The Wilt Alternative

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Book: Read The Wilt Alternative for Free Online
Authors: Tom Sharpe
Tags: Fiction:Humour
with the Education Committee was a grim one. He would have to handle them

tactfully.
    But first there was Bilger. He arrived after ten minutes and entered without knocking. 'Well?'

he asked sitting down and staring at Wilt angrily.
    'I thought we had better have this chat in private,' said Wilt. 'I just wanted to enquire

about the film you made with a crocodile. I must say it sounds most enterprising. If only all

Liberal Studies lecturers would use the facilities provided by the local authority to such

effect...' He left the sentence with a tag end of unspoken approval. Bilger's hostility

softened.
    'The only way the working classes are going to understand how they're being manipulated by the

media is to get them to make films themselves. That's all I do.'
    'Quite so,' said Wilt, 'and getting them to film someone buggering a crocodile helps them to

develop a proletarian consciousness transcending the false values they've been inculcated with by

a capitalist hierarchy?'
    'Right, mate,' said Bilger enthusiastically 'Those fucking things are symbols of

exploitation.'
    'The bourgeoisie biting its conscience off, so to speak.'
    'You've said it,' said Bilger, snapping at the bait.
    Wilt looked at him in bewilderment. 'And what classes have you done this... er... fieldwork

with?'
    'Fitters and Turners Two. We got this croc thing in Nott Road and...'
    'In Nott Road?' said Wilt, trying to square his knowledge of the street with docile and

presumably homosexual crocodiles.
    'Well, it's street theatre as well,' said Bilger, warming to his task. 'Half the people who

live there need liberating too.'
    'I daresay they do, but I wouldn't have thought encouraging them to screw crocodiles was

exactly a liberating experience. I suppose as an example of the class struggle...'
    'Here,' said Bilger, 'I thought you said you'd seen the film?'
    'Not exactly. But news of its controversial content has reached me. Someone said it was almost

sub-Buñuel.'
    'Really? Well, what we did is we got this toy crocodile, you know, the ones kiddies put

pennies in and they get the privilege of a ride on them.'
    'A toy crocodile? You mean you didn't actually use a real live one?'
    'Of course we bloody didn't. I mean who'd be loony enough to rivet a real fucking crocodile?

He might have been bitten.'
    'Might?' said Wilt 'I'd have said the odds on any self-respecting crocodile... Anyway, do go

on.'
    'So one of the lads gets on this plastic toy thing and we film him doing it.'
    'Doing it? Let's get this quite straight. Don't you mean buggering it?'
    'Sort of,' said Bilger. 'He didn't have his prick out or anything like that. There was nowhere

he could have put it. No, all he did was simulate buggering the thing. That way he was

symbolically screwing the whole reformist welfare statism of the capitalist system.'
    'In the shape of a rocking crocodile?' said Wilt. He leant back in his chair and wondered yet

again how it was that a supposedly intelligent man like Bilger, who had after all been to

university and was a graduate, could still believe the world would be a better place once all the

middle classes had been put up against a wall and shot. Nobody ever seemed to learn anything from

the past. Well, Mr Bloody Bilger was going to learn something from the present. Wilt put his

elbows on the desk.
    'Let's get the record clear once and for all,' he said. 'You definitely consider it part of

your duties as a Liberal Studies lecturer to teach apprentices

Marxist-Leninist-Maoist-crocodile-buggerism and any other -Ism you care to mention?'
    Bilger's hostility returned. 'It's a free country and I've a right to express my own personal

opinions. You can't stop me.'
    Wilt smiled at these splendid contradictions. 'Am I trying to?' he asked innocently. 'In fact

you may not believe this, but I am willing to provide you with a platform on which to state them

fully and clearly.'
    'That'll be the day,' said Bilger
    'It is,

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