Month: January 2020

A limerick a week #176

I say, Mr Derek… 

If you think this week’s ALAW sounds as if it’s a bit ‘make do and mend’, you’d be right. I wanted it to be an uplifting five-line eulogy for the actor Derek Fowlds who died recently, but I left it too close to my weekly deadline to produce a well-polished one.

I best remember Fowlds as Mr Derek, Basil Brush’s straightman in the puppet fox’s TV show, and then as Bernard Woolley in the renowned Yes Minister series.

Foulds as a youthful ‘Mr Derek’ on the Basil Brush Show

His rôle in the latter was as a support to the two leads, but his delivery and comic timing elevated it well above that of a mere bit part and included the punchline to one of the best sketches in the entire series. (I never saw him in Heartbeat, a long-running daytime TV drama that he valued for giving him financial security in his later years).

An older Fowlds as Bernard Woolley, with Paul Eddington as the politician Jim Hacker in Yes Minister

Here’s the limerick:

I say, Mr Derek has died,
But memories of him will abide
As a stooge to a puppet
(A fox, not a muppet)
Who then sat at a Minister’s side.

A limerick a week #174

Greggxit!

I like towns (and cities) with their own character rather than homogenised, lookalike town centres filled with same old chain stores, betting shops and charity outlets.

All of which means that I’m not a great fan of shops like Greggs, the ubiquitous UK bakery chain. Consequently, I was amused to read that its only outlet in Cornwall, a concession within a service station, has closed. Apparently it was much ado about pasties.  The Cornish, it seems, prefer the real thing:

“It’s obvious that Cornish people will use Cornish bakery’s where they can get a Cornish pasty rather than the s**t pasty slice from Greggs. They were never going to survive here.” [as quoted in the Daily Telegraph, including its misuse of the possessive instead of a plural. Groan!]

The real thing

If only the good folk of Kendal had the same attitude I might still have been able to buy a decent slab of sly cake on my occasional forays to visit the Matriarch!

Anyway, as this is a retail-orientated ALAW (and with some economy with the actualité) here is a limerick BOGOF offer…

A bakery once tried to expand
In the south-western parts of the land,
But the Cornish aren’t patsies
And want their own pasties
So Greggs, it appears, has been banned.

There once was an outlet of Greggs
Whose pasties were really the dregs
Of the pastry-shop art
So it had to depart
With its tail firmly tucked ‘twixt its legs. 

Not the real thing!

 

A limerick a week #173

A receding heir line

As I’m not a great fan of the British monarchy, I usually try to avoid ‘royal’ news. Indeed, when William married Kate (one of the so-called Wisteria sisters, christened thus due to their adeptness at social climbing), Firstborn and I managed to avoid the whole televisual shebang by hiding deep below ground in a cave in the Yorkshire Dales.

(We had also hoped to avoid his brother’s matrimonials a few years later by zip-lining through the old  slate mines in North Wales, but, sadly, our plans were scuppered.)

Lydia Leith’s screen printed ‘royal wedding’ sick bags, a pair of which adorned my office in my working days. 

However, I found it impossible to avoid yesterday’s news headlines in which Harry and Meghan proclaimed to the world that they are leaving ‘The Firm’.

Will it solve their problems with regard to media intrusion into their lives? I doubt it!

Do I care? Not really!

Does it merit a limerick? Oh, go on then…

An actress once failed to foresee
An imperial calamity
‘Cos when Meghan met Harry
She thought she could marry
A Prince and then live royalty-free!

A limerick a week #172

A laying on of hands…

It seems that a modern-day ‘Mrs Doyle’ took her devotion to the Pontiff a bit too far this week and was literally slapped down when she tried to get her hands on him.

Grope-a-Pope

The pugilistic Pope Francis later apologised, but I think it was a very human response, so good for him!

It also spawned this…

In a slugfest that soon spawned a trope
Twas Ali who once Roped-a-Dope
But those days are gone
‘Cos the game has moved on
To one where you now Grope-a-Pope!

Rope-a-Dope