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Popped into Hitchin to try and work in a cafe as I waited for my tour car to be serviced (damn, didn’t ask them if they can make my car forget about Ryan? But it never will. Love can find a way). As I left the car park I realised I had accidentally pocket dialled someone. My parents do this to me about once every four months and fill me with terror. Why are they ringing on their mobile? Something terrible must have happened? Oh no, the phone has somehow turned itself on (you can’t have it on yourself or the battery runs down) and called me and I am hearing the inside of my dad’s trouser pocket. Which is not somewhere I ever want to be. Again.
So I was looking at my phone, first to stop the call and then just to check it was definitely me ringing and not being rung. As I walked I was aware of some people crouching on the pavement beside me. I didn’t really give it my full attention, but as I was passed looked again and saw it was a confused looking old man, surrounded by people looking after him. He was looking at me so it wasn’t too serious and people were looking after him and I assumed he’d had a little turn and needed to sit down. But there was nothing I could do to help - he had several people with him already and I have no medical knowledge beyond a vague memory of how to clear a baby’s throat if they are choking. This man looked placid and unlike a baby and I didn’t want to embarrass him by asking what had happened (when that was pretty clear) or waste anyone’s time by asking if I could help (because I couldn’t). If it was me that had fallen or collapsed then I would be feeling awkward about it and wouldn’t want people to look at me or make a fuss.
I didn’t feel like this was a potential moral maze or that I had done anything wrong.
Later in the cafe, I saw a tweet about me. I search for my name on Twitter, not out of vanity (as people who say nice things will nearly always at you in), but just to see if there are reviews or some news in or if people are slagging me off or to find out about the progress of the other Richard Herrings in the world.
Someone called Neal had called me out for my arrogance, saying that an old man had fallen over and I was the only person who had walked on by without asking what had happened.
I thought this was a little bit weird. Was the guy just doing a humble brag that he’d been there helping out? Or was he really affronted that a nationally-known comedian might not have the compassion to stick his beak into a situation that was clearly under control?
What was weirder was that the man had clearly just set up this Twitter account to call me out. He had no other tweets, no followers and was only following one person. And that person was me. Yet even more oddly he hadn’t directed the tweet at me. Literally the only people in the world who would see it would be people searching Twitter for “Richard Herring”. So that’s me and maybe one or two of the other Richard Herrings who are vain enough to want to see the horrible things that people are saying about them (or more likely me). Those other Richard Herrings must resent me. They never get called out for being the priest of the levite in the Good Samaritan story.
I have made a pact with myself never to respond to critics on Twitter again (especially if they haven’t @ed me in), but I was curious about this man’s fury so I said, "Seemed to be in hand to me. Have no medical knowledge and didn’t want to intrude. What did you want me to do?”
I can only give you his replies from memory as he quickly deleted this new account, but he wanted me to stop and ask what was going or maybe if I could help, like, apparently, everybody else who walked by.
So I replied, " It was clear that something had happened and my personal preference if I were in that situation would not to have attention drawn to me. Danger of just looking like a busy body. Well done for helping. As I would had I been first there or seen it happen.”
The man told me that 14 people had walked past and 13 of them had asked what was going on. Why he was paying so much attention to creating a survey of passersby and their response when there was an old man in trouble, I am not sure. But there you go.
"Just explained why I didn’t. Is that not a valid response? He looked upset and had help, I didn’t want to make him feel embarrassed. Well done for helping. But don’t call he arrogant for respecting his feelings.”
The man then accused me of looking down my nose at them all as I passed. I was looking down at them, as they were on the floor, but with distracted concern, as I was trying to deal with the pocket dial situation at the same time.
It seemed to me this guy was in the helping fallen old men business for the glory seeking. Not only did he carefully count all the people who had passed, but had seemingly also attempted to assess what mood they were in, based on his interpretation of the face they were pulling. He’d got mine wrong. I was concerned for the man, but pleased he had help (and confused by the man taking a tally and looking at my face). We were perhaps seeing some of his prejudice here. He’d decided in that instant that because I was on telly in the 1990s I was so up myself that I would never help an old man who had fallen down and would heap disdain on the people who weren’t on television 25 years ago who had deigned to help him, rather than leave him in the gutter to die, as evolution had dictated.
Luckily I have a blog of all the many times that I have not been too swayed by my own ego to assist others. He only needed to google Richard Herring and nun to see how I had actually managed to more or less catch an elderly person (not turn up once they were on the floor like this chancer) I mean, yeah, that was 14 years ago, but what of it? I don’t see that many falling old people. I only have this tweeters word for it that the old man had fallen anyway, as I wasn’t around to see it.
I bet there are loads of other examples of my willingness to help prostrate wrinklies, but I don’t have time to read my blog from the start.
This fellow was wasting enough time on his census of the reactions and facial expressions of passersby. He could at least have googled my blog and read it all before accusing me in a tweet to no followers and my fellow Richard Herrings, who won’t have seen the rest of the conversation as I didn’t name check myself and will now think I am a prick.
I am not a prick.
This story makes that very clear.
