Headline Acts

Potemkin Fuzzpedal was once the UK's most famous nightclub and workingmen's club act during the heyday of those institutions. At least, before TV and social changes brought about the decline of those establishments. Until then, Potemkin Fuzzpedal and his Performing Accountants; a song, a dance and an internal audit were the biggest draw on that particular circuit.

For the audiences, it was the sheer thrill of live accountancy performed on stage – usually without the aid of a safety net - that was so exciting. Especially so in the workingmen's clubs. Places where accountancy was regarded as something beyond the pale and even a mere invoice was regarded with suspicion and dread.

Back in those days most people, the working class especially, lived in an almost total cash economy. Therefore, the use of accountants was virtually unknown. So to see a real one, especially performing on stage, possibly – and daringly – with one of the new electronic calculators, was a dazzling and riveting spectacle. It conveyed the full glamour of accountancy to a mass audience for the first time.

In fact, most of today's top-flight glamorous celebrity accountants say they were inspired to tread the accounting boards through an early teenage exposure to Fuzzpedal and his dancing auditors. Some even talking of their own first fumbling attempts at cash-book reconciliation under the bedcovers late at night. Often before falling into a restless sleep filled with dreams of VAT returns and tax schedules.

All in all then, today's glamorous world of performance accountancy, where some of the big name partnerships regularly sell out the world's biggest arenas has a great deal to thank Potemkin Fuzzpedal for. Otherwise – who knows – accountancy could still be – unbelievable as it sounds now – a mere profession practised in cramped offices by unglamorous people who know little of the fame, fortune and celebrity status now enjoyed by today's headlining accountancy stage acts.

 

[Books by David Hadley are available here (UK) or here (US).]