Flamingos

The cult of the pink flamingo never really reached the UK but this kitsch symbol of ordinariness has been prevalent throughout lower middle class America since the sixties. It is equivalent to our garden gnome cult - of which I am a paid up member. I can see a business opportunity here for somebody - Pink Flamingos UK Ltd. with pink plastic flamingos on wire legs inhabiting gardens from Wick to Winchester and from Southend to Southport.

The genius behind the flamingo cult was Donald Featherstone from Leominster, Massachussetts. It was back in the nineteen fifties when this art school graduate conceived his first plastic pink flamingo. It is estimated that Union Products, Leominster produced twenty million of them! They spread through America.

Where ever you see a pink flamingo, it defines the occupants of the house - ordinary, lower middle-class, God-fearing, truck-driving, burger-eating, Republican-voting, Britney Spears-loving, Bud-supping, baseball capped America. There are twelve in Alkelda the Gleeful's garden - they frighten the hell out of little Lucia! By George just has two and Friday's Web has a whole bloody forest of the suckers! Brad the Gorilla has fallen in love with a plastic pink flamingo called Hillary.