The Sunday Times Book of Answers part two

Tony Body of York wanted to know the origin of the political terms left wing and right wing ?

Some may have guessed that the terms had something to do with football, but Mr Ross Ferguson-Ford of Stirling University seemed certain that the two terms could ‘ clearly be traced back to Revolutionary France in the last decade of the eighteenth century’.

‘In the legislative assembly of the French Republic, the convention was dominated by two factions—the Montagnards and Girodins. As a result of their respective beliefs and the seating arrangements of the Assembly ( the former sat to the left of the chamber and the latter to the right ), the labelling of political beliefs  according to left/right polarity was instigated.

However, neither was a political party , despite the Montagnardas showing the first traits of socialism in  the form of the Jacobin splinter group, and the application to them of the terms ‘ left wing’ and ‘right wing’ in their modern sense is inappropriate’.

Most commentators agree that this was the origin of the terms.

Why do most countries drive on the right? The Sunday Times wanted to know this.

Richard Sotnik put the blame on Napoleon for this. Before he became a dominant influence in Europe ‘it was customary to drive or ride on the left hand side. Historically this was to enable the great majority of persons to draw their sword against an oncoming opponent.’

‘ Napoleon modernised this thinking in marching his armies south to Italy. In order to gain time he took advantage of the cool of the shadows of the trees in the strong afternoon sun and therefore obtained extra kilometres. Naturally Britain declined to acknowledge this crude upset to tradition.

Most of the other correspondents to the Sunday Times agreed that Napoleon was the culprit, though no-one else felt that he chose the right handed side because he wanted to take advantage of the cool shadows of the roadside.

Why does the fair hair of so many children darken as they mature ?

Mr James Ellinthorpe of Wiltshire asked this very good question, which your Jotter, whose own golden auburn hair at twenty has now turned to a rather boring shade of dark brown.

Mr Patrick James, whose answer possesses the erudition of a trichologist, explains thus:

Hair and eye colour are interrelated. Colouring depends on two pairs of genes, each pair of the same chromosome but fairly far apart. ‘E’ would represent dominant dark eye; ‘e’ light eye ’H’ would be dark hair and ‘h’ light hair. Thus:

HHEE—dark hair, dark eyes

HhEE —  medium dark hair, dark eyes

HHee—  medium dark hair, hazel eyes

HhEe—–variable

EEhh—–Fast cynope( brown eyes, blond hair)

Eehh——slow cynope

eeHH—–fast glaucope (blue eyes , dark hair)

eeHh——slow glaucope

eehh ——blond

Continue reading →

Stephen Potter’s Relaxmanship (1965)

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Steohen Potter. From the National Portrait Gallery (many thanks)

Books sponsored by companies, particularly drug companies, were more common in the nineteenth or early twentieth century, than they are now. A few years ago we featured one sponsor –a manufacturer of a tonic for those lacking energy—on Jot 101. The book they sponsored was a self-help treatise aimed at those high-fliers whose jobs overloaded them with work to the detriment of their health. We were reminded of this when, while   looking at a pile of books at Jot 101 HQ the other day, we found a rare example of a mid-twentieth book sponsored by another drug company, in this case Roche, a multinational  concern. By putting their name to Stephen Potter’s relaxmanship (1965) the company hoped to sell bucket loads of Libraxin, a drug sold to alleviate the symptoms of ‘ nervous dyspepsia ‘—a digestive condition brought about by stress and anxiety.

But let the advertising executives acting for Roche ( or even Potter himself) tell you about the benefits of Libraxin:

‘You may regard relaxation as an art. Not all of us, perhaps, are able to cultivate it to meet Mr Potter’s high requirements. But if properly approached , the holiday season can provide a real opportunity to unwind and to forget day-to-day worries for a short time.

Clearly this is excellent therapy for the nervous dyspeptic; his lack of anxiety reduces his dyspepsia. Sooner or later, however, he will have to return to work and to all his old problems and anxieties. This is the time when Libraxin  can be of particular value. Libraxin, which combines the anti-anxiety properties of Librium with the anti-secretory properties of clidinium, is most effective on the treatment of nervous dyspepsia.

