Jobs You Never Knew Existed Part Six

Now in mini e-book form:

manufacture jester hats for celebrations, football matches, festivals etc

pageant master (there's only one and he's called Adrian Evans)

teach nail art

give theremin lessons

run breadmaking classes

rehearsal stand-in for Queen

dresser for Queen/Kate Middleton/other royals/celebs/rich people

Queen’s shoe breaker-in

manufacture life-size Tyrannosaurus statues for (large) gardens. Repeat with other large species.

give “clubbing” lessons (they’re called “club dance” lessons)

tiara hire

sign writer/window graphics

chalkboard artist (for pubs and restaurants)

radio futurologist

run agency for doormen (Gunnebo: the UK’s leading entrance control service provider)

sell packages of “great quotes by great thinkers” to Tweeters

sell begging letters/stories about how you’ve been mugged and need precisely £3.87 to get back to
Sidcup

equine sports masseur

remove Tudorbethan features from houses and modern up the interior (see Times May 11, 2012)

replace Tudorbethan features that have been scraped off

add Tudorbethan features to modern houses

music adviser for cafes and restaurants (produce the mixed CDs)

be assertive on the phone on behalf of others (energy, the council, banks, suppliers of shoddy goods who don’t deliver on time, “you are being held in a queue”, “press six to listen to this menu again” etc etc)

manufacture garden watering systems for getting round the hosepipe ban

new perennials master (at Scampston Hall Walled Garden)

run crime news agency (@CourtNewsUK)

run an agency for graffiti artists

sell the predictions of a “stock-picking robot”

breed Beagles

traveling eyelash technician

design clothes for people who’ve had boob implants

source or manufacture natural, biodegradeable, sustainable, vegetable dyed garden string (or wool) in different colours with that handmade look

dig up dinosaur fossils in Montana and sell them

hire out vintage china for cupcake parties (someone doing it)

design and make one-off luxury beds - in the shape of swans, Viking ships, sarcophagi. Ditto baths carved out of a single crystal etc

set up a delousing service (and rebrand an ordinary nit comb and sell it for £15 - regular ones cost less than £1.)

invent a sure-fire headlice cure

open a stage school

make divorce cakes for divorce parties

farm rhinos and sell their horns for Asian medicine

proofread spam to make it look real

Mandarin-speaking fixer/comprador/go-between

Write a novel about teenagers. May include vampires and future dystopias, but make sure you get in a lot of sex and violence.

run the library on a cruise ship and get a free cruise

run courses in decorative towel folding (swan, lily etc)

make designer chocolates with fair trade/local ingredients

build a medieval-looking chapel in your beautiful park/garden centre/arboretum and hire it out as a wedding venue

grow poisonous herbs

grow medicinal herbs

offer a tinyurl type service to turn sentences into 140 chars of Twitter speak

import reclaimed industrial lighting from the former east bloc

manufacture wedding table confetti

tea taster

collect Chinese assembly line art (one day it’ll be worth - nothing)

Don’t bother forging old masters, the Chinese do it better and more cheaply in Dafen art village

If you find yourself doing anything interesting or unusual (trying to make it as a standup, languishing in a TB sanatorium, working as a prostitute, nurse, factory hand) keep a detailed diary noting verbatim conversations, what everybody was wearing etc. It will need very little work to turn it into a gripping book like Enter Talking, In My Skin, The Plague and I, One Pair of Feet or The Common Years.

Write a novel using another author’s character(s)

Take a long, discursive, unreadable, unread and forgotten 18th/19th century novel and turn it into a modern scifi drama/detective story.

open boutique restaurant/cinema which screens b/w movies to patrons seated in “pods”



open cinema which screens black and white movies 24/7

oyster farmer with outlet in London

escargot breeder

start a company “helping people back to work” and sell your services to the government.

buy a Scottish island and invent an extreme sport to fit the scenery. Build a [insert extreme sport here] centre and run courses. (Nude otter dancing, cliff horse diving, scree ski-ing, alp zorbing, eagle-assisted islet hopping etc etc)

bounty hunter

painter of harpsichord tops

coach/mentor for entrepreneurs

coach/mentor for coach/mentors
bike butler (with wheel-through bike wash)

provider of astroturf services

supplier of decorative gravel for landscaping

set up a nail bar (doing well in recession)

set up a tattoo parlour (they seem to be doing well too)

ghost reader Posh Elizabethans used to pay someone else to read a book for them and underline any interesting bits. (@DaintyBallerina)

advise people on how to get CBEs, Damehoods etc

fake boyfriend In China, young people hire boy/girlfriends to take home for New Year to impress their folks.

More jobs you never knew existed here.  More here and here. And here.