A Twist on Oliver
Had Oliver Twists' request, "Please sir can I have some more?" been experienced as a compliment to the chef, would the novel have taken a more entrepreneurial direction?
Would Fagin have spotted an opportunity to develop a chain of 'A Taste of Gruel' outlets franchised across London and perhaps around the world as it was then known? Oliver himself eventually becoming CEO.
A personalized line of silk handkerchiefs as a substitute for paper napkins not yet invented could easily have been the defining lock on the brand.
For what it's worth I doubt if it could have been interpreted as a compliment to the chef given the historical frame of the novel, and since it has already been made into a movie of some note the success of which would make the novel's direction irreversible. To say nothing of the dreadful stuff in the bowl.
To explore and enlarge and re-direct the drift of the story on the basis of a more comely interpretation is as tempting as it is pointless, and would definitely have Dickens thoroughly ticked off.
Well lets do that anyway.
So here we are the chef makes a rash and inaccurate assumption of approval of his gruel cunningly read in the moans rising like mist from the mob of wretched kids in the damp hall prompted by Olivers audacity.
Fagin seeing signs of life in the chef, stage left, senses an opportunity wafting in the smell of spilled gruel bubbling on the hot stove and the quixotic expression on the chef's face. Their eyes met.
Five outlets on Fleet Street for starters and a business is born.
Oliver is whisk out of the joint, polished up and blazoned on copyrighted signs hung invitingly over the outlet's entrances as a slightly obese boy smiling into a bowl of steaming gruel.
"A taste of Gruel" - 'for growing lads to make 'em strong for work in the coal pits!' And it spread.
The availability of stolen silk handkerchiefs increased mysteriously, which, as expected, solidified the brand. Generous low interest loans from the coal mine owners and a guaranteed customer base of happy miners and their families moved the franchises across the nation reaching into the mysteries of the Welsh Valleys and even unto the fertile coal fields of Lancashire and Yorkshire and whatever was beyond.
Fagin was made a Baron became very rich, a patron of the Arts and an esteemed founder member of The Guild of Franchises of England". Oliver married three times had twelve children, played himself in the movie, retired at thirty five, and lived happily ever after.
Point being of course, that it is important to say clearly what you mean since the accurate understanding of it has value, otherwise fate could take you into a totally unexpected place. Which may be unsettling for business, but makes for great farce!
JFC May 2011
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