I worked with Jeremy and Ruth when I lived in London. Jeremy was a Manchester lad, late 20's, perhaps 5'10" tall, but his slender build made him look much taller. He had a rubber face with bulging eyes, long stringy brown hair tied up in a pony tail, creases in his cheeks that made Iggy Pop look like an advertisement for Oil of Olay. The girls loved him, he had a certain rough vulgarity they warmed to, working the counter there would often be a posse of much younger girls vying for his attention. He would say the rudest possible things over the heads of the customers, carrying on preposterous conversations with staff, one suggests he should pursue older women, nods at an elderly lady, Jeremy performing a grotesque pantomime - "But can she pop her teeth out...."
(here an illustration with tongue in cheek and two hands held up to his mouth)
"...Otherwise she's no good to me..."
One man gagging on his burger, his friends patting him on his back, wondering why he's choking, he's overheard one of Jeremy's conversations. Never a complaint, somehow he had mastered the art of invisibility, able to perform the most incredible feats of impudence in front of customers, unnoticed, unobserved.
We had a few of the Manchester lads working for us at the diner. Julien, as rude as Jeremy but forever being caught out, Ade the cook, their loud laughter, cries of "Boyzee" as they shook and snapped their wrists over some shared joke.
And Ruth, the manageress, plump, pleasant blonde who had her own outrageous stories of lovers met in the adult shops of Soho.
She would party with the staff, I'd find out when they developed pictures and passed them round, Ruth drunk in compromising poses with assorted members of the Kitchen. Jeremy calling her down, I asked why the hostility, she was fair, more than fair, with them. He pauses for a moment and gets serious.
"We don't think that Ruth likes herself very much...."
he began.
"...Therefore, we don't like her either."