into a bucket the fish I had inherited from the salon's aquarium.
"Be gentle, for God's sake," ordered a customer as I clumsily bumped a goldfish and swept the cup around in an attempt to catch him. For ten minutes, I unsuccessfully scooped and lunged. Suddenly, Paul grabbed the cup from me with his left hand and, with his right hand, flicked the fish into it. Then he chucked fish and water into the bucket. The girl pulled a face: "You know what they're like."
The superstition and fear surrounding the "dwarves are violent, gypsies are thieves" mantra are nothing new, but are finding a new generation of believers.