It is possible that Potter’s booklet was aimed at GPs or psychiatrists rather than members of the public, for printed on the back flap were the following words:

Basic NHS cost 25 tablets: 

3/10 ½  (500 rate)

4/8d. (100 rate)

5/4d.(25 rate)

Potter is an interesting writer. Born in London on 1 February 1900, just a week after the death of Queen Victoria, he also missed action in the First World War, it having ended while he was training to be an officer. He then went on to study English at Oxford. On graduating he was offered a job as a Talks Producer for the fledgling BBC, but turned it down because it was based in Birmingham, where he didn’t want to live. Instead he established himself as an elocution teacher in London, advertising ‘Cockney accents cured ‘. He was then a tutor and schoolmaster before becoming private secretary to the playwright Henry Arthur Jones.

Continue reading →

The Sunday Times Book of Answers (1993)

In 1993 Andrew ‘Brillo Pad’ Neil, editor of the Sunday Times, initiated a regular column in his paper inviting readers to submit answers to the origins of well known phrases and institutions. In the same year a book appeared with some of these answers. Many of these submissions now read like the outrageous fictional suggestions that Private Eyeoccasionally publish in one of their columns.

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Who was the ‘ Bob’ in the phrase ‘ Bob’s your uncle ?

Only one reader offered a solution. Bob, according to Tecwen Whittock of mid Glamorgan, was Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne Cecil, better known as Lord Salisbury, the last man to be Prime Minister while a member of the House of Lords. The phrase came into use when Salisbury promoted his nephew, A. J. Balfour, to the post of Chief Secretary for Northern Ireland in 1887. Fifteen years later Balfour succeeded his uncle Bob as Prime Minister.

It is interesting to note that Tecwen Whittock later achieved notoriety as the audience member with the chronic cough who it was alleged helped Major Ingram  win a million pounds on ‘ Who Wants to be a Millionaire ‘. But Whittock was surely incorrect in stating that Balfour was Chief Secretary for Northern Ireland, which only came into existence in 1921, after the island was divided into Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Balfour was in fact Chief Secretary of Ireland. So perhaps Mr Whittock was not the reliable quiz expert he appeared to be.

Today there is general acceptance that this derivation is correct.

If it is not over until the fat lady sings, who is the fat lady and what does she sing ?

Four readers thought they had the answer to this question. One thought it was a portly singer in the role of Brunhilde in a Seattle production of Wagner’s Ring; another felt it was the woman who sang the national anthem at American baseball matches; another argued it was the overweight American diva Kate Smith; however, the most convincing answer came from a Mr Robert Fox of Shrewsbury who contended that it referred to someone who sang at the first performance of Wagner’s Ring in 1876.

Today the most popular derivation is the one featuring the overweight Miss Kate Smith.

When did homosexuals become gay ?

Only one reader dared to answer this question. Ms Emma Fox, a Ph D candidate at my alma mater, the University of Birmingham, argues that the term was beginning to be used by around 1900. According to her, men drawn to wearing gaudy clothes were popularly regarded as effeminate. She argues that in  R. L. Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.  Jekyll’s admission that he is torn between a life of gaiety and one of gravity suggests that he is a closet homosexual. Also in Conrad’s Victory (1915) the ’openly homosexual Jones wears a ‘ gay’ blue silk dressing gown. By 1957 – 8 yay novelist E. M. Forster used the word in his story ‘The Other Boat’ to described the hedonistic lifestyle which the protagonist Lionel wishes to experience.

Continue reading →

Royal Alphabet Game (R.A.G)

This game was sent to Jot by someone call Opal Alger, possibly a pseudonym, but it conforms to the rules of her or his game. They call it the ‘Royal Alphabet Game’ (R.A.G) as it was supposed to have been played by kings** – possibly the unfortunate Edward VIII, who may have used it to get to sleep (as Shakespaere wrote:’Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown’.)

Image conjured up at Dall-E

Lewis Carroll was also fond of these ‘waiting’ games. They can be played in your head while waiting at a dentist or barber or as a passenger in plane train car or bus or especially lying in bed unable to sleep.
R.A.G. goes like this— you start with AA and move on to AB AC AD etc., Each time you are looking for a word that begins with the 2 letters and ends with the 2 letters and you form a sentence or statement from these. Any word in any language will do – it just has to exist. If it doesn’t you are just fooling yourself…

Place names, proper names and known slang are OK. Also initialled words (‘Best Beatles LP? Help!) At AA you could have “Aaron’s lamb bleated ‘baa‘ and at AB “Grab a ticket to see the virtual Abba” or ‘A very drab abbot.’ At AC “Lets bivouac across the Ganges.” You get the point… going all the way through to ZZ – “’Time to grab some ZZ’s said the tired guy with the buzz cut.’ Many letters will have no solution at all (eg QQ or BC) – in those case move swiftly onwards.

