So, Sir Ken Dodd has died at the age of 90. There’s been enough media tributes paid to him since he ‘passed on’, so I shall add only a soupçon.
I don’t think there is anyone else that could have succeeded with his outrageous defence against criminal tax evasion charges yet retain such widespread popular affection, let alone be knighted subsequently. What a guy! And what a funny man.
In a way, it was the constant stream of jokes that got you laughing. On its own, this is amusing, but no more: “By jove, missus! What a wonderful day to run to the Kremlin and knock on its door and ask ‘Is Lenin?’“, but in the midst of an avalanche of one-liners, it made me laugh out loud.
Anyway, I tried to encapsulate his humour (and tax affairs) in this week’s ALAW. I couldn’t manage it with just one limerick so I resorted to two.
The first is a bit contrived to fit in to Dodd’s “By jove, Missus!” routines that usually expressed “What a wonderful day it is to…” before being rounded off with “How’s that for a…”. (Dodd’s humour was in filling-in the gaps in a surreal way).
Here it is:
By jove, Missus! What a wonderful day To look in a coffin and say: “It’s short of a body, So let’s stuff it with Doddy!” How’s that for a new hideaway?
and here’s t’other:
By jove, Missus! What a wonderful day To knock on a coffin and say: Is this the one Ken’s in? ‘Cos I think I’m sensing It’s not cash that he’s now stashed away!
Sir Ken. Not just a clown-come-tax-evader, but also a reflective scholar of humour. He made me laugh (a lot).
A few years ago I was surprised to see a sticker in the toilet cubicles of a German research institute. It comprised a humorous cartoon that illustrated the purpose and use of a lavatory brush and it made me wonder what had happened that obliged it to remind its staff and visitors about basic lavatorial hygiene.
Since then it’s been alarming to know that my place of work has, on occasion, had to resort to posting notes in cubicles to remind colleagues and visitors to leave the ‘facilities’ in the condition they would expect to find them.
So it was of concern recently to read an institute-wide message that re-iterated the need for lavatorial cleanliness and, thus, this week’s limerick hit the fan. It initially comprised part of a poster that I pinned to my office door (to much critical acclaim); however, I took it down on learning that the ‘incidents’ in question were not simply of inconsiderate use, but something more sinister and worrying.
“However ordinary each of us may seem, we are all in some way special, and can do things that are extraordinary, perhaps until then…even thought impossible“
Sir Roger Bannister (1929-2018)
At the age of 88, Roger Bannister has died. No-one with the slightest interest in athletics needs to be reminded of his achievement on the running track, but, for any who remain ignorant of it, on 6 May 1954 he became the first person officially to run a mile in under four minutes.
It was a new world record (obviously), albeit one that was eclipsed just a month or so later by an Australian runner, John Landy. Records are made to be broken yet Bannister’s achievement remains the stuff of legend because, quite simply, the four-minute mile was the middle-distance runner’s Holy Grail and Bannister claimed its discovery. It was also done in a gloriously Corinthian spirit. Bannister was a true amateur who trained in his spare time away from his medical studies in Oxford
Corinthian versus the modern day.
His two pacemakers on that day in Oxford were Chris Brasher and Chris Chataway, both middle-distance runners. Brasher, who paced the first half-mile, later won an Olympic gold in the 3000m steeplechase and Chataway, who finished second at Oxford (and broke the world 5000m record later the same year) paced the remainder until Bannister’s finishing sprint. All three became household names and the two pacemakers remained firmly in the public eye, perhaps more so than Bannister, due to their mix of business, broadcasting and political careers.
Brasher (left) and Chataway (right) keeping a tight grip on the Bannister.
It might have made sense back then, I wasn’t around so can’t tell, but it seems inconceivable to me that Bannister then lost out to Chataway to become the BBC’s inaugural Sporting Personality of the Year. To me that’s a calumny that ranks alongside The Pogues’ Fairytale of New York being kept off the 1987 UK Christmas number one spot by the Pet Shop Boys’ cover version of Always on my Mind, or Dances with Wolves getting the 1990 best film Oscar ahead of Goodfellas or Forrest Gump getting it in 1994 instead of Pulp Fiction.
Yet despite his sporting achievement, Bannister’s subsequent career as a consultant neurologist and researcher gave him greater pride if less-widespread renown. As a physician he appears to have been universally liked by his patients and medical peers and, from reading obituaries about him and their ‘below the line’ comments, what stands tall is his fundamental decency. That really appeals to me as my profile on this blog states “Values decency over achievement” in Bannister’s case he had both. In spades!
So, it’s limerick-as-obituary time again …
When you ran past the track’s finish line The stopwatch read three-fifty-nine. Thus the four-minute mile Was beaten in style, But now, sadly, you’ve run out of time
Cutting it close. Bannister crossing the line in 3 minutes 59.4 seconds with Chris Chataway a distant second.
We’re soon to undergo a kitchen refurbishment that entails among the many other things you would expect:
a wall to be knocked through;
the replacement of two hot water cylinders and five (yes, five) cold water storage tanks by a single pressurised cylinder system;
sunken LED lights to be fitted in the ceiling.
Naturally, we’re getting the professionals in, but we still have to do some preparatory work.
The plaster work around the knocked-through wall and the ceiling will need to be made good after the rest of the works are finished. That means we have to strip the existing wallpaper and ceiling paper back to the plaster before the professionals start.
That has been easier said than done. It turns out the walls had wallpaper on top of lining paper (no problem there) on top of lining paper on top of paint on top of wallpaper on top of some Victorian laquer on top of wallpaper, and then the plaster.
