Catching a story thief
a mystery and an adventure
I spent a year living in a Swedish student accommodation that used to be an old folks home. It housed around thirty students from all over the world. When I moved in, there were two decorative features in the whole building. One: a poster of the Backstreet Boys along with a note from the previous tenants, marked with the date, which read, ‘We found this at a flea market a week ago and bought it for you all.’ Two: on a secondary staircase that was very rarely accessed, a visibly used condom. We all appreciated the poster, adopting Everybody (Backstreet’s Back) as the building’s official karaoke anthem in tribute, and no one was going to be the volunteer to remove the condom. As such, both stayed in place at least until I moved out and, when the building was torn down that summer, I like to imagine that the condom went down with the building, like the dignified captain of a sinking ship, as the Backstreet Boys played them out.
An integral part of Swedish student culture, at least at that particular university at that particular time, was taking road signs from the street and displaying them as trophies in bedrooms or communal areas. Student buildings that housed a larger number were more abundantly signed than ours, but we did have a fair go at it.
At night, I would often go for long walks with the guy I was seeing at the time (lived on my corridor — messy, silly, risky behaviour; do not get with your flatmates). One night, we happened upon a road sign discarded at the side of the road. We could hardly believe our luck. It was half the size of me so he carried it all the way home and I felt I should let him keep it in his room and take it home with him when he left at Christmas (I’m practically a saint). A friend gifted me a teeny tiny blue sign with a snowmobile on it that she ripped off with her bare hands (thick wood, all credit to you, G) when a group of us spent a fucking magical week in Finnish Lapland.
For my birthday, after a few months of acquiring no trophies of my own and feeling slightly inadequate for it, my best friend bought me a screwdriver. She genuinely envisioned me prowling the streets of our university town (where the most common crime is bike theft by the way) under cover of darkness and unscrewing road signs from their posts with my specially purchased screwdriver. Extremely normal birthday present. I didn’t ever use it — I really truly did not, if any Swedish police happen to be reading — but I just think that’s one of the funniest and loveliest presents I’ve ever received.
Several years later, I’m lying in bed in my house in Scotland when my phone rings. It’s my friend Anna who never ever phones so obviously I assume she’s in the back of an ambulance.
I hurriedly answer and, down the phone, slightly slurred and as if all one word, Anna bellows, ‘Did-you-use-to-steal-road-signs-and-get-a-screwdriver-as-a-birthday-present?!’
‘Yeah?’ I answer. Again, for the benefit of any Swedish police officers, I didn’t ever actually steal a sign, but this isn’t the phone call for clarification of nuances.
‘Someone’s stolen your life!’
I eventually manage to parse her meaning. Anna had been at a stand-up comedy open mic night and got déjà vu during one of the acts. She assumed she had seen this act before until she was walking home thinking about it and realised she could hear one of the jokes in my voice in her head. She realised this set was literally just my anecdote. She assures me I tell it better.
‘Well, who was it?’ Had one of my former international flatmates somehow found themselves on the Scottish amateur stand-up circuit?
She doesn’t have a name, but she can narrow it down to a descriptor: Scottish man, normal looking. As you might imagine, that isn’t particularly helpful.
There were no Scottish men who lived in the flat with me. And it wasn’t one of the previous tenants because the comedian spoke of arriving to a flat decorated only with Backstreet Boys and a condom, and the Boys were only present at the beginning of our year. Some other details Anna tells me (that I wont bore you with — I know you’re here for the detective work) confirm that I am the only Scottish person who could have a story like this. This was my story!
I have told anecdotes about this accommodation and/or screwdriver present more than once (I think it’s a good story, okay, shut up!), including to more than one normal looking Scottish man. I look up the open mic night, but find no record of the lineup or attendees anywhere online. I draw the line at contacting the venue because I don’t care that much — yet.
A couple of months later, Anna and I are enjoying a day trip to a lovely seaside town on the east coast of Scotland when it starts bucketing, as it is wont to do. We were having a wander through a caravan park at the time so there’s nowhere for us to go to get out of the rain. We spot a hut-type structure used for storage-type purposes and we climb through an open window (it was raining really heavily and we were far away! We weren’t going to be able to get dried/changed for hours!) and wait for the rain to subside.
