The Unexpected Man.

David Dim Bum Bum at St Paul's Cathedral.

I was sitting on the tube the other day and sitting opposite me was a very small man. If he stood up he might have been taller than me but he was tiny in every other aspect. Tiny head, tiny shoulders, tiny thin legs and such a small face. The smallness of his face was exaggerated by the turban he was wearing as he was a Sikh even though his beard had been trimmed and was well kempt. 

Adding to his smallness was a large Crombie bluish looking overcoat which swamped his appearance apart from a knitted tie, which was tied in a Windsor knot, and a silk scarf that lined the border of the V shape of the overcoat aperture. 

It looked as if he would be able to move around quite easily leaving the overcoat where it was.

He was reading from a Kindle and whatever he was reading was attracting all of his attention as his eyes never left the page apart from the very odd blink.

I would say his age was around 25-30 and the reason the Kindle didn't look too small between his hands was they, like his feet, were of normal size; whatever normal size is.

One of the things that attracted me to that man was the intense look in his eyes; was it nervousness? Fear? Or maybe he was reading a horror story or some kind of eerie ghost story?

I asked myself if the Kindle was in Punjabi, for that is the language of the Sikhs and then again I wondered if Punjabi had the same writing system as the west and was used in the Kindle – or was it like this? بھارتی جن-سنکھیا گننا انوسار ہے۔ اس دا پرشاسکی مکھ دفتر.

Then I had a thought; he could be reading one of my novels; they're both on Kindle! Maybe even in Punjabi which is the 2^nd most popular language in the UK.

Maybe I should travel on the tube with a little business card which would say 'Read “Who Was Gertie Ford” by Chris Sullivan' and slip it onto their page as I pass?

There is a play called The Unexpected Man by Yasmina Reza – in fact I should say by Yasmina Reza and Christopher Hampton as he translated it from French to English – which I saw at the Edinburgh Festival in 2002. I also saw it in Los Angeles a couple of years ago with a friend of mind in it and he was excellent.

It's set on a train and is a two hander; one man and one woman. In the version I saw in Edinburgh they used chairs as the set and had train sound effects but in LA they went for the full Monty and had a train carriage, flashing by countryside and sound FX too.

He is a world famous author and she is reading a book called The Unexpected Man which he wrote. He sees what she is reading and she notices him.

The journey is from Paris to Frankfurt and during the journey they have plenty of time to ponder and philosophize – I thought about that play as I looked at my Unexpected Man. Movies about trains always make the journey look luxurious – even if they're documentaries - but when it's icy cold outside and the tube keeps stopping and flinging the sliding doors open at each stop it's a different story.

Keep with this whilst I change the subject – there is a programme on TV here called Question Time. It has a panel of pundits each week made up of a couple of politicians, a journalist and a well known person who has political opinions – as we all do. 

The audience ask stupid questions and the panel is supposed to answer them. The politicians don't, of course, the journalists do and the well known person usually struggles. I don't know why I watch it but I do. It is introduced by David Dim Bum Bum. 

Jonathan Dim Bum Bum (only known picture).

His brother, Jonathan Dim Bum Bum, hosts a show on the radio called Any Questions and they are usually the same questions as on Question Time.

The Dim Bum Bum name is big at the BBC; they have the Dim Bum Bum Lecture each year and the Dim Bum Bum's father was a stalwart of the BBC years ago and his name was Richard Dim Bum Bum; he is acknowledged as being the greatest broadcaster who ever lived; in fact he is the Daniel Day Lewis of broadcasting and it's a wonder they didn't call the BBC the DBB after them.

Last week's episode was recorded at Saint Paul's Cathedral and one of the questions was 'should a woman who has 11 children be given a council house?' - or words to that affect or even effect. The politicians didn't answer it in case they got into trouble with their party leader, the well known personality, who was the former Canon Chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral, The Rev. Giles Fraser, answered it and so did the bellicose journalist but nobody mentioned that it was a stupid question; not even Dim Bum Bum.

I won't tell you what answers they gave but believe me you won't be any the wiser if I did.

In the audience at the recording was my Unexpected Man; the man from the train this time without the overcoat; he was still wearing the same shirt and tie and looking very suspiciously at someone but as small as ever. Here he is:

The Unexpected Man.