Here's to the land of the free lunch

The US Presidential brainwashing campaign has worked on me too, says Paul Carter. Now all I need is a free accessible villa with a pool and cocktails and I’m off to LA

As you can’t possibly fail to have noticed by now, the USA has a new leader of the free world, a new defender of democracy, a new bastion of human rights and all that over-used, cliché-ridden claptrap we’ve been plagued with since the Triassic period – or whenever the campaign began.

Before any one writes in (if only), I am aware of the irony in bemoaning the media saturation of the US election and then using this column to discuss it, but hey. My column, my rules.

Do you think American viewers have their television schedules interrupted to bring them urgent updates on the latest policy announcement from Nick Clegg? Of course not.

If there is anyone from America reading this, we’ve probably got off on the wrong foot, because I actually quite like the place. That very nearly wasn’t the case, though, as the first time I visited, a few years ago, I didn’t think they let disabled people in.

I was alarmed to be given a landing card to fill in on the plane that asked all these ridiculous questions like: Do you have any bodies under your patio? Have you ever owned a record by The Beautiful South? That kind of thing.

One question included the mandatory “are you disabled?” option, except that on this form we were lumped into the same group as narcotics-users and other social deviants.

When I landed, I thought I was going to be bundled into a side room and strip-searched. But once they’d decided that I was just your average run-of-the-mill disabled and not a gin-soaked crack addict with a penchant for leather (if only they knew), they let me in.

Los Angeles is brilliantly crackers. Not only is it the most accessible place I’ve ever visited in my life, it’s the only place where there is absolutely no such thing as normal. Anywhere. The whole place looks like what the 60s must have looked like to Jim Morrison.

In the space of my first four hours in town I was challenged to a boxing match by a toothless yet friendly down-and-out in the middle of Hollywood Boulevard and encountered a man in a club who removed his artificial leg and slammed it down on the bar, declaring we were “brothers”. Maybe I was in the wrong kind of joint and it was some sort of mating ritual. I didn’t stick around to find out.

Now I’m used to getting stared at. A lot. But in LA, nobody seemed to bat an exquisitely Rimmeled eyelash.

I did get stared at at Universal Studios but I think that’s because people thought I was some sort of exhibit. Like a roaming ET.

As a result of all the wall-to-wall American brainwashing recently, I’ve decided that if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, and that I’d like to go and live in LA, where I can pen my prose from the pool each month with the help of a couple of margaritas.

So if anyone has an accessible pool-side villa going spare for the next few months, then let me know. I shouldn’t need a plane ticket, as I do stow easily in overhead storage bins. The weight might be an issue, though, and it’s quite likely my contents will have settled in transit, but that’s a minor detail. God bless America.