In Praise of the Happy Amateur

Most people I know inhabit a professional world and as such know that, try to make something of yourself and you’ll find your head occupied nearly every hour of every day by what you should be doing, when, for how long and who with. Combine this with our money and celebrity-obsessed culture, which advances the idea business people should act like the idiotic narcissists on The Apprentice, and you have a recipe for frayed nerves and bad attitudes. That’s my excuse anyway.

It is against this backdrop that I long suspected a charming quirk of English life had gone the way of the dinosaur. As we scramble to change the world with our supreme talents, work ethic and delusions of grandeur, I thought the enthusiastic English amateur – men and women who do eccentric things, not very well, without a hint of competition and purely for the pleasure of it – had been slowly fading into obscurity.

But I’m gleeful to report I am wrong. A recent trip to Howden Show, East Yorkshire, proved beyond doubt that England is still a nation of enthusiastic amateurs who turn out on weekends to entertain, delight and amuse with their gloriously peculiar antics.

This first became apparent while watching the Tailwaggers Dog Display team. If there are two qualities that characterise the enthusiastic amateur it’s a genuine love of their chosen activity combined with, how do I put this sensitively, a good-humoured lack of ability. The Tailwaggers had these in spades. Their display consisted largely of an aged team of dog handlers attempting to persuade respective charges to lie down close to a life-sized stuffed sheep. Why? God only knows. But perhaps persuade is the wrong word. The dogs, rendered half delirious by the midday sun, wandered off in every direction but the right one, prompting highly-animated responses from the handlers that bring to mind verbs such as beg, bribe and plead. It was a masterful display of amateurism that set the scene for the day.

Spirits soaring after the Tailwaggers, we next caught the curiously-titled Jive Pony. The buzz surrounding this act was such that and the old bread knife and I sat in eager anticipation of being truly wowed. What we were treated to, however, was a young woman doing some shaky acrobatics on the back of a plod-along horse around a small enclosure.

Now, anyone who has seen Jive Pony might take exception to this description. But let me assure you it’s not my intention to rubbish the act at all, or to suggest that I could better it, because I couldn’t. Indeed I enjoyed it. This post is about celebrating the odd things people do for their own pleasure or that of other people, and Jive Pony falls well into that category. The underlying hint of amateurism as the music started and stopped in the wrong places, the microphone failures and the announcer’s prompts to the audience to clap in the right places served only to make it more compelling, if not always for the right reasons.

Add to this robust, farm-bred youngsters tugging reluctant bulls round a ring and baskets of lovingly arranged root vegetables and you realise England is still as amateurish and eccentric as ever it’s been. It’s brilliant. And although these people are rarely feature in newspaper columns or reality TV shows, they are a truer reflection of our great nation than Cheryl Cole, Jordan or Lord Sugar will ever be.

So let’s celebrate the eccentric, English amateur in all his or her glory and be glad it continues to be a living tradition. England is still a country unafraid of being a bit naff just as long we’re all enjoying ourselves and although that’s not a lesson I would take to the office, Howden Show was a great reminder that sometimes a happy amateur can get the better of the over-competitive, self-obsessed and grumpy professional.