Inspired by our current predicament, conversation turns to our favourite crimes. Mine: trespass — if any Swedish police are still reading, for a period of about two months, I did climb a fence into the locked botanic gardens every time I’d had a drink. Anna’s: theft. She mentions that she would love to steal a road sign like I ‘used to do’ (I didn’t).
‘It’s so crazy how you never found out who posted you that screwdriver,’ she says, offhandedly.
I have no idea what she’s talking about.
‘The screwdriver! Remember that stand-up comedian who stole your story? He said that once he was home— or once you were home, someone posted you your screwdriver and you never found out who it was.’
Oh em gee.
Puzzle pieces start flying around the room. Screwdrivers and envelopes and road signs and condoms swirling around me. I am Sherlock Holmes in his mind palace. I have cracked the case. I know who the guy is.
Or I know a few guys who could potentially be the guy.
At a semi-recent time, I auditioned for an Edinburgh Fringe play (didn’t get it because I am ‘too Scottish’ apparently, not touching that one right now). As part of the audition, I had to pick an item from a selection provided and tell a story about it. I had about 30 seconds to prepare. On the table there was a book, a nail polish, a screwdriver, a pencil, and a couple of other items in that kind of category.
I picked the screwdriver and talked about my Backstreet Boys/condom flat and my weirdly sweet screwdriver gift, but because I needed to tell a story I improvised an ending in which I accidentally left Sweden without packing my screwdriver which was so sentimental to me, and, after the building was torn down, I received my screwdriver in the post with no note and I never found out who sent it.
I told that story to a panel of three guys holding the audition. I don't remember any of their names and couldn’t pick any of them out of a lineup — they were indeed all normal looking Scottish men. I do, however, remember them all listening to this story, rapt, laughing uproariously at funny wee details I was throwing in and, by the end, asking questions and hypothesising about who could have sent me the screwdriver. I’ve never told the story to anyone else because it’s not true.
It must be one of these guys, right? I look back in my emails to find the name of the production company I auditioned for. I google the name. It seems the company only existed for one show and doesn’t have a proper website. I search on twitter, instagram, facebook. I find the page for the Fringe show on facebook. I find the user who created the page. It’s a normal looking Scottish man. Or, as he is now known to me, Suspect A. At this point, Anna is almost wetting herself with excitement, performing some kind of cheerleading routine in the cramped storage hut while my nose is practically embedded in my phone screen. I scroll through Suspect A’s facebook, I go to his instagram, I scroll back to the dates of the show, I find a picture with another normal looking man tagged, I click this new guy’s profile, and discover that he does a bit of stand-up comedy. I watch a couple of his clips. It would have been far too serendipitous for one of them to be the clip but I do hear he has a Scottish accent. Suspect B! Obviously Anna has seen the guy we’re looking for in person, but it was months ago so she couldn’t confidently say whether this guy was the guy, but she wasn’t ruling him out.
Suspect B’s instagram profile tells us he has an upcoming gig in Edinburgh about a month in the future. Anna is adamant that we should go. I say no because, firstly, what are the chances he’s made my silly wee story his actual stand-up routine? Secondly, even if he has, what am I going to do, confront him? No chance. Thirdly, and maybe most importantly, I don’t want to go to a multi act amateur stand-up comedy show.
But Anna is the devil on my shoulder and I don’t have an angel to balance her out. We book tickets right there in the hut.
On the day of the comedy show, Anna has suspected covid so the wee arsehole backs out of our plans. ‘You still go, though!’ she urges from her devils’s throne on my shoulder, ‘you have to!’ It’s probably pointless because Anna wont be there to tell me whether or not he’s the guy from the open mic. But I have already bought the tickets. And I am curious.
