Ricky turned up a Finchley this week. He turns up once in a while and then moves on, never wanting to ‘overfish the sea’, or get caught, you decide.
He sells the ‘miracle car wax’. One side of the car bonnet he uses for his demonstration is cleaned with normal car wax the other with ‘miracle car wax’ and you can see how much better the miracle wax is.
He neglects to mention the reason that the side of the bonnet that he puts his wax on looks so good is that it has eight coats of paint on it and it has been triple baked in an industrial kiln. Don’t get me wrong, what he sells is good, just not that good.
There used to be another demonstrator called Goobta who used to sell the ‘miracle cleaner’ at the Elephant and Castle. He would smear a square of carpet with boot polish and then exclaim:
“Oh No! Boot polish on the carpet! What are we going to do! Never fear miracle cleaner…” and he would wipe the polish away like it had never been there.
The polish was poster paint. He used to top the tin up between pitches.
He sold out once and was on the verge of leaving the market when a punter came up desperate for some ‘miracle cleaner’ he said:
“I think I might have a couple left in the lock up”. He found two empty bottles in the back of the van, ran round to the bogs, filled them up with water and fairy liquid and sold the two of them for a tenner.
It’s still a cleaner, of sorts. Buyer beware.
That’s this week’s report form Pete the market trader, the man on the street. Literally.
