Don't tell 'em, Darla!

For those of you who don't know, bait and switch is another name for the use of fake pictures in an escort ad to lure in the client while often providing a less-than-awesome girl.  This is a bit of a long winded post, but do bear with me, since I actually have a point.  I was watching one of my favourite programmes of all time last night, Dad's Army, the episode being The Big Parade.  This episode has made it very clear that I have been an escort for way too long.  In the beginning the platoon determine that they need to acquire a mascot for their upcoming parade and decide that a ram is the best possible solution. Through a series of inept hijinks they find that they are unable to catch said ram.  Walker promises to get them a rather spectacular goat, and even has a picture to prove it.  As you will see about a minute into the below clip, the creature that shows up fails to impress.

Being Darla, all I could think on was that this was a bait and switch goat, and rather typical of Walker's antics.  This made the scene all the funnier, but at the same time I was a bit disturbed to think that I can relate something as innocent as Dad's Army to the world of escorting. 

And yet this isn't the first time I have been able to do this. When I worked at an agency I got a booking one night and was warned that the client was one of their regulars and a bit of a character, eccentric verging on demented, and extremely, extremely, Scottish.  At the end of a surreal but fun booking, the agent asked me how I'd got on.  My reply?  "He's exactly like Frazer from Dad's Army." 

I am sure that most escorts who have been in the business for any length of time have had a suave and charming client like Wilson, or one like the adorable bumbling Godfrey.  We've all met a client like Mainwaring who is pompous but suffers at the hands of his shrewish wife.  Every time I have a nervous older client I have to bite my tongue to keep from saying "Don't panic!" and "Unlike people in the Sudan, I DO like it up me!"  And whenever I get a haggling spiv on the phone, my instinct is to say, "You're not private Walker and you never will be." 

As for the repulsive ARP Warden Hodges?  He's exactly the type of person I never take.  

Every time I watch an episode of Dad's Army, I see something I've never seen before, and it never stops being funny.  Despite being made in the 60's and 70's, and set in the 1940's, the show and its characters remain relevant, universal and never seem to date. They are much realer than other comedic characters, and as such, no matter what walk of life we choose, we always meet people like them.  Or at least that's what I tell myself so I don't feel quite so bad about comparing the characters to my clients.