Then I saw a female rep coming towards us through what seemed like a mirage. I explained our predicament and, mercifully, she took pity on us and gave us two bottles. Out popped the corks and we thrust the cold necks straight down our throats.
It was like drinking bubbly battery acid. It stripped the enamel from my teeth and tore at my tonsils. I spat it out. Blistered and delirious, Mike and I sat on the burning sand watching the male rep down more cold Cokes. Until it was time to leave paradise, we discussed in hoarse tones how we would take it in turns to torture him to death.
On the plane home, I couldn’t get over what an interesting, albeit demanding, job those reps had. And how bad they were at it. The genie was out of the bottle now. I knew that I wanted to be a rep – and a good one. I drew up a well-embellished CV as bait and sent it off. One company called and, in March 1991, I found myself on a ten-day training course held on Majorca.
I enjoyed every second of that course, even though it was a bit like what I imagine basic training in the army to be. You are stripped down to your basic parts to see what you are made of and then rebuilt the way the company wants you. I passed muster and was offered a job but, after much heart-searching and tears from my fiancée, I turned it down at the time and went back into sandpaper. But as I went from dry shop to ironmongers, I found myself brooding about the life I could have been having in Majorca. The genie wouldn’t go back in the bottle.
So in October 1991, I revamped my CV and tentatively sent it off to another tour operator. I was summoned for an interview. I explained my motives and reasons – though, of course, not the ones to do with drinking and shagging – and told them why I thought I’d shine as a rep. I also mentioned that I had languages (a friend had given me some Spanish tapes – that’s what I thought they were, anyway – and had spent some time talking back at the tape recorder). When the girl who was interviewing me asked me to tell her about my family in Spanish, she looked baffled as I spluttered on for about a minute, then said she had heard enough. She confided in me that her Spanish wasn’t up to much, but said that mine sounded OK. It was only later, when I did learn Spanish, that I found out that those tapes I had been given were, in fact, Brazilian Portuguese.
There followed an intimidating group interview with other likely candidates, a sudden-death multi-choice questionnaire – fail that and you are out – and then the part everyone dreads, the presentation. Each of us had to sell a trip to the rest, who were sitting round in that tight circle. One woman droned on for forty-five minutes about the wonders of Coventry, handing out pamphlets and pinning pretty pictures on the walls, until the exasperated examiner told her to sit down. We applauded politely and then it was my turn.
I had rehearsed my merry tale of a wild Wild West night out time and again. In my head I could hear the laughter and the excitement as my captive audience lapped it up. I got all my lines right and my delivery was perfect. But not a sound emanated from those sitting in front of me. They stared past me, their faces as blank as fused television screens. Halfway though my show, the examiner put his head in his hands. I was unsure as to whether the gesture was caused by amusement or despair. I returned to my seat to tepid applause and went back to my fiancée resigned to a life selling sandpaper and taking our future offspring to see Bristol City play.
When a big envelope flopped on to the lino three weeks later, I had trouble opening it, such were my nerves. But there it was: my chance of a new life, a passport to debauchery and general misbehaving. I was among the ten per cent of the 6,000 applicants to be invited on the training course – the toughest of them all.
When some of the chosen few gathered at a hotel in Essex on a frosty February morning, I was primarily worried about two things: my name and my age. In the 1930s, Cyril was among the nation’s favourite names, but by the time I was born – in the Sixties – it was reserved for hamsters or tortoises, fluffy toys and other objects of ridicule. My father was unaware of this when he came across the name in a book he was reading, liked the sound of it and informed my mother that the lad was going to be called Cyril. My mother protested, but the old man insisted and so Cyril I became. I was the only Cyril on the Hartcliffe council estate in Bristol, where I grew up. Matters were made worse by my parent’s Irish brogue, which meant they pronounced my name as ‘Cerril’, which came out sounding like ‘Sarah’. Some of our neighbours were mightily bemused by the eccentric Irish family that lived at the end of the street and had a son called Sarah. Being called Cyril pronounced Sarah was also the cause of a few scuffles in the school playground. Even now the name is likely to provoke fits of giggles. And, of course, everyone knows the rendition of the song ‘Nice One Cyril’, written in honour of the only famous Cyril I’ve ever heard of – the Tottenham Hotspur player Cyril Knowles.
And that wasn’t all. Being a good ten years older than the rest of my course companions made me feel like I was a sly old fox let loose amongst a flock of young chickens. For them it was their first or second job. I sensed they thought I was only doing the course as a last desperate attempt to make something of myself. Maybe they were right.
Some of my suspicions were confirmed when I approached the door of the room where we would all meet formally for the first time and I caught the faint strains of ‘Nice One Cyril’. Not very original, I thought, and strode in. Our names were on labels: Andrew, Malcolm, Robert and a collection of sensible girls’ names. I thought of sitting down in front of any of them, even a Sarah if there had been one. Instead I sat down behind my tag; the oldest bloke with the silliest name.
Courses always begin with trainees introducing themselves to the group. The teeth-grinding strategy serves a dual purpose: to give the course tutors an instant idea of the new recruits’ potential to cause trouble, and to give the trainees their first opportunity to make fools of themselves. Telling total strangers a brief history of yourself tends to result in a tale of woe, intertwined with lies and pathetic attempts to raise a laugh. One bloke announced, ‘Hi! My name’s Darren. I’m twenty-three, from London. I used to be plumber, but all the pipes got fixed. I wanted to be a chicken, but I couldn’t pluck up the courage. So now I want to be rep, as it’s gonna be sun, sea and sex, but this time I’m gonna get paid for it.’ There was a cringing silence, briefly broken by one of the tutors deliberately letting her biro clatter on to the floor.
After Darren came Liz, a wardrobe of a Welsh girl with a voice that must have put sheep to flight as it echoed round the valleys. In her previous job she had sold sex aids and she was an expert on the subject, so she told us with a knowing smile. Liz expounded on her sales techniques, but just when it looked as though she was about to whip out a contrivance and demonstrate its purpose, one of the tutors told her sharply to sit down. The atmosphere was one of collective shock.
Now it was my turn. ‘Hi! My name’s Cyril and I used to be a sandpaper salesman and I support Bristol City.’ The howls of laughter caught me by surprise. ‘No, really. I am called Cyril and, well, someone’s got to sell sandpaper,’ I twittered above the rising tide of hysteria. One girl had slipped off her chair. ‘And I want to be a rep because anything’s better than watching Bristol Rovers. And that’s it really.’ I sat down feeling silly. I glanced at the tutor who had dropped her biro. The bottom half of her face had all the humour of a bulldog eating stinging nettles, but I thought I saw the merest glint in her eyes that made me think I had made the right career move.
Nice one Cyril, I thought.
Our course tutors were Malcolm and Tracy. An efficient and well-worn pair; they played the roles of good cop, bad cop. Malcolm was friendly and could be approached. The way round him was to ask him to reminisce. He would oblige with wondrous tales of times in Benidorm or Greece, neglecting the coursework, his mind out there somewhere in the Mediterranean, a long way from the stuffy classroom in Essex.
Tracy, though, was not for turning. Her view was that the course was not meant to be fun, and that knowledge should be acquired through fear and diligence. We joked that she only smiled when she broke wind. I christened her Miss Prissy Knickers, a nickname that I believe stuck with her for a while.
The