Scoring? Not necessary but if you want you can score 1 for one word, 2 for 2 and 3 for a particularly amusing, clever or surreal solution. For this punching the air or sketching out a tick or shouting or mouthing ‘Yes!’ will also do. Try ‘Damn mnemonics!’ or ‘Xenophobes avoid the Prix Fixe menu’ or ‘The best xylophone in the galaxy.’ For the advanced player there is a 3 word version that could (with over 2000 potential solutions) take months to do but is said by Opal to be very satisfying..more of that later.

**The web shows nothing on this but as Bruno said: Se non è vero, è molto ben trovato –‘if it is not true, it is a happy invention.’

Zen and the art of Wordle

Are there ways of solving Wordle in 2 or 3 goes? One go is pure chance, although undoubtedly a glorious feeling, to get it in two is very lucky– possibly  with a touch of inspiration and nouse, three is quite do-able but feels great when achieved.  So aiming at three tier wins and hoping for  better this is a method, the Tao or Zen of Wordle…Partially inspired by re-reading Martin Amis’s now rare and very dated Invasion of the Space Invaders and  his advice for winning  the game Scramble where, inevitably, a swarm of deadly red snowballs come hailing at you from the east. Firing at them is apparently useless–Martin’s advice in order to survive is to go into “a sort of low level Zen trance.” It’s the same with Wordle (the NY Times version). Those smarty New Yorkers know all about the standard openers— so say goodbye to Adios and Adieu, ignore opening words like Least and the 15th century Helmet known as a Salet and just type in the first 5 letter word that pops into your mind the exact moment the NYT Wordle page opens— probably best to avoid words with 2 of the same letter like truss, tests etc.,

 

Getting into slightly occult, not to say Wu-Wu or pseudo science territory it may be better to do Wordle towards the end of its 24 hours. Our own great organic farmer Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, evidently a Wordle player,  tweeted about “the controversial (but appealing) theory of morphic resonance, which predicts that puzzles should get easier to do once a critical mass of human minds have solved them…’ This theory was advanced a while back about crosswords – it was suggested  that they were easier to solve the next day when everybody had done them and even the answers were printed. I have a feeling some tests were done..

You need all the help you can get with Wordle and if tapping into Jung’s Collective Unconscious (or the Unified Field) helps, let it be. The other day the opening word that came to mind was  ‘risen’ giving me 3 right letters all in the wrong place so I went to Crisp, which gave 3 letters (ris) in the right order and I triumphed at 3 on Brisk (Frisk is a bit British and NY is a brisk sort of place). If no inspiration comes I use the word Nymph or Lymph, for no good reason— and that’s a good reason.

 

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Some nightclubs and ‘dives ‘ of post-war London

 

Jot 101 Night club dancing pic

We at Jot HQ know our audience. We know, for instance, that Jots on long-departed restaurants and pubs in London are popular. Presumably, Jots on seedy night clubs and ‘ dives ‘ ( do people still use this word to describe such resorts ?) will also prove popular. People are certainly curious about the London drug culture of yesteryear. They are aware that drugs like opium and cocaine have been around, thought not always easily available, for two centuries or more. They know that S. T. Coleridge and Thomas de Quincey were slaves to laudanum and that Sherlock Holmes was a cocaine addict. They are perhaps not so sure about the history of marijuana consumption in the UK before it became the drug of choice among hippies in the swinging sixties.. One of the most interesting sides of The Good Time Guide to Londonis the candour with which the more disreputable and sleazy pleasures of the flesh— from sex , (the while slave trade and prostitution)—  to hard drinking and drug taking are discussed in 1951. This is such a contrast to a guide like Dining Out in London, published in the same year, which merely covers restaurants. In fact, The Good Time Guide to Londonseems to revel in the seamier side of London.

