'Loose Talk'
By Benjamin Benedict

Freaky Beaks

Whether ‘Beak’ came from the old school expression, meaning ‘headmaster’, or from the coincidental fact that most ‘executives’ seem to have a particularly prominent proboscis, I don’t know. The late, famed Hammond Organist, Graham Bond penned a song of that title. Of course, the record company chiefs had no idea what he was on about.

The thing is Beaks, be they Masters of education or business are freaky. It goes with the territory. They hide it well, but you can bet your very last Twinkie that behind the calm, measured, authority there lays a bubbling, fevered brain of wall-bouncing freakiness. One minute they seem to be the patron saint of balance and rectitude, the next a mouth-frothing, megalomaniac of gargantuan proportions.

You want proof? Look no further than the present financial crisis. Exactly how long ago were Bankers and Stockbrokers making profits so obscene as to be virtually incalculable to mere mortals, such as ourselves; a year and a half, perhaps? Now, they are being bailed out to the tune of many hundreds of billions of dollars, and the political Beaks are telling us how smart they have been. Freaky, freaky, freaky! Beaky, beaky, beaky!

The question of our time, of The Age perhaps is ‘Can you take the Freak out of the Beak?’ It sounds a tall order, but let us look at it objectively. Being beaky makes you freaky. When you think about it, it is understandable. Put yourself in a Beak’s position. You wake up in the morning, look in the mirror and see yourself in all your beakiness. “What a very fine Beak I am,” you say to yourself, puffing out your chest as if there were medals pinned to it. Roman Generals had a man on board their chariots to whisper humbling words in their ear, Kings had their Fools, but Beaks only have themselves to listen to and that’s what makes them freaky. They are an island to themselves, and it sends them loopy.

So next time you meet a Beak, have some sympathy, as The Stones would say, but not too much or you will end up seeing them as they see themselves, and not as weirdo’s of the nth degree.

From Bank Managers to Media Exec’s, from Politico’s to City Slickers, there are ever more among us and they are all as mad as Hatters. They think they run the world, but don’t. They have made a mad world for themselves and they can’t even run that, let alone the real world which runs itself, despite their freaky beakery.

One day, the Beaks will all be gone and Little Johnny will be told to be a good boy, or The Beak will come to freak him; a very scary prospect in that far-off time to come, and not exactly something to go to sleep on in the here and now.             

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