Digital signatures are another way of infantilising us
There is plenty about modern life to cause celebration and aggravation in equal measure. Thankfully, old hand Christopher Howse and young gun Guy Kelly are here to dissect the way we live now...
Huge crowds thronged the hanging of a clergyman in 1777 for forging Lord Chesterfield’s signature. Everyone enjoyed the event, except for the Rev Dr William Dodd himself and perhaps his wife. Dodd was known as the Macaroni Parson, not because he ate pasta but because he dressed like a dandy or macaroni. There are plenty of other interesting things about his life (such as his founding the Society for the Resuscitation of Persons Apparently Drowned), but none rivalled his leaving of it.
But the other day I read in The Telegraph about the death of the signature itself, never mind the forger. There is no need to sign anything much now. This is another way of infantilising us. It used to be a rite of adulthood to sign a cheque and take the rap if it bounced. Chip and pin lack any such style.
I suppose we learnt what a signature should look like from our parents and from the Chief Cashier of the Bank of England, whose signature is on banknotes. I’ve got one here adorned by a picture of the King and signed by Sarah John declaring: ‘I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of twenty pounds’. I don’t quite understand how she’ll do it, certainly not in gold. If she fails I doubt whether capital punishment would ensue.
Anyway, I don’t think Sarah John occupied hours during double French on a Wednesday afternoon practising loops round her signature. You don’t get to be Chief Cashier like that. But as a consequence her signature is Roundhead not Cavalier. It’s as plain as an entry on a shopping list: Strawb Jam, for example. By contrast, one can’t help thinking that Queen Elizabeth I as a girl must have spent many an afternoon doodling. No signature of hers was complete without at least two looping swashes.
And now I discover that there are websites where you can download artificial signatures for use online. One such website provides choices from more than 3,000 designers. Each is more hideous than the last. If handwritten signatures are dead, then these virtual simulacra must be zombie signatures.
For reasons I feel I should make abundantly clear were to do with work (I would hate for you to think it’s the kind of thing I do in my spare time), I attended a golf tournament this week.
It was one of those one-offs where celebrities are invited along to show precisely why they’re not professional golfers, and spectators are invited along to experience precisely how tall Peter Crouch is up close (staggeringly), or just how long it takes to watch a round of golf (aeons).
Anyway, I wouldn’t recommend it, but one of the many things that caught my eye was an ‘Autograph Area’ by the first tee. There, gathered all day, was a motley collection of enthusiasts clutching scraps of paper and just-bought memorabilia. Every time somebody they remotely recognised walked by, they yelled like banshees, demanding a scribble.
In the age of selfies and Cameo, it was a strangely heartwarming sight. All that these fans needed as proof of their brush with stardust, or Dan Walker, was a name in the hurried hand of their idol. As a kid, I used to do the same. Ian Botham was my first; I barely knew who he was and lost it instantly.
Sportspeople and theatre actors are surely the last people on earth who regularly write their signature. To think, the hours we spent at school, honing a unique stamp, only to grow up and find the closest we’ll get to using it in everyday life is dragging a limp finger across a Parcelforce driver’s iPad.
My father’s signature looks like a hunched, long-dead cellar spider shaken out of an old toolbox. It is so elaborate, so chaotic and impressive, that my siblings and I used to force him to do it again and again at pub tables, unconvinced he could repeat it. Anybody who ever tries to forge his documents is on a fool’s errand. It’s the longhand version of a ‘suggested strong password’.
To my shame, mine is nowhere near as good – yet. But then I am of a different generation, so I barely have a use for one. I wish I did. And I suppose the solution to this quandary is obvious: either I become a time traveller, or a middle-ranking celebrity who plays golf. Now, does anyone know a mad scientist?