Take the general introduction to the section on night clubs:

‘…In theory all the clubs are for the use only of members and their guests. Some of them stick to this rule, and it isn’t easy to get in without preparation ( though nothing, of course, is impossible). Others are, shall we say, less insistent on the letter of the law. A day ticket is produced from somewhere, or the secretary may discover you are a life-long friend of his…The dives vary a great deal. Some have specialised clienteles—artists, coloured folk, poets or crooks. Some play be-bop all night; others prefer poker. A sniff of marijuana. Not all of them places to go with your wife. Whatever happens, you’ve been warned !’

The writer then proceeds to make notes on individual night clubs, which we shall discuss under various headings:

The Pigalle

‘…just opened in Piccadilly, offers the disturbing attraction of 40 pretty girls, properly dressed to be undressed, accompanied by a really lavish stage show. You can dance between times, and enjoy yourself for the remarkable small sum of 17/6 which you pay for your dinner…Original idea was provided, it is said, by the world famous Tabarin in Montmartre…’

The Society

Sited in Jermyn Street ‘…with its tiny dance floor and its beautifully panelled walls, ( it) is an excellent rendezvous if you are in the mood to appreciate an intimate, relaxed, unmistakably French atmosphere. Here the gypsies will leave their stand to sing just for you; here the rumba-drums mix with the ripple of whispered conversations and subdued laughter…’ Continue reading →

Some anecdotes from ‘Fun with the Famous’ by H. Cecil Hunt (1928)

Jot 101 Kipling's home in sussex

 

Funny book titles in Prince Edward’s Library.

 

In the library of the Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII) at Marlborough House were many false book spines inscribed with amusing titles, most dating from the Victorian age. The following particularly amused the Prince.

 

Boyle on Steam.

 

Lady Godiva on the Horse

 

Constable’s notes on motoring.

 

Bacon’s History of Greece

 

Nine Tales of a Cat

 

The Voyage of Noah by Arkwright.

 

Payne’s Dentistry

 

Warm Receptions by Burns

 

First Sight by Lovett.

 

Spare the Tree by Hewett

 

Cochin’s Lays of China.

 

‘The Prince is often amused at visitors who cannot find their way out of this quaint library. There is no apparent exit, but one of the morocco volumes bears the title “ The Passage Out “, and it is in the centre of the door, so that the discerning explorer soon has a clue to his escape.’

 

Charles Wesley meets ‘ Beau’ Nash.

 

The great Wesley once had an encounter with the pompous Beau Nash. The meeting was in a narrow street, and the right of way obviously belonged to the divine. The dandy, drawing himself up proudly, said in his most haughty manner:

“I never make way for fools.”. I always do”, said Wesley, quickly stepping aside.

 

Kipling’s autographs

 

A comical situation arose some years ago when the writer made a habit of paying even small bills by cheque. He found that his balance was much larger than the counterfoils of his cheque-book warranted. It was discovered that local tradesmen never cashed his cheques. They found that admiring visitors would often willingly but them for much more than the values for which they were drawn. [Above is Kipling’s house in Sussex] Continue reading →

Max Beerbohm—practical joker

Max Beerbohm young picIn The C. O. Jones Compendium of Practical Jokes(1982) Richard Boston narrates some entertaining anecdotes concerning the humorist Max Beerbohm. Most of those involving the ‘ alteration ‘ of books remind us of the hilarious alterations  made in the ‘50s and 60s by Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell on books borrowed from Islington Public Library, where they are still displayed. It is possible that the two men got their idea from Beerbohm.

One joke, according to Boston, was played on ‘a volume of exceptionally solemn poems by a dullard called Herbert Trench ‘. Boston doesn’t identify  the collection, but since it contained a ‘ romantic dialogue between Apollo and a mariner ‘ it was definitely Apollo and the Seaman(1908).This is what Beerbohm did.

‘With a sharp knife and painstaking care Max scraped out the aspirates at the beginning of every word beginning with ‘h’ spoken by the mariner, and substituted an apostrophe. The result was that a speech intended to be of a classical dignity was turned into straight Cockney. Max then sent the book to the author, commenting that he had notpreviously come across this edition of the book.

The work had been done so carefully that it appeared to be perfectly genuine. At first Trench was horrified. When he tumbled, he was offended. Max made it up by explaining to Trench that he considered him to be a true poet —-‘Otherwise there wouldn’t be any fun in making fun of you’.

