LONDON LIFES 3
STAN ANDREWS

Stan Andrews stands on Oxford Street holding a placard saying Golf Sale, and has done since 1989.

‘Golf Sale’. That’s me. Perhaps you’ve seen me. My pitch is at the corner of Oxford Street and Rathbone place, just by the Waterstone’s. I’ve stood there for the best part of two decades now, from ten till six, fifty weeks of the year, six days a week, holding my massive, hand held, Golf Sale sign. I estimate that over this time I have directed over half a million people to the Golf Sale and that my Golf Sale sign has been seen by a number of passers by roughly equivalent to the population of China. As a kid I always liked holding up signs, so holding up a sign all day has been the perfect job for me. I don’t even really think of it as work. But ironically, I know nothing about Golf itself at all. I understand it’s some kind of sport, but beyond that it remains a mystery to me.

I have never even been to the Golf Sale shop itself. This means I can point people in its direction with a clear conscience. I imagine Golf is a fast and exciting game involving motorcycles and roller skates and vigorous contemporary dance and hilarious puppetry, in which people of all ages and races and sexes are encouraged to compete as equals, in a noble test of skill and fortitude and imagination. In the Golf Sale shop there are perhaps signed photographs of Golf Players, gleefully purchased by Golf Fans for whom they have provided a selfless example, changing lives and bringing about real political change for oppressed people as a result of the inspiration Golf provides, whatever it is. Golf songs play on the in-house sound system, filling people with righteous pride, and people dressed in the costumes of famous Golfers meet the Golf fans that I have sent with them and sweep them up into an uplifiting Golf dance.

In about 1999, ten years after I first started holding the Golf Sale sign, a documentary came on Channel 5 about Golf and I thought maybe I should watch it and find out, once and for all, what Golf was. But as soon as the opening credits began I started shaking with fear and realised that this was a bad idea. How would I be able to stand there every day, relentlessly promoting Golf and the Golf Sale if Golf turned out to be a sport that I would hate. What if it involved rabbits being smashed over the head with sticks, or kittens being flung at a target made of fire and spikes? How would I feel then? What if Golf involved anti-Semitic gestures or had a complex system of rules somehow designed to parody the basic tenets of major world religions? I need my Golf Sale sign job. I love my Golf Sale sign job. How could I continue to do it with a clear conscience if Golf was evil? Or worse still, what if it was just boring, perhaps involving men wandering slowly around a big empty field quietly hitting tiny balls towards tiny holes, for example? I know it sounds absurd, but imagine? Imagine how foolish I would feel if that was what Golf was, knowing that millions of Londoners and millions and millions of foreign visitors were walking past me on Oxford Street every day going ‘Ha ha! Look at him! He likes Golf! The twat!” What? It is? That’s what Golf is? You’re joking? No? Nooooooooooo! Why? Why? Merciless God why must you punish me in this way?

Stan Andrews was talking to Stewart Lee