Open Writing

Billy Mays has been referred to as "a full-volume pitchman, amped up like a candidate for a tranquilliser-gun takedown," and that is a description I can go along with because I’d like to be the one firing the sleeping dart, or, better yet, a Taser cranked up as high as he is. If I had to sum him up in one word that word would be "SHOUTER!"

When ‘The King of Infomercials" hits the screen there is no need to ask who it is – that aggressively loud voice that makes sub-woofers smoke can only belong to Billy-boy. Even if you are visiting your neighbour three doors away when Billy the Boomer comes on the box he reaches you with his stentorian vocal cords, to which he adds reverb, echo, and maximum gain.

And now, if you haven’t already cottoned on, I have to confess to a long and mounting dislike for the raucous rasper who is unable to speak normally, cannot whisper, and if he stood among the Alpine ranges he would initiate so many avalanches that the mountains thereafter would be stood in their birthday suits.

Imagine this: you are sat in your comfortable chair watching a costume drama based on the work of sweet Jane Austen, being wafted long on the zephyrs of genteel manners, faultless English, and acutely correct etiquette. You are transported into another world where you lazily drift down an eighteenth century river with only nature and quiet craft for companions.
Suddenly, the play stops. Then, booming out of nowhere and destroying your reverie you hear, "Hi! Billy Mays here!" The river dries into a foul bed of mud harbouring rotting fish, the riparian creatures scuttle down their holes, and the sun runs behind a massive bank of black thunderheads that cool the air as if the heater had been switched off, and freezing rain pours from out the heavens, drenching you to the bone.

In less time than it takes you to say ‘trice,’ or the Robinson fellow, you are plummeted from Heaven, thrust headlong into Hell to stand by the man who is the USA’s Olympic Team in the sport of shouting. He takes the Gold, Silver, and Bronze Medals every time, for he has no competition worthy of mention.

I greet the grimacing hullabalooer who, like a carnivore looking for his din-din, flashes his teeth through a too-black beard, under a head of hair also too black for a man of his years, and I begin to think unkindly towards him.

Those closest to me know that I have harboured unkind thoughts for Billy Mays for several years, but recently I have to curb my enthusiasm for disliking him and insulting him in absentia. I have had, if you like, an epiphany equal in effect to the Damascus Road revelation of Saul the Tarsian.

Naturally the fruit of my revelation will not match the fruits of the former Pharisee in sweep, extent, or in the untold numbers whose lives were transformed because he was transformed. My experience is personal and is designed only to save me from myself by preventing my pettiness from overshadowing my life and doing injustice to Mr Mays every time he pops up on my box.

Call it a lesson in life, if you will. I have long maintained that the two Great Commandments, "Love God with all you have," and "Love your neighbour with all you have," are the key to the serious Christian life. For me it works this way. It is not easy to love God because we cannot see him just now. Yet we can see our neighbours, and our neighbours are God’s children. Therefore, if we love God’s children, our neighbours, then we love God thereby.

The Bible asks an hard question, "If a man says he loves God but hates his brother, then he is a liar and the truth is not in him; for how can a man love God who he has not seen, yet hate his brother who he has seen?"

That nails me. I am left with no acceptable excuse for not loving Billy Mays a moment longer. C’mere Billy, I owe you some serious hugs!

I have to confess that, of course, I have been aware of love-‘em-all principle for a long time. Longer, indeed, than I have known about Billy the Barker, and so because I know the principle, and know that it is a right principle, unless I make it part of my daily Christian walk, I am not true to God, and that will matter when I have to present myself and give a reckoning.

I have decided to change, but not because I fear the Judgement, but because some things have to be done because it is right and righteous to do them. Knowing that a thing is the right thing to do is all the encouragement a good Christian needs.

And so, it is a new day for me and for Billy Mays – even when he fills his lungs with air enough to bust a hot water bottle and blasts a gale of garrulous guff in my direction – I could swear that his eyes follow me round the room!

It is a new day because I am committed to destroying my animosity towards the most successful television commercial presenter ever, I shall no longer fuss and fume and sup with the Devil, but will rather love him as I should.

So, from this point forward, whenever the Voice barges through the screen making the windows shake, the pantiles rattle, and my fierce dogs run for cover, instead of sticking pins into my Billy Mays Voodoo Doll, I shall thank God for my conversion – and reach for the mute button. Sorry Billy, but I still need a little more work before I am a certainty to breeze through the Pearly Gates. A couple of days more should see me right.

Copyright © 2008 - Ronnie Bray

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