He is known as Mr Know-it-all, and he is at every braai, talking non-stop.
You didn’t invite him.
He is there because he is married to your wife’s best friend, so there is no way to get rid of him.
You and all the normal guys are in for at least three hours of agony.
Mr Know-it-all knows everything about absolutely anything.
If one guy happens to mention that he is training for the Comrades, Mr Know-it-all will explain to each and everybody what it takes to win an ultra-marathon, even though the furthest he ever runs to is the toilet.
He has verbal diarrhoea and speaks overly loud, making it impossible to correct him without starting a shouting match.
Eventually someone will manage to change the subject, but not before Mr Know-it-all has let it be known that he once happened to attend a charity function where Bruce Fordyce was one of the guests.
Yes, he likes to drop names like a drunken streaker drops his trousers at an ODI cricket match.
It makes him feel important and substantial.
Inevitably, when it is time to light the fire, the subject of wood vs charcoal will be brought up.
Mr Know-it-all has a ‘connection’, who knows somebody who has a friend, who supplies him with a rare type of hardwood, which is impossible to get if you’re not ‘connected’.
This wood is apparently far superior to anything you and the other guys can ever manage to source.
Ask him if he can get you some of this ‘ultimate braai wood’ and Mr Know-it-all will suddenly become as vague as brakes on a 1982 Datsun Pulsar, and will say something to the tune of ‘I’m not sure when I will see my supplier again’.
And so the evening goes on and on…
His meat is better than yours. He buys from a butcher who doesn’t care for making a profit, but who lives for the sole purpose of curing the perfect steak, and then to sell that tender, succulent fillet at cost to our Man of the Match.
The man is absolutely incredible. He knows everybody you know, but only better, and can get anything much cheaper and faster.
Just don’t ask where because ‘you probably won’t be able to afford it’, because, ‘if you’re not connected you will have to pay’.
Eventually the other guys cannot stand him any longer, grab their cooler boxes and wives, and leave you to suffer alone for another hour.
At the gate, shaking his burley paw, you silently vow ‘never again’.
But as they drive away your wife shouts, ‘See you again next Friday’…
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