Add dwarf to cart
Is it ever OK to hire a ‘little person’?
POLLY MORGANY
ou’re planning a party. You’ve hired
the vaults of a former bank, Le Caprice
is doing the catering, and a celebrity
DJ will round things off on the dance floor
— but you want that little bit extra to give
your fashionable, jaded guests something
to remember. What about a dwarf? It’s a
curious fact that even people who think of
themselves as modern and caring feel quite
comfortable laughing at dwarfs.
Type the words ‘dwarf’ and ‘rent’ into a
search engine and you’ll be amazed at the
number of websites offering to ‘supply a lit-
tle someone’ for every occasion. Just click
‘dwarf’ and ‘add to cart’. One online agency
boasts: ‘If you require the midget to perform
and dance... or if you would like our mini
man to be handcuffed to a specific person
this can be arranged.’
Fun-loving party-people seem oddly
keen to be handcuffed to dwarfs. One video,
with thousands of ‘likes’ on Facebook, shows
a male dwarf standing with his face at groin-
level, handcuffed to a man using a urinal.
A comment reads: ‘I want one of these at
my hen night!’ Other photos show middle-
aged men on stag nights, posing with a dwarf
dressed in nothing but a nappy, astride their
knee. It’s surprisingly popular.
Some friends of mine recently attend-
ed the party of a beautiful socialite, where
canapés were served by naked dwarfs. Why
would intelligent, privileged women pay
people with a genetic disorder to serve them
food? And why nude? Does being naked
make being short funnier? It must certainly
make it more humiliating for the poor dwarf.
The term dwarfism covers a number of
syndromes, the most common being achon-
droplasia, a genetic condition resulting in
shortened arms and legs. Spondyloepiphy-
seal dysplasia congenital (SEDc) tends to
result in more proportionate limbs. If you
consider that two people with dwarfism
starting a family together have a one in four
chance of their baby inheriting the gene
from both parents and dying within days
of birth, it’s not unreasonable to feel that
bodies that characterise this condition aren’t
all that funny.
And yet... I spoke to the actor Warwick
Davis recently (star and co-writer of the
comedy Life’s Too ShortLife’s Too Short and co-founder of
Little People UK), who showed me anoth-
er side of what had seemed to me a prettystraightforward story. If we shame our coun-
trymen into dropping the dwarfs, what will
the unintended consequences be? Warwick
says ‘solving one problem may well cause
problems for little people elsewhere’.
Davis uses, by way of illustration, the
Harvey Weinstein scandal, which has rap-
idly progressed from the downfall of a seri-
ous abuser to the criminalisation of clumsy
would-be seducers. ‘If we decide a dwarf at a
stag night is unacceptable then where will it
end?’ he says. Will people start campaigning
for pantomimes to stop hiring dwarfs as it is
‘demeaning’? In 2011 Qdos Entertainment
re-cast children in the roles of the seven
dwarfs in a panto version of Snow White.
They claimed to be being politically correct,
but in fact, says Davis, they were cost-cutting.
Davis has reason to be frustrated by
what he describes as ‘people taking offence
on my behalf’. The biggest challenge his
Reduced Height Theatre Company facedin its 2014 touring production See How
They Run was breaking through the political
correctness barrier. ‘The play is a farce, peo-
ple were meant to laugh at us! It had great
reviews and those that came loved it, but
persuading them to come was the hardest
part.’ Another entertainer, Laura Whitfield-
Phillips, agrees. ‘I get people apologising to
me on bookings,’ she says. ‘Even trying to
send me home early as now they’ve found
I’m just a normal person, they feel bad for
me. I tell them please don’t, I wouldn’t be
taking any job I’m not happy to do.’
What’s beyond the pale? What’s just
fashionable fun?
Perhaps what’s in the real interests of lit-
tle people is just to smile politely and admire
their ability to look dignified even hand-
cuffed to a drunk and hope that there’ll be
better jobs on offer in the future.
The set of See How They Run was built
in proportion to the actors. Once it began,
says Warwick Davis, everyone forgot they
were watching dwarfs on stage. When the six-
foot director came to take a bow at the end
of the play the audience gasped at the sight
of him, a giant.How to sell snake oilEx-cabinet secretary Lord O’Donnell
accused Brexiteers of ‘selling snake oil’. How
do you sell snake oil? Some eBay listings:
— Original snake oil. £11.99 for 125ml.
‘Natural hair treatment. No chemicals.
Feeds the hair and protects from
precipitation. Free from alcohol. Country or
region of manufacture: Saudi Arabia.’
— Snake oil strengthening hair mask
with mamushi snake oil. £25.22 for 500g.
‘The effective remedy of supplementary
hair care. The mask is perfect for dry and
damaged hair.’ Some listed ingredients:
aqua, cetearyl alcohol, paraffinum
liquidum, cetrimonium chloride, mamushi
oil, parfum’ (no actual snake oil).
Women’s marchWhich countries beat Britain to granting
women the vote?
1755 Corsican Republic
1838 Pitcairn
1856 Norfolk Island
1881 Isle of Man
(unmarried women with property)
1893 New Zealand
1902 Australia (South Australia from 1895)
1906 Finland
1913 Norway
1915 Denmark
1917 Russia, Armenia, Estonia, Canada
The Brexit brain gainThere was an increase in overseas students
applying to study at UK universities
(contrary to claims that Brexit would
dissuade applicants). Which countries
supplied the most applicants in 2017?
China 11,920
Hong Kong 5,320
France 4,590
India 4,470
US 3,840
Italy 3,750
Ireland 3,740
Poland 3,700
Source: UCAS
Slipping the netStudent Lauri Love won a High Court case
against extradition to the US on hacking
charges. How prolific are UK hackers?
— In 2013 Deutsche Telekom produced a
list of the 15 countries where most cyber
attacks originate. Britain did not even make
it on to the list. The top countries were:
Russia 2,400,000
Taiwan 907,000
Germany 780,000
Ukraine 566,000
Hungry 366,000
USA 355,000
Romania 351,000
Brazil 337,000
BAROMETER‘If we decide a dwarf at
a stag night is unacceptable
then where will it end?’