A new twenty pound note
has finally been unveiled, and in February 2020 it will be released
into the wild. If you could stop your whooping for just a second.
Thank you. It's made of a polymer which means it lasts longer than
the previous note and – PLEASE, ENOUGH WHOOPING! JESUS! - and, to
quote bankofengland.co.uk, for the first time the note incorporates
two windows and a two-colour foil, making it very difficult to
counterfeit. Mmmm, two windows. It's gonna be so light and airy.
Phwooaarrr, foil of more than one colour. Hot stuff. It also has JMW
Turner on it. Y'know, Joseph Mallord William Turner. The English
Romantic painter? Yeah, that one. The one everyone has heard of who
we all desperately wanted on a bank note. Remember that meeting? The
march we all went on? Whatever, it's a selling point. YES IT IS.
Because yes,
apparently, a bank note needs to be sold. Money needs to be marketed
to the masses. Promotion is required. Phrases like 'banknotes people
can use with confidence' must be used. The notes have a glory that
is 'radiant, colourful, evocative'. It is hoped that we will look
forward to spending the new notes, because we all do that, look
forward to new versions of existing currency and spending it in
modern, exciting ways. Ways that make the old ways we used to spend
money look kind of, well, shit. Don't we? Shut up, yes we do.
 |
| You're out, Elgar. Do one. |
There's even a slick,
not at all pointless, one minute long video that shows you everything
you need to know, not just about the beautiful, entrancing note
itself, but also about society at large and how we are all probably
completely fucked. I was going to embed it but it's so enticing that
I daren't. I couldn't live with myself if I was even somewhat
responsible for an increase in people rolling up twenty pound notes,
inserting them in a nostril and deeply inhaling that sweet,
intoxicating polymer high. So, let me talk you through this mini
motion picture marvel instead:
We open on an artists
studio. Could it be that of JMW Turner himself, as the painting on
the easel – his The Fighting Temeraire – suggests? No, because
there is a laptop on the desk with a Banksy desktop wallpaper and
neither Banksy or Laptops or desktop wallpapers were around then.
Wait! What's that under the mysterious artists palette? Why it's a
new twenty pound note! So new it is as yet unfinished. It lifts into
the air, as if imbued with the soul of a graceful pigeon, or robin,
or something certainly very English, and soars through some paint.
These bold, interesting colours splash the note with their visual
powers and on our hero floats. Where to you ask? Some sort of tacky
photo studio, in which the Queen is flattered and cajoled into just
slipping it a bit further off the shoulder - smile, yeah, that's it
baby – and BOOM, she is immortalised on the face of the star of the
show, as if some sort of odd tattoo.
Then to a tailor in
Savile Row, no, wait, Brick Lane... um, both somehow, and there Mr
Note is fitted with... with... transparent sections? It's unclear
(haha), but it happens in trendy, upmarket, cool and posh and
fashionable and current and tweedy and slogany London. Finally, Notey
passes two Apple Mac computers on which one presumes the design for
the note was created. And because this advert didn't pay for itself.
A clock changes from 20:19 to 20:20 which is, of course, incredibly
clever, because the new Cockney Score will be released at twenty
minutes past eight next year. A window opens onto a brighter tomorrow
and... the money shot. The polymer seductress gives us a quick gawp
at her rear end before JMW-Turnering onto her back and showing us a
regal full frontal. Sploosh.
I'm not making this up, that's the actual, real life advert for some money. Go Youtube it. Go on, I'll wait.
See. I told you.
In summary, someone got
paid for this shit, we're all going to use the damn thing anyway
because we have to, what the actual titty loving Christ, and lest we
forget, SOMEONE GOT PAID FOR THIS SHIT. More than twenty pounds.
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