 Some lines altered by Beerbohm may have appeared thus:

Apollo:    “ And whence did that craft hail, sailor,

Of which you seem so fond ?”

Seaman:   “ It was some ‘ arbour of the East

Back o‘ beyond, back o’ beyond. Continue reading →

Walter Jerrold as book collector

Autolycus of bookstalls 001We at Jot 101 had not imagined the travel writer and biographer Walter Jerrold ( 1865 – 1929 ) to be a frequenter of second-hand bookstalls, but there he is as an unabashed collector of ‘unconsidered trifles ‘ in  Autolycus of the Bookstalls (1902), a collection of articles on book-collecting that first appeared in The Pall Mall Gazette, Daily News, the New Age, and Londoner.

But as we already knew him as a biographer of Charles Lamb we should have known better, and indeed he mentions Lamb several times in his book. Jerrold’s range as a bibliophile was wider than Lamb’s, but he seems to have been particularly drawn to writers of the Romantic period. He wrote about collecting Thomas Hood, Cobbett, Coleridge, Southey, and Rev Sydney Smith, while also mentioning books on Oliver Cromwell and Ruskin. In addition, he appears to have rather liked association copies of all dates, and boasted that he had ‘snapped up ‘volumes bearing the signatures of Cardinal Manning, George Eliot, Sydney Smith and Thomas Noon Talfourd at ‘Metropolitan stalls’ in recent years. Jerrold was also tickled at the idea of buying books that had been displayed in the windows of very unliterary shops—in one particular instance an ‘ oil and colourman’s shop in the Seven Dials’, where a first of Ruskin’s Political Economy of Art and a Tennyson signed by George Eliot rubbed shoulders with ‘ soap, soda, pickles and jam ‘. Finding literary treasures in unlikely stores was probably more common in Jerrold’s time than it is now, although your Jotter does recall his first entry into collecting back in 1968, when he found an odd volume of the fifth edition of Johnson’s Dictionary and a battered early edition of Gay’s Fables, complete with nice copper plates, in the window of a car mechanic’s shop opposite Sketty Library in Swansea, along with spanners and a grease gun. After negotiating with the mechanic he secured the two tomes for just 2/6 ( 12p ).

Jerrold favoured ‘ Booksellers’ Row ( aka Holywell Street, off the Strand ), a disreputable  area cleared for the construction of Aldwych c 1900, from where he moved to ‘ that newer Booksellers’ Row which has sprung up in Charing Cross Road ‘, itself a product of slum clearance a little earlier. He also ( in passing ) mentions the stalls in Farringdon Street, for so many decades dominated by the Jeffrey family (see earlier blog in Bookride) , and Aldgate, in addition to the New Cut opposite Waterloo station. The two latter sites went many years ago and following the demise of George Jeffrey, the Farringdon bookstalls, where a lucky punter a few decades ago bought an early sixteenth century scribal copy of a work by Sir Thomas More for a few pounds, folded within a year or so. Today the only surviving ‘Booksellers’ Row ‘ is in Charing Cross Road. Continue reading →

Practical Jokes by Richard Boston

The late Richard Boston (1938 -2006 ) was an interesting man. He was a columnist for the Guardian,a writer on beer in the early days of Real Ale, the author of Beer and Skittles, a history of the English pub, the biographer of Rabelais’s translator Urquhart, who allegedly died oRichard Boston Jones jokes cover 001f laughter after hearing that Charles II had been restored to the throne, and the editor of the short-lived magazine The Vole, a pioneering ecological magazine. Boston lived in the same village ( Aldworth ) as Richard Ingrams and was friendly with him. He was also a pal of the artist and writer John Piper ( though Frances Spalding’s biography neglects to mention this fact ) and it was Piper,  who may have supported The Vole 
financially, who told me that Boston had gone into depression when the magazine had folded. Subsequent to this I asked Boston to contribute an appreciation of Geoffrey Grigson for the festschrift I was preparing for his eightieth birthday in March 1985. Boston seemed happy to comply and his piece was one of the best in the book.

