Spooky, Possums

A funny thing happened on the way to Moscow, and the story is worth retelling on its own. I was sitting in the front row of economy in the port-side window seat. The 767 had a 2-3-2 configuration: to my right was a well-groomed young man who was disturbingly ill. He rested his head between his knees, coughed deeply over and over, and otherwise displayed symptoms that I diagnosed as early on-set ebola infection. And all that was before takeoff. Fearing contagion, I was not pleased. And to make matters worse, he insisted upon engaging me in conversation... All before 9am.

Curiously, he mentioned in passing that he was Australian, despite having the thickest Received Pronunciation accent... which actually annoyed me, I must confess. Challenging his Australian credentials, I asked how he came to be in England. The reply was peculiarly loaded with detail: "My father is a comedian, and he left Australian in the late 50s and moved to England". I felt like I was being lead, but I didn't bite... at least not yet.

Sometime later, when the ice was broken, and we had chatted on a dozen other subjects, the breakfast was served, and I'd managed to unwittingly charm him with a (serious) request for a gin-and-ginger ale at 10am, the conversation turned to Kath & Kim. He asked me if the show was still in production (even though I had already said I had lived in London for almost two years now). I said I wasn't sure, and that the last episode I saw was the Christmas special... To which my travelling neighbor sharply interjected, "my father was in that". "Oh", I inquired, "is your father Barry Humphries". His answer was "yes".

I think it rather interesting how our brains can contemplate stuff only with the passage of time (eg was I primed to mention the Kath & Kim special), and how sometimes certain things can automatically pop into your head when a previously untested circuit is synapsed. An example for the latter is how, on learning the identity of my travelling neighbour, I suddenly remembered reading a newspaper article about Oscar Humphries, son of Barry, who had instigated a London society scandal a few years back, by writing about a brief love affair. She happened to be Tamara Mellon, financial backer behind Jimmy Choo Shoes. She was also 20 years senior to young Oscar, and married, with children. Oscar wrote about his seduction in a thinly veiled roman-a-clef for The Telegraph. (I'd love to know how that job was pitched). The article caused a huge sensation. Those who knew, knew the real identity of Ms Mellon... Whose marriage, in the real world, publicly dissolved a short time thereafter.

Anyhow, we didn't discuss all that. It seemed rather rude, though I did have to bite my tongue on one occasion in order to let politeness rule the day. What I did ask, is whether Oscar found his life was unusually interesting, or at least different, growing up as the son of a household name in two different countries. He replied firmly in the negative, and insisted that life in the Humphries household was normal, like anyone else's. Normal, relatively speaking, I am sure of that... But like anyone else's I couldn't disagree more. This strand of our conversation was moments before explaining to me that one his first jobs was as a personal assistant to Joan Rivers in New York. Impressed, I asked how that came about, and he said that Rivers is a friend of his father's. And therein was the real answer to my question. Would he have got the job without the connection? Most probably not... But then again, how is this different to a shop owner helping out a friend by employing the friend's son? The only difference is celebrity.

The flight to Moscow is almost four hours, but the time flew with our light-hearted conversation. Throughout, Oscar was polite and cheery, but what most charmed me was his acutely sharp sense of humour. Definitely "a chip of the old block", as we'd say back in Australia. And on the one occasion he used the word "spooky" to describe something bizarre, it sounded to me exactly as if Dame Edna Everage was sitting right next to me. Spooky, indeed.