I’ve been asked about the usage of the term freak and its appropriateness.

See, that word appropriate again.

How people love to manoeuvre us onto the back foot by raising the spectre of social norms and our purported failings in relation to them.

The faint, sweet odour of latent shame is being subtly, but determinedly fanned.

But sadly, to no avail.

Flypaper for Freaks refers to the unique cultural and epochal location of an emerging enterprise, with abundance of opportunity and low barriers to entry at a time of relatively high employment.

An ideal location for a new start or for personal re-invention. How else would you describe the unexpected appearance of innumerable individuals with unusual and bizarre personal characteristics and behaviour patterns?

For me, the freak motif is, and always has been, consistently apt.

And yes, a fair few misfits were drawn in, at all points on the freak continuum.

But the point is that this unique environment also created freaks – and continues to do so.

As for Freaking Hired!, well is it so much of a surprise that some of these freaks have moved on to positions of authority, where they are designing, implementing and administering organisational processes?

In some ways, Flypaper for Freaks itself could have been centred on agency recruitment in the 1990s. And what both BPO and Recruitment ‘industries’ have in common is that they are founded in cost-strangulating, corner-cutting production churn, a world apart from the attentive, considered and supportive services they purport to offer.

Businesses that run on staggeringly low costs, but are deftly packaged to reflect supreme quality.

Manned by people who will sell out in exchange for an identity. To be somebody. Paranoid about being again cast into the wilderness of nobodies.

Ideal freak territory, in fact.