 

Fast forward to 2002 and on walking in sweltering heat from Streatley station to Aldworth to interview Ingrams for Book and Magazine Collector, I passed Boston’s cottage and thought about knocking on his door to say hello. I didn’t do so, but I regret it now. Boston died just a few years later, a rather forgotten figure by this time. His titles appear occasionally in second-hand bookshops, but one I have never encountered is The C.O. Jones Compendium of Practical Jokes,which luckily cropped up in a pile at Jot HQ the other day. It was published in 1982, which was the year in which my Hertfordshire Shell Guideappeared, and was illustrated by the lovely Posy Simmonds, who was another of my interviewees. But that’s a story for later.

 

Boston was primarily a humorist. All those who knew him said that he couldn’t be serious for very long and had a particular penchant for practical jokes. Even the title of The C.O. Jones Compendium of Practical Jokescontains a pun on the Spanish word for testicles ( cojones, geddit ?). The running joke in the book is the identity of the mysterious Mr Jones, who remains a mysterious, and distinctly subversive figure—rather like Boston himself— right to the end. Continue reading →

Lousy condition / Cold climate

Found in our old blog Bookride from 2011 this piece about a quest for the world’s worst condition book. Below (right) is a pic of IMG_2825 a particularly lousy LOTR found in a holiday rental college. Compared to the books we found this copy is quite acceptable.. We wrote:

…have been trying to build a set of books by Nancy Mitford for a customer who wants to have them bound in leather. In these cases you require no jackets, the covers can be worn but the text must be clean. I have dismissed all the nice copies at silly prices and all the lousy copies at whatever price, although as usual some of these were pricier than the ones in exemplary condition. Some were so bad they reminded me of the Dada knife (lacks handle and blade). They lacked pages, spines, boards, some even had missing title pages – mentioned as an afterthought as if it was no big deal.

Inspired, motivated, energised and exasperated I started on a search for the worst condition book on the entire web. In 2007 there had been a legendary Webster’s dictionary on Ebay that was basicaly a pile of ruined, frayed and crumbling paper — it looked like, as Jimmy Webb would say -‘Someone left a cake out in the rain…’ It attracted no bids but was a fun item for a while. That was a yardstick. There are not that many truly appalling books on the web as they take a long time to describe and you cannot charge much for them. There are some eighteenth century and earlier books in laughably bad state often with huge loss and every indignity a book can suffer, presumably catalogued because of their antiquity. There is a type of customer who thinks old books should be a bit worn and distressed, even a few dealers. It should be noted that old and ruined books can have their uses as door stops or draught excluders etc., Continue reading →

Thorpe’s Water Frolic of 1824

Thorpe_Water_Frolic,_Afternoon‘Water Frolic’ is a new term for us at Jot HQ. But according to the art historian Trevor Fawcett, who was perhaps a Norfolk man ( he attended the University of East Anglia), these events were common festive occasions on the Norfolk rivers and broads, at least in the early years of the nineteenth century.

In his short article published in Norfolk Archaeology ( XXXVI, Part IV, 1977), a reprint from which we found in a pile of ephemera at Jot HQ, Fawcett writes about the Thorpe Water Frolic of 1824, which was captured in a superb oil painting by the provincial artist Joseph Stannard, himself a keen oarsman and the owner of a skiff—the Cytherea — the following year.

Thorpe is today a riverside place on the Yare immediately adjoining Norwich, whose station is named after it. In 1824, however, it was a picturesque hamlet ( dubbed the ‘Richmond of Norfolk’) on an important trading route to foreign markets; and on this particular occasion all the various commercial vessels on the Yare would have been immobilised to enable the ‘ frolic’ to take place.

Although annual frolics had been common events in Norfolk over the years, the Thorpe frolic had only been established in 1821 by local cloth-merchant and manufacturer John Harvey, who had bought and developed the Thorpe Lodge estate. Originally, it was attended only by the wealthy and influential in Norwich and its vicinity. In 1822 nine cutters had raced for a silver cup and five rowing boats for another trophy. But in 1823 Harvey decided to open the event to everyone—from the humblest loom-worker, farm labourer and shop assistant, to the wealthiest businessmen and landowners. Continue reading →

Words for Wizards—a useful book at Hogwarts, perhaps

Words for Wizards cover 001Sometimes wizards—that is, magicians— don’t have the right patter to accompany their tricks. This is where George Schulte comes in. His Words for Wizards(G. F. Schulte, Chicago 1924), which we unearthed in a pile of ephemera at Jot HQ, is a guide to what could be said as the rabbit is pulled out of a hat or knots disappear from a handkerchief. What isn’t mentioned is how unimpressed members of an audience hearing this patter might be if they’d heard the same words from other magicians who’d also used Mr Schulte’s book.

