This is the future: Planet Earth after the Tim Noakes Revolution

Good satire requires a light pen and a sharp intellect. One of the best local examples was my former colleague Jeff Zerbst (sadly, now an Aussie) a highly educated horse-racing nut who penned the brilliant Thomas Equinus column in the Mail & Guardian. Thanks to a good friend, we have discovered another in the same league. Jonathan Ancer has agreed to allow us to republish his sparkling contribution on the Tim Noakes saga. It guarantees heartburn among all those who ignore Benjamin Zander’s famous Rule Number Six – “Don’t take yourself so goddam seriously!” For everyone else, a way to brighten our day. – AH

By Jonathan Ancer*

I’m writing this in a secret bunker on the 18th day of July 2044. I’m writing this because the truth needs to be told so that some day someone will find this and know that the world wasn’t always this way.

The resistance is in tatters – we’ve been annihilated. There are just a few of us left, mounting individual attacks, but it’s useless. It’s only a matter of time before we are weeded out and destroyed. We have lost.

It was in 2014 when our teacher told us that World War III would be fought between the East and the West over oil and religion. Could she have been more wrong? In those days we were happy and then one man got up and started instigating.

At first people said he was a noisy guy with just a few followers – they called him a mosquito; a fool, a clown – and made fun of him.

They said he was controversial, a rabble-rouser; that his ideas were dangerous and no one would take him seriously. It’s just a faddish gimmick that will soon be forgotten, they said.

He had a few fans, but he had many more critics than ardent supporters. But the
cult grew and his followers became increasingly vocal and militant.

The agitator I speak of is, of course, Tim Noakes. He said salvation lay with the lumpen proteinteriat in their struggle against the petty bungeoisie.

“My ideas are not new,” Noakes said. “A 100 years ago a great visionary declared: ‘The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of carb struggles’.” That was Carb Marx, who dedicated his life to a carbless society.”

Noakes launched the Meal Revolution, and said every missed steak was a mistake. The crossworders called his Meal Revolution “lame” (lame is an anagram of “meal”, ”revolution” is the anagram indicator).

But in spite of this Noakesism spread. Hollywood was split. Sean Penne rejected it but Kevin Bacon, the highly qualified actor (he has six degrees), endorsed it. Noakesist restaurants became trendy and people spurned the spud and joined the Noakeses’ Steakholders, who dressed in Lady Gaga suits of fillet and chunks of prime rib.

At first carb-eaters were allowed into carb-free restaurants, but things changed when the Noakeses formed the No Potato (NP) party and introduced a system of separate development, which he called apotatohate.

@alechogg @ProfTimNoakes @jonathanancer More than the kernel of a style,but what substance is this? It's a bit corny, but wheat not to like?

— Rupert wilson (@Oxfordite) July 28, 2014

He warned about the carb gevaar and claimed there was a bread under every bed.

The Steakholders attacked bakers and anyone caught with potatoes or breaching one of the 10 Carbmandments was jailed. Public Loafing became an offence.

Then Noakes introduced Banting Education.

“Our bodies shall run on unbreaded fuel,” he declared.

While most people were panting about Banting, I was ranting about Banting. The world was divided into the Bantings and the small band of people who opposed them – the Buntings.

I’d graduated from the University of the Wheatwatersrand and believed there wasn’t a grain of truth in Noakesism. I was a child of the flour power revolution and, as far as I was concerned, Noakes was a cereal killer. He was protein.
I was anti-tein.

I followed in the steps of the great anti-Bantingistas like Bagel, Fidel Crusto and Che Guevaroll who said no whey. I became a founder member of the Anti Noakes Congress (ANC).

We first tried to negotiate with the NP but when Noakes and his food heavies would not budge, we felt we had no choice but to take up arms.

We are hungry for freedom – an ideal for which we are not prepared to diet.

A-Pasta Continua!

* Jonathan Ancer describes himself as a journalist, cryptic crossword junkie, Billy Bragg fan and cyclist. Follow him on twitter at @jonathanancer and click here to access his blog. This piece was first published in the Cape Times.