Carter's famous last word

To take his mind off the more frightening aspects of his day-job, Paul Carter has been pondering intimations of his own mortality

There’s been a cheery subject on my mind in recent days – epitaphs. Part of the reason is that I’m extremely fortunate in being surrounded by a circle of friends who only ever acknowledge the fact that I’m actually disabled when it’s to take the piss out of me in some way, which is fine. That’s the way I like it.

This often leads to some quite funny things that I get told other people say about me from time to time.

Most of you will be unaware that these days I ply my trade in television production, which generally involves strutting around pretending to be important and trying to persuade people to give you money to make things.

My epitaph moment came at a TV sales festival that I spent a few days at recently, trying to do a pitch to get a programme funded.

Now, pitching is a terrifying process where you stand up in front of a live panel, on a stage in front of an audience, and lie, until people agree to give you money. It’s like Dragons’ Den on acid.

When the people I was pitching with went to check that a ramp or step would indeed be in place, they inevitably had to explain my physical situation, as I was too busy sitting outside nervously ingesting my own teeth. I’m fine writing sardonic, sarcastic prose on a page, but when it comes to speaking in public I turn into a gibbering wreck with all the stage presence of an antihistamine.

Turns out there was no ramp to the stage. I was about to encounter my own Tanni Grey-Thompson moment. I became some­thing of an instant minor celebrity as stage hands and event organisers scurried around in terror, in an effort to spare the humiliation of me having to shout my pitch from the front row like some sort of angry tramp.

Eventually they found a ramp that clearly wasn’t designed to be attached to the stage, but it worked.

The most entertaining part was a friend reporting that one person working at the event was minded to say: “Oh, I know him! We had a conversation in the queue yesterday! He hasn’t got any arms or legs – but he’s still cool.”

The worst part was, I didn’t really register the last part of the sentence until people were laughing. When you’re me, you're not used to people thinking of you as cool. I have plenty of four-letter words directed at me but cool isn’t usually one of them.

And there, folks, is my epitaph. “Cool.” You hereby have my permission to stick that on my tombstone, ashes bucket, pint glass or whatever else you put me into should I cark it anytime. I think it’s a fitting tribute, don’t you?