If we want custom-made material we must turn to the back of his book, where we find Schulte’s own advertisement.

 

Written to order, for any magical effect or illusion. Humorous or serious patter, specially arranged, from one act to a complete show, at one dollar per item and up.

 

Magical entertainers who “SAY IT WITH LAUGHS” add additional amusement to their entertainment. If you are interested in improving your program, you may have further particulars by writing to

                                       GEORGE SCHULTE

4263 Lincoln Avenue                                             Chicago, Illinois

 

“ Vaudeville Monologues”       “Humorous Character Stories”

And Comic Chatter specially written for any act, club and stage entertainers looking for new “ LAUGH LINES” and “NEW IDEAS” will find that we have many valuable suggestions to offer them.

           All letters receive a prompt reply. Prices are regulated by the grade of material desired. If you are interested in this particular style of entertaining, write to…. Continue reading →

Visiting London to see the cars

In London recently buying a small collection of books near Palace Gate I spotted three Bentley Bentaygas parked casually along the neighborhood streets. The one pictured can reach 190 mph and will leave little change from £150K. The ultimate SUV, 4 by 4,  ‘Chelsea tractor.’ On showing this photo to a colleague, something of a ‘petrol head’,IMG_4096he informed me that there were certain areas of London that (young) tourists visit just to see rare and expensive supercars in the flesh – Mayfair, Chelsea, Belgravia mainly. He said that the visitors sometimes encourage the owners, often young Middle Eastern guys, to rev them up. In one instance the driver forgot he was in gear and shot forward into another supercar wrecking both. I blame Jeremy Clarkson..

Margaret Rutherford and Patience

Found – Illustrated Games of Patience a reprint (Frewin, London 1968)  of Lady Adelaide Cadogan’s  IMG_32051870 edition, this with an introduction by the actress Margaret Rutherford (memorable as an early Miss Marple). Her piece has a  quirky style  and a good glimpse of the older actress Marie Tempest playing Patience back stage:

They call it Patience– you play patience and, often enough, when you play if you put yourself for all practical purposes into a condition or persuasion of patience. I suppose we have all, at sometime or other, laid out the cards, in our Nursery, in sickness, or at one of those desperate moments of suspense before action, when all preparations have been made, every step been taken, and all that remains is to wait the call.
One of many my most vivid recollections, at the very outset of my career, passing down the corridor on my way to the stage was to see, through an open door, the great Marie Tempest at a table with the cards spread out. She was supreme, glittering and efficient, yet at repose, collected and ready to spring.
But one is not alone when one plays patience. There is an invisible opponent– Yet a comrade! This book presents a picture of him. From lonely palaces in The courts of idleness? Who can say? From some hidden corner of Royal anxiety? From some bereft  age when loved ones were a-far in battle?
I feel a history in this book, and yet it is a picture of a formal, little, courteous Comfort, a quiet, inner Amusement.
Margaret Rutherford

Google Blaster – the name game

A young jotwatcher, one Simione, from the Silicon Fen area has sent in famous_fantastic_mysteries_195306this amusing game that can be played using an iPhone or laptop. One player picks 3 people of seemingly equal fame and then all the players have to say (in order) who has the highest google rating i.e. number of hits. It is best when searching to put the full name in inverted commas – e.g. “Kevin Bacon.” Players score 1 point for naming the person with the most hits and an extra 2 points for naming all 3 in correct order. First to ten , at that point you can play again but one session is usually enough. Try Marcel Proust, Jorge Luis Borges and Vladimir Nabokov. The leader is Borges at 7.88 million, Proust at 4.68 and Nabokov at 3.3 million.

In the realm of popular youth culture who is the biggest – Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift or Lady Gaga? Bieber wins at 168 million, Lady Gaga 137M and Taylor trails with a mere 127 million. Results can change day by day and rather randomly. People currently in the news do well, as do those associated with technology. Best to avoid common name like James Brown or John Taylor.

You can mix cultures to make it more challenging – say Kafka, Ayn Rand and Samuel Beckett— predictably Kafka comes in at number one with 7.74M, objectivist Ayn Rand at 5.7M and Beckett with only 3.97 million hits.  [See our illustration which brings Rand and Kafka together.]
Names of rock bands can be fun – try Kraftwerk, Radiohead, Metallica (it’s Metallica by a country mile.)

