The Power of Suggestion

In which The Author plays a joke on a friend

My pal Gaz has an unfortunate habit of falling asleep after a few beers. It’s happened to us all, of course, but never with such frightening regularity as it does to Gaz.

We were playing an important quiz game one night in our local pub. During the second half, we noticed that Gaz had gone rather quiet. We assumed that the questions were just on topics which were out of his field. The eighth round consisted of the individual questions; mine was on Politics.

James T. started reading the question: ‘Which Conservative politician has recently been selected to fight the seat of Kensing—’

‘Alan Clark!’ Gaz shouted. We all looked at him in horror – the question was forfeited.

‘What are you doing, man? It’s my bloody question!’

Gaz went scarlet and looked for a hole to crawl into.

‘I must have dropped off,’ he mumbled, ‘I thought we were doing the “spares.”‘

Another time, he dozed off on a train returning from a football game in Port Talbot. The plan was to change trains in Cardiff and make his way home. But the beer kicked in, and the next thing he recalls is being woken up by the conductor. At London’s Paddington Station.

When he asked the conductor what time he’d get a train back to Cardiff, he was told, ‘Nine o’clock tomorrow morning.’ Undeterred, Gaz decided he’d be able to crash out at a relative’s house, so he set off on the tube. And fell asleep …

He was turfed off the underground at Hammersmith when the network shut down for the night, and wandered around all night until the trains started running again. It cost him £38 to get home on the Sunday – and then the pillock went and told us all what had happened!

Now that cameraphones are pretty universal currency, there are a lot of embarrassing pictures of Gaz in various pubs, surrounded by a lively party of friends, chucking out the Zs to his heart’s content. He’s even been known to fall asleep standing up, pint in hand, perfectly poised and not spilling a drop. It’s an incredible gift – and a infinite source of potential mischief!

Anyway, on Good Friday a gang of us met up in our local pub, and decided to go on a bit of a pub crawl. Knowing that it would be a long day and a late night (especially for Gaz!), we came up with a cunning plan. Under the seat where we were sitting, Amanda N. found an empty packet of 24-hour party pills. They’re high-dose caffeine and Vitamin B1 with some other ingredients, designed to keep you going at all-night dances and things. You can buy them openly in the local newsagents. I don’t know whether it had been discarded by one of our party, or was there from earlier on. It gave us an idea.

By the time we got to the Temple Bar, Amanda and I’d managed to convince Gaz that we’d slipped a couple of these pills in his pint. The rest of the gang played along with the joke. He was really worried. He muttered vague threats about suing us for ‘Common Assault’. Then he decided that we wouldn’t really have done such a terrible thing. But the doubt was in his mind. After another couple of beers we headed back to town, and drifted to a couple of different pubs.

Gaz texted me later on to say that he was going to a house party. That meant, against all the odds, that he was still awake at 10 p.m. – a new record. I decided to pass on the party – it had been a long day – and went home.

The following lunchtime, walking back into town, I spotted Gaz.

I crossed the road and greeted him with the words, ‘Still awake, mate?’

‘I haven’t been to sleep yet!’ he replied with a broad grin.

We’re currently preparing a paper on the Placebo Effect, to go to one of the medical journals.

In the meantime, Gaz is psyching himself up for the come-down that won’t happen. RESULT!