I go by myself. I get the train through to Edinburgh, walk to the venue and am standing in the queue outside when I hear someone call my name. It’s a woman I know through work, Kay. I work in theatre (like stage, not like operating theatre as my optician is adamant every time I see him) and Kay assistant produced a play I wrote. The seating is unassigned so I gladly join Kay and her friends for the evening. Kay asks why I’ve come all the way through to Edinburgh for this and I explain that me and Anna had booked tickets but she couldn’t make it, stopping short of the real reason. And thank god I do. It turns out that Kay and her friends are actually there to see Suspect B. They all worked on a play he had directed. This shouldn’t be shocking — not many people go to an event like this without knowing one of the performers so there was a one in three chance they were here for him. Also, I already know he directs plays (that’s how I met him) and the theatre scene in Edinburgh is not that big. I slam my mouth shut so hard I almost chip a tooth and commit to keeping completely shtum about my secret hope of catching a plagiarist red handed. The venue opens, we take our seats and enjoy the show. I say ‘enjoy’ — it was, like, fine. It was still a mixed bill of amateur stand-up, but it didn’t make me want to turn myself inside out in sympathy cringe and that’s all one can ask for, really.
After the show, we go elsewhere. We’ve all had a few drinks and I’m having a really nice time with Kay and her friends (can you see where this is going?). We’re talking about Suspect B’s performance and it is mentioned that they don’t know him all that well, they just worked together recently. Putting aside the fact that this means both Suspect B and I know Kay equally as well (or as little), I decide to reveal the real reason I travelled an hour and forty minutes to watch a just okay stand-up show in which I knew none of the performers.
‘Ooh, what was the stolen story?’
I tell them.
‘Wait — I know that guy!’
Kay has heard this story on stage as well. And she tangentially knows the guy through knowing Suspect B.
Suddenly a new bombshell has entered the villa: Suspect C!
Kay pulls him up on instagram. We look at his profile picture and watch his story. I’m almost positive I’ve never met this guy before. I’m almost positive he’s not one of the three guys from the audition panel, nor was he tagged in any pictures from the time of the production.
Immediately Kay asks, ‘Should we find him?’
We did just watch his story. We know exactly where he was 44 minutes ago (in a pub in Edinburgh’s Old Town). Maybe the lesson from this whole saga is don’t share your current location on a public instagram unless you want some slightly unhinged and firmly tipsy girls to stalk you across your city of residence on a Saturday night.
At this point my shoulder is double devil-ed (I have of course been texting Anna with updates throughout the evening). We get on facetime as Kay, Kay’s three friends and I dash out of the pub and power walk through the notoriously hilly streets of Edinburgh. No one is acknowledging the speed at which we’re moving. As if we all always walk at jogging pace on a night out. We’re walking so fast we’re struggling to keep up a conversation (which, by the way, is the official NHS definition of vigorous intensity physical exercise). Poor Anna is just listening to us panting down the phone, potentially rubbing our breathing capacity in her face in quite an insensitive way given the reason for her absence.
We arrive at the pub and Suspect C is not immediately visible. We split up, each with our phones open to his instagram, each hoping to be the one to fulfil our secret mission. I am fully, without any pretence, staring straight at people’s faces then looking intently at my phone and then back at their faces. Fortunately I have a bit of a resting deer-in-headlights face so I think people just assume I’m lost.
We reconvene with no comedian (plagiarist! thief!) in tow.
In hindsight, we should have looked at his instagram again sometime between leaving the previous pub and doing a sweep of this one. His story now tells us he’s in a different area of Edinburgh which will mean nothing to you, but by christ does it mean something to me. It’s an absolute trek is all you need to know. But I don’t have time to go somewhere else; I have to get the last train home. I prepare to walk to the station in a state of grief and disappointment when Kay says I can stay with her tonight. I need you to understand that Kay is a former colleague, we barely know each other, but she’s obviously become invested in the mission. Of course I immediately say yes and give her a little kiss on the cheek. We’ve got a mystery to solve don’t you know!
There are too many of us for a taxi and it’s too far to walk. We could have gotten a bus, but one of Kay’s friends says her brother would give us a lift in what would turn out to be a white transit van. Three seats (one for the driver) in the front, the rest in the back. Like in the cargo bit. In the white box. Get in a strange man’s white van at midnight? Sure why not. This mystery’s not going to solve itself.
