Mistaken identity makes the world go round – creating the laughter so traditionally found in comedy and farce dating back to the Greek gods, who reinvented themselves in search of love.
That was the delightful theme Michael Frayn, the prize-winning novelist, playwright and author of screenplays, as he retold the basic ideas behind his new comic novel called Skios, a totally fictional name for a Greek island he invented.
Yet, to prove his point, he recalled at the Marlborough literary festival last night (Saturday) that admirers had come up to him on his promotional tours for the book to tell him they knew the island well.
And that brought down the house at Marlborough town hall where a packed audience succumbed to his exceptional tales of true events that ought to make them wonder whether he was really Michael Frayn and not some commercial franchise aiming to dumbfound them.
He revealed how this was in fact the case with the pop star Little Richard — and a major Moscow orchestra too — who appeared in different places at the same time without their audiences being aware they were being cheated.
One man who protested vehemently at a Little Richard concert some years ago was hauled off by security guards as if he were mental. Yet 18 months later his claim was proved to be true, people always willing to hide their identities for nefarious purposes.
“How do you know I am Michael Frayn?” he asked them. “Who knows, some shaven haired security guards might come and haul me off at any moment.”
Indeed, he pointed out that the festival aide who had picked him up at Swindon railway station had never met him before, as was the case in Skios where his colourful hero, an ebullient Boris Johnson-type character, changes his identity without difficulty.
Having stupidly picked up the suitcase of an eminent scientist on the baggage carousel and seeing a young woman with a placard with the man’s name on it, one of half a dozen waiting to collect people, goes off with her, in more than one sense.
“Have you ever been tempted?” asked Frayn. “I confess I have always been tempted to go round and claim I am the name on the card because it would be so interesting to step into someone else’s life and see someone else’s world.”
“Those waiting at airports don’t know person they have been sent to pick or what they look like. I wouldn’t do it because I’m far too timid.”
But he had a manic depressive friend who was a danger to himself because nobody knew what he might do next.
“He was walking along Fleet Street, he was a journalist, and saw in the slow-moving traffic a chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce with white ribbons on it,” Frayn recalled. “What he wanted to do was to get into the car and tell the bride and groom the story of his life.”
“That’s what he did. According to him it was a great success because he is such a charming fellow. And no doubt somewhere today there is the bride thinking how much her life might have turned out very differently if she had gone off and married him.”
Indeed, he pointed out, the masked ball of the 18th century was a perfect ploy for people to have secret assignations thanks to being able to hide their true identity, providing endless possibilities for fun and frolics.
Fact or fiction, it didn’t matter, the laughter from 79-year-old Frayn’s delicious stories undoubtedly adding to the audience’s sheer enjoyment.
As he told them at the start, when he set out on his Skios travels he received an email from the Society of Authors telling him that he needed public liability insurance.
“People nowadays sue their doctors for miss-diagnosis, they sue the council for making them trip up over paving stones, they sue their lawyers for failing to collect damages,” he pointed out.
“But I am not at all clear what I can do to you which will be so awful that it will get you suing? The only thing I can think of is getting a writ from someone who says my beloved mother-in-law passed away following the event the other night because you bored her to death.”
That Michael Frayn failed gloriously to achieve.
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