What do Donald Trump, Elmo the Muppet, and Gollum in Lord of the Rings have in common? Hmm. You might say, the wagging hair, maybe? Well, yes, but no.

Let’s try again. What do Donald Trump, Elmo the Muppet and Gollum have in common with Pele the footballer, Julius Caesar the emperor and our very own MP, Michael Falzon?

To answer that, let’s have a look at Gollum, the small, slimy creature who lived on a small island in the centre of an underground lake in Tolkien’s Middle Earth – you know him; he’s the one who in the movie was constantly hissing ‘My Precciouusss’. He was originally known as Sméagol, but everyone called him Gollum because of his tedious habit of swallowing noisily and throatily. Here are some lines of his:

“No food, no rest, nothing for Sméagol,” said Sméagol.

“Sméagol is a sneak,” said Sméagol.

“Sméagol always helps, if they asks – if they asks nicely,” said Sméagol.

Instead of using ‘I’ or ‘me’, he refers to himself in the third person, which is sort of acceptable/cute, because he is a bit like a little lost child, and toddlers, as we know, have a complex problem of self-reference. Right until two Xarabanks ago, that was my only brush with illeism, a word to describe the act of referring to oneself in the third person, instead of the first. Rather a strange word, but it’s derived from ‘ille’, the Latin for ‘he’.

Then, along came Michael Falzon. And Xarabank ‘O-e-o’ became and ‘O-q-o-w’. I watched him being interviewed and saying “Michael Falzon is hurt” and “Michael Falzon this” and “Michael Falzon that” and I gave a Gollum gulp. What’s happening here?

There’s only one answer: Dr Falzon is an illeist. It is a consolation, to know that he is not the only illeist politician. Donald-sadbadhair-Trump is a chief illeist. “Nobody would be tougher on Isis than Donald Trump,” the billionaire property mogul said when he announced his 2016 presidential bid. “You wouldn’t even be hearing about immigration if it weren’t for Donald Trump,” he told NBC and so on and so forth.

Instead of using ‘I’ or ‘me’, Sméagol refers to himself in the third person, which is sort of acceptable because he is a bit like a little lost child

The BBC, worried about this, even consulted a psychotherapist, who said that it’s fine to think about yourself in the third person but “it’s less normal” to talk about yourself in the third person and that usually can reflect a larger-than-life perception of oneself in the world.

However, I am sure that Dr Falzon’s illeism stems from other things and these could be:

1. He had just finished reading Lord of the Rings before sitting on the Xarabank sofa.

2. He is following Donald Trump’s campaign as textbook reference for next election.

3. He is a fan of Pele. The football legend’s real name is ‘Edson’ but he refers to himself in the third person: “Pele doesn’t have a nation, race, religion or colour. People all over the world love Pele. Edson is a man like other men”; “I think of Pele as a gift of God. We have billions of billions of people in the world, and we have one Beethoven, one Bach, one Michelangelo.”

4. For Christmas he got Julius Caesar’s The Gallic Wars. Caesar wrote about himself in the third person in his accounts of his conquests in The Gallic Wars, as if he were an objective observer rather than a protagonist and the writing style was praised by none other than Cicero himself.

5. As a child, he loved Elmo the red, furry Sesame Street muppet puppet who tells children, “Elmo loves you!”

6. He is an art connoisseur of Salvador Dalì. Occasionally Dalì referred to himself in the third person, saying: “Dalì is immortal and will not die.”

7. Maybe it’s a habit developed because at dinner parties people are always forgetting his name, so as to kindly avoid them embarrassment, he gives a heads-up while shaking hands: “Hi, Michael Falzon is happy to see you, Kristina.” Wait, Kristina works for the pesky media, Michael Falzon is not so happy to see Kristina after all.

8. It could be a nostalgic phrase of childhood; when called to table, his parents would shout: “Michael Falzon dinner is ready!” So calling himself by the name is a bit like comfort food.

9. He experienced an out-of-body experience. Xarabank can do that to you.

10. Facebook. When all else fails, we must blame it on Facebook. Look at all the statuses in your newsfeed: “Paula is cooking baked beans”; “Matthew is feeling joyful (with emoticon)”. Yes, there is such a thing as too much Facebook, which gives you a status-tic. Maybe Dr Falzon really wanted to bring out a little card with the sad yellow face on it.

The bottom line is that hopefully this third person business does become a trend because, frankly, Kristina Chetcuti is freaked out.

krischetcuti@gmail.com
Twitter: @KrisChetcuti