Free My Shit Life So Far by Frankie Boyle Page A

themselves because recently Bowie developed metal skin and turned Chinese.
    The fact there were pretty girls in the debating society convinced me to join and I loved it. In it, the hideous flaws in my personality suddenly turned into virtues. I looked at the debating society in the way that a bank robber looks at an easy score, trying to spot the catch. I was a facetious, argumentative bastard and it turned out that it was a game that required you to be a facetious,argumentative bastard. The only other boys looked like even bigger losers than me. It just seemed too perfect.
    The woman who ran the debating society was called Pat Slaven. She is a truly wonderful woman and if I ever invent a time machine I will go back in time and marry her. Right after I’ve finished fucking the young Diana Rigg.
    I took the whole thing really seriously, as I honestly saw it as a chance to impress girls. Yes, I saw what is now clearly the club least attractive to women as a chance to impress girls. How many people have lost their virginity to a woman who gasped ‘Great speech!’ as they came? Possibly less than none. I’d just do lots and lots of jokes, largely because I rarely understood the arguments involved.
    There was a real ethereal quality to the days of the big debates. I’d wake up really early with nerves and find my mum warming my good shirt by the fire and putting my shaving stuff out. It was a lot like doing comedy gigs later on: the nervousness dominated my whole day. On the bus trip to the school we’d be debating against, everyone else would be having a laugh but I’d be trapped in my fear bubble. Afterwards I’d be really excited, high and relieved, and there were often girls to talk to on the way back. I’d be back in my jokey mode, looking for the funny side of everything in the way that only an ingratiating virgin can. In hindsight, they must have all have thought that I was some kind of manic depressive.
    We were one of the few comprehensives who’d do well in the debates, because we had such a good coach. After the firstround or two you’d be up against a bunch of public schools.
    Scotland’s public schools are pretty Lovecraftian: archaic and bizarre institutions dedicated to the production of humourless young adults. I’d never send my kids to public school, partly because I think it’s socially divisive, but mainly because I think they generally produce shallow people. When my kids have their nervous breakdown in their twenties (everybody seems to have a nervous breakdown before thirty, but culturally we are trained not to mention this) I don’t want the friends they have to fall back on to be a bunch of cunty, CV-padding, tax-discussing Scottish dentists and lawyers.
    I used to quite enjoy standing underneath baroque paintings of former headmasters, debating in my stiff C&A shirts and NHS specs. I felt like Alf Tupper, Tough of the Track. We won a few gongs and got a glimpse into another world, a world of different nerds. Nerds who knew that their school bullies would one day work for them.
    I suppose debating was my first real encounter with the class system. There was a guy from one public school we knocked out of a competition who refused to shake hands afterwards because we were comprehensive kids. The next time I saw him he was a left-wing student leader organising an antipoll tax sit-in at Glasgow Uni. I sometimes wonder if anybody really has principles or if they’re all just chasing different kinds of sex. Life isn’t just a choice between Conservatives and Socialist Workers. It’s also a choice between fucking a muscular polo player at an Oxbridge ball or being rattled in acaravan by your yoga teacher at a weekend of environmental awareness.
    We are, of course, ruled by genetic inbreds. Most aristocrats have DNA so damaged they could join the X-Men. When I walk through Knightsbridge I feel like I’m on a mini-break in Chernobyl.You can tell what class you are by this simple test. There’s a