For this reason, he doesn’t tick the box.
George has also entered the Specsavers Spectacle Wearer of the Year competition (“Have You Got Specs Appeal? Our first-prize winner will be awarded a fantastic two-week all-inclusive holiday for two in the Maldives. Send a recent color photograph of yourself wearing specs to . . .”).
I am, unlike George, an embittered cynic, ground down by the travails of life, and so I consequently wonder if this whole spectacle-wearing beauty pageant is an excuse for the company to gather our names and addresses for their database, and to sell them on to other databases.
TITCH RONSON
Titch is the least favorite of my personas. He is venal. He is a gullible sex maniac. He thinks about nothing but pornography, his virility, Nazi memorabilia, and extreme martial arts. Today Titch takes up an offer in the News of the World: “The original BLUE PILL. Something for the weekend, sir?”
In this newspaper advert, a topless woman wearing a policeman’s helmet has a speech bubble that reads, “Allo, Allo, Allo. What have we here—is it a lethal weapon I see before me?” A warning covers her breasts: “IMPORTANT NOTICE. Some customers find the 100 mg Blue Pill we supply TOO EFFECTIVE. If this happens to you simply reduce usage to half a tablet.”
I assume the Blue Pill is some kind of herbal Viagra. Titch is taken in hook, line and sinker, because he does in fact see his penis as a lethal weapon.
He barely notices a tiny sentence at the bottom of the order form: “If you don’t wish to receive further mailings of exciting offers from us, or associated companies, please tick this box.”
Titch spends his every waking hour seeking depraved gratification and is therefore tantalized by the promise of exciting offers, so he doesn’t tick the box. Then he reads the rest of the News of the World and is saddened to discover that Kate Moss has got back together with Peter Doherty.
Titch also subscribes to Fighters Only, a magazine dedicated to photographs of frequently blood-splattered boxers, with captions like “Psycho Steve Tetley. Lightweight. Hyper aggressive. He’s called Psycho for a reason!”
There is no end to Titch’s troubles. He’s also, I decide, a hopeless gambling addict, and has signed up to William Hill and the Loopy Lotto free daily Internet draw.
Midway through my experiment I fill in a consumer lifestyle survey on Titch’s behalf, attached to a “Win a Day on a Playboy Shoot” competition. (“Get to hang out with girls like this in the flesh! There’ll be naked girls! It’s a once in an adulthood experience!”)
The consumer-lifestyle survey is quite detailed, and so it gives me the opportunity to really flesh out Titch’s character and circumstances:
Is Titch in employment?
No. He is an unemployed, single, thirty-eight-year-old homeowner.
His annual earnings are what?
I tick the “less than £10,000” box.
What are his annual outgoings?
I think for a moment, then tick the “£10,000–£24,000” box. So every year Titch somehow manages to spend approximately £14,000 more than he earns. How frequently does Titch pay off his credit-card balance in full?
Funny question, I think. Titch answers: Rarely.
Then Titch tires of these relentless questions and instead scuttles away to order the PABO Sizzling Adult Mail Order Catalogue from their online sex shop. Titch, who thought he had seen it all, is startled by the voluminous choice on offer by PABO. Many of the items for sale involve pumps and studs and—mysteriously—“tracts” that even the grotesque Titch can’t picture aiding a sexual situation.
I put all the things Titch subscribes to in an old picnic hamper, which I keep on a shelf in my office. Rifling through the contents of this picnic hamper is a disturbing experience. Red blood, pink flesh, green baize. Although I have to say that when I troop around the betting offices looking for loyalty schemes for Titch to add his name to, I always stop to play video roulette. It is terribly moreish.
• • •
EVERY MORNING for three weeks I walk the streets of London in the guise of one or other of my personas. I inevitably spend slightly less time being Titch because I find the prospect of being spotted slouching into sex shops incredibly embarrassing. But by the time three weeks are up, I believe I’ve been fair and signed each Ronson up to a similar number of lists. And then I wait.
It takes three months for the first unsolicited-loan offer to arrive. And then, suddenly, I am bombarded. And which Ronson is inundated more than any other? Which Ronson receives the first and, in fact, all the credit-card junk mail?
It’s Pauclass="underline" the handsome, high-achieving, aesthetic, sagacious millionaire Paul. No, I’m joking. Paul doesn’t receive any credit-card junk mail at all.
It’s Titch: stupid, superstitious, venal Titch.
Titch has so far been offered loans by Ocean Finance, Shakespeare Finance, Blair Endersby, e-loanshop.com, TML Mortgage Solutions, loans.co.uk, and easy-loans.co.uk, and an MBNA Platinum card, and an American Express Red card.
What—I wonder—is Titch’s most attractive personality trait for the lenders? Is it his sex addiction, his gambling addiction, his—surely not—interest in bare-knuckle boxing and Nazism? It has to be something. And then I find the culprits! They are in Shoreditch, East London. And they are called Loopy Lotto.
• • •
IN A SPLURGE of gambling addiction back in April, Titch signed up for the Loopy Lotto free daily Internet draw (top prize £1 million). I remember the occasion well because I had to pick six numbers for him, and so I became—on Titch’s behalf—a superstitious fool, choosing numbers that intuitively felt special to me. Last night, as I examined the e-mails offering Titch “up to £75,000 for almost any purpose” (loans.co.uk) and “We will consider all applications, no matter what your credit rating” (Ocean Finance), I noticed the small print explaining that they came via Loopy Lotto.
And so I telephone them.
Dan Bannister, the company’s director, sounds lovely and very surprised to hear from me. He says journalists usually have no interest in what people like him do, because it’s terribly boring. But I’m welcome to come over if I like.
The whitewashed loft-style offices of Loopy Lotto could belong to an advertising agency or a TV production company. Boho-yuppies with wire-framed glasses beaver glamorously away as Dan and I sit in the lounge area.
“Who is the average Loopy Lotto subscriber?” I ask him.
“People who are looking for something for nothing and are into instant gratification,” Dan replies. “It’s not a massively upmarket list.”
Dan says they have six hundred thousand registered players. I say one of them is Titch Ronson.
I tell Dan about my experiment. I explain that my fancy, upmarket personas received no junk mail at all, yet Titch was bombarded, primarily through Loopy Lotto.
Dan nods, pleased and unsurprised. He explains that Titch sounds classically, enticingly “subprime.”
“Subprime is the golden egg,” Dan says. “If, as a direct marketer, you can identify subprime characteristics, you can do very well.”
Dan says the vast majority of all junk mail—be it loans or otherwise—is directed at the subprime market: “The best thing you can tell a client is that you can accurately identify subprime individuals. Which is why, when people are asked to fill in lifestyle surveys, they’ll often see questions like ‘Have you ever experienced difficulty getting credit?’ or ‘Have you ever missed a mortgage payment?’ Those are the sorts of triggers that will identify you as potentially subprime. It’s valuable information.”
It is slightly chilling to realize there are rational, functional people up there employed to spot, nurture, and exploit those down here among us who are irrational and can barely cope. If you want to know how stupid you’re perceived to be by the people up there, count the unsolicited junk mail you receive. If you get a lot, you’re perceived to be alluringly stupid.