We’re at a kind of bar-type place, rather than a pub-pub. By that I mean people are mingling. Normally, mingling is not my ideal scenario, but right now it couldn’t be more perfect. I must mingle with Suspect C.
Kay executes the performance of a lifetime. She just so happens to bump into Suspect C and ‘Oh, hiya! So nice to see you again. You haven’t met my friend, here she is!’
‘She’ is, of course, me. Suspect C completely thinks Kay is trying to drunkenly nudge-nudge-wink-wink us together. And he seems happy to go along with it. And therefore so am I.
Our two groups kind of merge and we all chat a bit but it’s too loud so we go outside and I am hoping against hope that these people I met a matter of hours ago can keep their shit together and not let on that we are here for underhanded activity.
As we’re standing out in the cold, Suspect C suggests we should go back to his flat nearby which is fine by me (I hate the cold). He means all of us, I’m not a complete idiot. So I assemble the troops and we stop at a corner shop on the way for some mixers for whatever spirits he has in his kitchen cupboards. (Trivia for the non-Scots: you can’t buy alcohol in shops after 10pm.)
I’m in the checkout queue clutching a bottle of tonic water when one of Suspect C’s friends announces there’s been a change of plan. We’re no longer going to Suspect C’s flat, we’re going to another party that is currently active. It’s apparently in a shipping container somewhere. Suspect C says he hopes I’ll go with him. Go to an alleged party in an alleged shipping container with a strange man, blatantly hitting on me, who, from his willingness to brazenly plagiarise for his own benefit, we already know is at least somewhat lacking in scruples. Personal safety advice tiktoks come screaming out of the recesses of my memory: never go to a second location with a kinda dodgy guy! So of course I agree to go to the second location. The white van was fine and I’m going with a whole load of other people who I also don’t really know so what could possibly go wrong, right?
The party is indeed a party and not a ruse to lure a group of girls into a shipping container, lock the door and send us out to sea.
Suspect C and I are sitting together, alone. He is still clearly, to put it bluntly, trying to get fired in. Little does he know he wont be getting lucky tonight for I am an undercover detective here solely to suss out his crimes.
I ask him about his stand-up which, it will come as no surprise to anyone who has met a certain type of comedian, he is more than willing to engage in conversation about. I tell him that, on the walk over, Kay told me about a set she saw where he was talking about stealing road signs and she said it was so funny and would he tell it to me? Oh pleeeeease? Come on, I really want to hear it!
He obliges. He tells the story of the road signs and the screwdriver present — aside from anything else, a 29 year old man receiving a screwdriver as a birthday present from a friend is just not as unusual and worthy of anecdote as a 19 year old girl receiving the same, sorry! He tells it with the confidence of someone who really did receive a screwdriver in the mail. Of someone who really was outlived by a used condom. Of someone who really did believe that Backstreet was back. And I listen to him tell the story, agog, agape, aghast. And I say nothing. I told you I never had any intention of confronting him. But now I know for sure who the culprit is.
Given that I couldn’t let on that I knew it wasn’t his story, I obviously couldn’t ask him how he heard it, but he definitely wasn’t someone I’ve told it to before. I’m assuming one of the guys from the audition panel who seemed to enjoy the story so much relayed it to him at some point and he was just like, ‘I’m having that!’ And that’s a good enough explanation for me. I am satisfied with the conclusion.
I’m particularly satisfied because, when I heard him tell the story, full of details and quips and sentiment, I realised: I do tell it better.
And that’s the end of the tale. I’d like to leave you with a suggestion that I hope everyone, but particularly Suspect C, will consider taking on board. Before you get on stage to tell a story, ask yourself the following question. In the immortal words of the Backstreet Boys themselves:
Am I original?
— Everybody (Backstreet’s Back) - Backstreet Boys, 1997
Was in need of something to read at 4am given that sleep is not my friend at the moment, and this was thrilling. Somehow gave me Killing Eve vibes. Suspense, suspects, Scotsmen, Sweden, signs, stealing, screwdrivers, stories, stand-up, sleuthing. It hassssss the lot. 5/5
agh this was fab!! also “it will come as no surprise to anyone who has met a certain type of comedian” I (unfortunately) feel you lol - at least you got vindication!!