Think I Better Leave Right Now

I have always admired people who have the right exit line at their finger tips at the right time. If finding a great put down line or something funny to say before walking off and leaving people shocked with admiration is an art then I’m more Tracy Beaker than Tracey Emin. My heroes are those who unfailingly know how to give “good exit”.

I first became aware of the power of a good leaving line when I was a kid watching James Cagney in the movie White Heat on telly. As Cagney was about to die in a blaze of glory he shouted the famous line “Made it ma. Top of the world.” Powerful stuff, and even as a small kid I recognised class.

Pancho Villa the renowned Mexican bandit realised the power of a good exit line as he lay dying when he said, “Don’t let it end like this. Tell them I said something”. Doctor Who regularly gives up all signs of modesty each time he dies. The ninth Doctor, Christopher Ecclestone, went out with "Rose, before I go, I just wanna tell you...you were fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. And you know what? So was I!"

The reason I was thinking of good exit lines this week was that I was in the audience for The Bootleg Beatles at The Albert Hall, with a packed house enjoying it to the full apart from a woman who was having her view spoiled by two men in front of her. They talked away on their mobile phones through the gig, chatted to each other blocking her view, and were up and down to the toilet three or four times in the first half.

When I heard one of them slating her for asking them to be quiet I felt I had to support her so, at the interval, I climbed over the seats and told them to shut up in the second half. One became belligerent so I threw in the odd bad word, for once came up with the perfect exit line, and then proudly headed back to my seat - and fell flat on my face. A great exit ruined.

Why is life never like the movies? Why can I never have the glory that Mel Gibson’s lot had in Braveheart when their exit line was just one shouted word? “Freeeeeedooooom”.

I don’t believe you have to be a literary genius to think of a good exit, though Oscar Wilde did not do badly with “Either that wallpaper goes or I do.” The great British actor John Le Mesurier, who played the bumbling Sergeant Wilson in Dad’s Army, dictated his own exit line to his wife the week before he died. She published it in the Times newspaper and it read. "John Le Mesurier wishes it to be known that he conked out on Nov. 15. He sadly misses family and friends."

I’m going to start thinking of my exit line now so that with a few years of thinking about it I may come up with something memorable.

Mind you, I can always ask my daughter for advice on memorable exit lines. This week she sat a history exam at school and was asked to account for the lower number of kids in the UK now, compared to Victorian times. She didn’t know the answer so came up with one of her own. As she later told me what it was, she walked out the kitchen leaving me stunned. She had answered, “The reason we have fewer children in Britain today is that we now have more lesbians.”

As exit lines for a twelve year old go, that’s a great one.