With Elvis, Bob Dylan and Albert Einstein, the scientist leads, followed by Bob and trailed quite closely by ‘The King”. (Allegedly Dylan once chucked  Phil Ochs out of a limo for suggesting he would never be as big as Elvis – turns out Ochs was wrong!) Super heroes throw up some surprises- at 100 million Super Mario has more hits than the Hobbit and Darth Vader combined. Theoretically you could try Oranges, Apples and Lemons or Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle but celebrities are the most fun. The name of the game, according to Simione was suggested by the cocktail in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster*. Simione also suggests it could be a drinking game with the loser having to buy a round or the winner drinking a shot. More sober players could play for money, say a  $1000 a point.

He (or she) suggests you try William Shakespeare, J.K. Rowling and John Lennon or Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath and Bjork. Such fun!

*Beeblebrox advised that you should “never drink more than two Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters unless you are a thirty ton mega elephant with bronchial pneumonia.”

 

How to Waste Money at Christmas

waste-money-christmas-pic-001How to Waste Money at Christmas

1) Order in a lot of fruit that goes bad
2) Order in flowers you have no time to arrange
3) Buy handsome presents and have them put down
4) Give a big Dance when you can only afford a Games Evening
5) Economise on heating, and give everyone ‘flu ( see Doctors’, Nurses’ bills)
6) Economise on lighting ( and let people trip over stairs and break their ankles etc)
7) Give rubbishy presents and make lifelong enemies.
8) Overdo yourself and have to go into a Nursing Home.

Extract from The Perfect Christmas (1933) by Rose Henniker Heaton.

[R.M.Healey]

The Right and Wrong People to invite to a Christmas party

how-to-ruin-christmas-illustration-001Two extracts from The Perfect Christmas (1933) by Rose Henniker Heaton.

Right people

Cheerful People

Lots of Young People

The guest with a car

The Enterprising Girl

The Elderly Woman who can tell fortunes

The Elderly Man (if red-faced and jolly).

The Handy-Man (issue invitation early, as he is in great demand).

Anybody good with children.

The Unselfish Friend.

 

Wrong people

The Bone-lazy.

The Egoist.

Mischief-makers.

Spoil-sports.

The Greedy and the Selfish.

Mean People (who suffer tortures at Christmas).

People who always feel “out of things.”

[RR]

 

Barry Ono—collector extraordinaire

barry-ono-pic-001Barry Ono (1876 – 1941 ) was both a comic ( in the Music Halls) and a collector of comics. This photo from the Collector’s Miscellany of August 1936 shows him lecturing at the ‘Barry Ono Penny Dreadful Exhibit ‘at Selfridge’s Hobbies Exhibition.

In a short article for the same magazine a trawl by Ono through the ‘ For Sale ‘ and ‘Exchange’ adverts in the Boy’s Standard of the 1880s recalls his own early triumphs as an avid collector of Penny Dreadfuls.

“There was a little shop in the Waterloo Road, London, that had stacks and stacks of the Chas. Fox publications when that firm passed out, 6d a vol. mint in wraps. “Spring Heeled Jack”, “Sweeny Todd” , “Turnpike Dick” and all the lot, plus quarterly divisions in wrappers of the Boy’s Standard, Boy’s Leisure, and Boy’s Champion at 3d each. At another second hand shop, also in the Waterloo Road, a shilling used to be my limit for such items as “The Boy Detective, or The Crimes of London”, “Gentleman Clifford”, etc, etc. Seems incredible now, and all a fantastic dream. Yes, my £20 would have gone quite a long way then, wouldn’t it? And many now completely unknown and unheard of rarities would have been saved. Well, since I acquired belated wisdom, many a tattered only derelict have I rescued from that oblivion it was hastening to, midst unfeeling and heedless vandals, carefully have I doctored it, gorgeous has been the half-calf overcoat in which I have had it arrayed, and now a more careful posterity I am thinking will least honour it on my demise as ‘Curiosa’. I am thinking I have been the ‘Scarlet Pimpernel’ of the ‘bloods’, rescuing not from the guillotine, but from the flames and the dust bin. Continue reading →