Talent

'I am afraid, Rita, that you will find that there is much less to me than meets the eye.'

Frank to Rita in Educating Rita

'Well, we never really know anyone, do we?'

'M' to Bond in A Quantum of Solace

Willie Rushton's script for Educating Rita is full of penetrating observations on class, relationships, alcoholism, suicide and the utter futility of most intellectual lives. It also contains my favourite bit of dialogue in the entire western canon (make of this assessment what you will).

Frank: Sod them, eh, Rita! Sod them!
Rita: Will they sack you?
Frank: Good God no. That would involve making a decision. Pissed is all right. To get the sack, it would have to be rape on a grand scale. And not just with students, either. That would only amount to a slight misdemeanour. No, for dismissal it would have to be nothing less than buggering the Bursar.

I think - though I'll admit that literary criticism was one of my weaker subjects at 'O' level - that Rushton intended us to agree with Rita that Frank was being too hard on himself. Frank, though, knows better. He is a fraud, whose only talent is to be slightly less talentless than his hopeless students. When Rita makes the mistake of praising his unpublished poetry he replies: 'This clever, pyrotechnical pile of self-conscious allusions is worthless, talentless shit.' And no doubt he is right.

You will not be surprised to hear that I identify with Frank, to the extent that I think I understand him far better than his creator does. Frank was at the front of my mind as I drove earlier today to a meeting with my psychologist. I intended to bully her into agreeing that I am, basically, a total loser. Inevitably, I failed. It seems that my one real talent is an ability to exaggerate my talents. You are going to say that I'm fishing for compliments (or, since you know that pretty much anything could push me over the edge right now, you are just going to think it) but nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the truth is almost exactly the opposite - I am fishing for insults.

I seem to have lived my entire life surrounded by people who expected great things from me. In itself, this is presumably not unusual. Many children bear the burden of their parents failed ambitions. What is odd about my own situation is that my failures do not seem to dent the faith of my followers in the inevitability of great success around the corner. This has become really annoying.

It started, I think, when my Dad suggested to my golf coach that I was a 'natural'. The coach, seeing an annuity income stream stretching into the far future, agreed that this was probably true and it took literally years of staggeringly inept golfing performances on my part before Dad accepted that my golf coach just didn't have what it took to unleash my potential. Unfortunately, the old man assumed that, since golf wasn't my thing, I must have other talents, hitherto unsuspected. I was born to please my father and no doubt I shall die trying to appease his memory so, in desperation, I made an immense effort to excel at something. It is no accident that my specialization of choice was biology, a field of study that my prep school considered so insignificant it was taught by a volunteer once a week, after homework. No-one else gave a shit and I saw my opportunity. So began the legend that I am a talented biologist and I have been leveraging it ever since. My biological skills have been so highly leveraged that, if I were to issue junk bonds, I would not merit a 'D' rating.

Occasionally, though not very often, I feel sorry for the mental health professionals whose misfortune it is to have me as a client. Today was such an occasion. I was determined to secure agreement that, in at least one respect, I am a failure. Bad father, I suggested. 'Do you abuse your children?' She asked, as though a negative response would imply impeccable fatherhood credentials. 'Well, no', I replied, 'but I do let them watch a lot of television.' She looked at me pityingly. 'Well, OK, I said, I'm a bad husband.' 'Do you beat your wife?' She didn't have to ask. Well, of course I don't beat my wife, because I didn't grow up in Arkansas, but surely that doesn't make me a good husband? I gave up.

If you spend enough time around people who tell you that you are intelligent, attractive and talented, eventually you start to believe it. This is a terrible mistake. My belief in my own myth reached its apogee when I was an undergraduate. At that time I sincerely believed that I was cleverer than my peers and this attitude rubbed off on my teachers, who came to believe the same thing. As a result, I was made an extraordinary offer. I was given a PhD studentship with no strings attached. My supervisor, an eminent zoologist, told me I could study whatever I pleased and he seemed only mildly put out when I chose to study botany. All of his previous students and, for all I know, all of his subsequent ones, went on to become distinguished academics, except me. Years later I met a guy who had been supervised by the same man. When we'd made the connection, my new acquaintance said 'Oh, yes, I know about you! When I thought I'd never finish my thesis, N consoled me by saying that he'd once had a student who's PhD consisted in proving that as trees get taller they also get wider.' Which is as concise a summary of my contribution to science as could be made.

Don't get me wrong. I don't want to fail and I don't enjoy being a loser. It is frigging difficult, however, being both a failure and a loser and at the same time bearing the burden of expectation that goes with being a success. I don't know whether being regarded more realistically would improve my mental health but I am willing to give it a go. Are you?