The Money Burner

Did you ever watch a money burner perform when you were young?

The Money Burner

One of Sally’s earliest memories was running through the estate with the other kids, shouting with excitement because the money burner was in town. Sally had been too young to understand who this was, and far too young to watch the performance. Even so, like all the children, she was shocked and excited by the idea that anyone would set cash on fire.

At primary school, her friend Jess once told everyone that she’d burned a twenty-pound note but no-one believed her. All the children were thrilled by the idea of it. Sometimes, on summer afternoons, the kids would set light to scraps of paper in their hedgerow dens, pretending it was cash.

The first-person Sally saw doing it was one of the boys on the estate. She was eleven then and remembered watching breathless as a fiver blazed up. Beforehand, they had talked about all the things that money might have been used for. Instead, the fire transformed it into a few curls of ash.

When she was fourteen, the money burner came to town again, for a show at the village hall. Sally had seen various entertainers there: a grim unshaven clown; a married couple pretending to be pirates; a woman who brought animals out of cages for children to stroke. She never thought at the time about how miserable the creatures’ lives must be, piled up in cages in an estate car.

The doors opened just before the show and the audience’s chatter died away as they took their seats. The money burner came in once everyone was seated. Sally was disappointed. He wore a business suit and looked like a clerk or a headmaster. The show started out with the man talking about money, and the things the obscenely rich spent money on. A few basic magic tricks followed, where the man made banknotes disappear. Sally’s Dad had warned her that the first part of the show would be dull, but she was enthralled.

There was a short interval, although most people stayed where they were rather than go to the bar. Then the lights were turned down even lower and it was time for the burning.

Was it real money? Mr Botts the Bank Manager was there to hand over the cash and to guarantee it had been withdrawn that afternoon. He said that he could not lie about such things, given his position. The money burner then invited anyone who wanted to join him at the front to set their own banknotes on fire. Sally’s Dad gripped her arm as if he was concerned that she might go up and torch her birthday money. How did he know that she’d brought it with her, she wondered.

Watching the burning was as magical as she had hoped. In minutes, thousands of pounds went up in smoke.

The first time she herself did it was with a boyfriend, during a cold Brighton winter. They were crammed into his freezing flat in town, even though she had a warm room on campus. They burned money that they needed – because they needed it. She thought she would never be more in love than she was at that moment. Now, that memory returned more easily than the name of the boyfriend.

Later that term, drunk with a group of friends, she asked if anyone else ever saw the money burner. A couple of loud boys mocked her, at first claiming she was making it up, and then teasing as if it was some sort of provincial thrill, something they did in Sussex villages. She never mentioned it much again, even though one of her friends had come up later in the evening to say that, yes, she too had been to a money-burning show. And, said the girl, she too was never quite the same afterwards.

Some Background

This story is inspired by Jon Harris, the Money-Burning Guy, who runs the Church of Burn, an organisation devoted to exploring money-burning. John has written a great deal about the subject, and his essays are always worth reading (the most recent being Why Joe Lycett Might Kill Us All).

The money burner in this story is not based on Jon, and this story has no connection with contemporary money-burning. I wanted to describe it like my childhood memories, imagining the act as one of those entertainments that happened in the 80s that you dont’t see now - like the sport of piano smashing. I imagined a plainer, more matter-of-fact show than the extravaganzas that the Church of Burn put on, a show which would be taken for granted by many of those those attending.

I’ve been present at a few burns, and it’s always a strange, intense experience. The rituals produce a strong reaction, even as a witness, and the strength of that reaction is itself thought-provoking. Seeing cash burn raises questions about money, society, and the nature of sacrifice.

Recommendations

I first encountered John Higgs through his biography of Timothy Leary back in 2010, which was followed by a book on the KLF, Chaos, Magic and the Band who Burned a Million Pounds. Rather than write a conventional band biography, John uses the band’s story as a starting point for a much larger and stranger story.

John publishes a regular ‘octannual’, an email newsletter which comes out on the six-weekly festivals of the Wheel of the Year. These often include short essays, the most recent a look at the difference between authentic and genuine. There’s also been a re-release of the KLF book, with John’s commentary in the footnotes. Many books would benefit from the author adding their thoughts on the text ten years later.

Sign up to the octannual here.