The Victorian ‘paint’ covering the last paper layer.
The lacquered layer has been particularly difficult to remove, but that pales into insignificance compared to the ceiling where we had textured paint on wallpaper on paint on lining paper. With no way to score through the textured paint, it has been hell to strip (with the job still unfinished as I write – three days solid work so far).
Textured paint over wallpaper over paint over lining paper. Aaarggghhhh!
So, in ‘honour’ of all those DIY handymen that repeatedly paper or paint over the existing decoration instead of doing a PROPER job, I give you:
I’m not a DIY master And progress could surely be faster. But the problem I have Is the handyman chav That put artex on paper on plaster!
Harland Sanders was the ‘Colonel’ that founded the Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise (Kentucky Colonel is a non-military, honorary title bestowed by the eponymous state on notable citizens). Yet despite having worked for the business after he sold it, Sanders ultimately denounced the impact of cost-cutting on the quality of its product.
That’s something, perhaps, that KFC’s current bosses should have borne in mind when they replaced Bidfed Logistics, an experienced food haulage distributor, with DHL; a cheaper competitor that lacked experience of that specific sector.
It transpires that DHL was caught out by the fact that “getting fresh chicken out to 900 restaurants across the country is pretty complex”! Certainly, last week’s delivery failures that resulted in the subsequent closure of most of KFC’s UK outlets demonstrated the maxim that you get what you pay for.
To add to their woes, it now it seems that the local council authority could easily have closed down DHL’s one and only chicken distribution warehouse on health and safety grounds because the company had failed to register it as a cold-storage facility!
I wonder if KFC had all that in mind when declaring that it had “specifically chosen DHL for its reputation of ‘innovation in logistics’ across other industries”?
Here’s what I think:
There once was a culinary farce ‘Cos chicken deliveries were sparse. The folk at Kentucky Said they were unlucky. But really? Unlucky? My a**e!
This meme is not relevant, I was just amused by it!
I travelled down and back to Kendal a couple of times in the last two weeks so that I could collect the family matriarch for a short stay in Aberdeen and then return her home.
Both trips re-introduced me to the sort of fine, mist-like rain that Kendal specialises in. It’s not heavy rain, but it envelops you; it soaks and chills with effortless ease. Brollies are impotent against its permeating tendencies and it makes the limestone of which the auld grey town is built look even greyer.
Turned out nice again! You can just about see Kendal castle through the rain.
I don’t know if the Cumbrian word for this kind of rain is a portmanteau derived from mist and drizzle (it could easily be), but Cumbrians know it as mizzlin. And in my recent trips south, mizzlin it was. Of course ‘mizzlin” is not solely Cumbrian or, maybe even northern (I believe it has also crossed the Atlantic with the migration of Ulster Scots).
Anyway, to borrow from that old joke about Manchester, if you can’t see Kendal castle from me mum’s house, it’s mizzlin; if you can, it’ll be mizzlin tomorrow!
Hmmm! A limerick comes to mind…
Visitors never stop grizzling In Kendal, ‘cos t’weather ain’t sizzling. Instead, they just frown And loup about town And learn what we mean by “It’s mizzlin”!
Try Googling ‘the problem with golf’ and you’ll find any number of serious articles discussing a sport that “is dying on its feet”. (Of course that is not what you hear when developers want to destroy protected conservation areas!)
“S**t! I didn’t iron the crease in my trousers. I’m going to look ridiculous!”
The cost of playing, the foosty attitudes of the clubhouse golf bores, the dress codes, and its social elitism are all seen as reasons why young people are not driven to take up the game, but rarely, it seems, are attitudes as primordial as those of the leading golf clubs’ approach to women’s membership.
Not that things don’t change (albeit with little grace) …
The day before the result of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum was announced, the result of a different vote saw women finally being allowed membership of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews; the so-called ‘home of golf’.
This was encouraging and it followed a period of asinine behaviour on behalf of its members when they had earlier denied honorary membership to the first woman vice-chancellor of St Andrews University; an accolade given previously to (male) vice-chancellors.
But let’s not forget that before the vote, the exclusion of women as members had given the club’s officers cause for concern, as sponsors of tournaments elsewhere had withdrawn from competitions held on the courses run by men-only clubs. So the R&A’s recognition of women’s membership was not entirely altruistic and the very same could be said of this week’s decision of the 238 year old Royal Aberdeen Golf Club finally to allow women to join as members.
That’s right! The Royal Aberdeen Golf Club has decided to join the 21st century and admit women members (only 100 years after women in the UK won the right to vote!); it also gives me an opportunity to revisit a limerick-of-old that has yet to be published in ALAW.
This one was originally penned after the St Andrews vote and pondered upon the thoughts of members that had for so long voted to continue with the exclusion of women. It can now be co-dedicated to their confrères in the Royal Aberdeen Golf Club!
His small world would soon fall apart Cos they’d voted to have a new start And to let women join Was a knee in the groin For that puce-faced, sclerotic old fart!
There was a wee bit of a stooshie ahead of this year’s celebration of Burns Night.
Liz Lochhead, Scotland’s former Makar (national poet) accused Burns of being a Weinsteinian sex pest, citing a letter that he once wrote that boasted of what was, at best, a ‘robust’ encounter.
It’s not the first time that Burns’ letter has been highlighted and, as with all these things, commentators take sides. Some agree with Lochhead’s interpretation of the letter’s wording, others disagree. In fact some even point to Lochhead’s current perspective as a contradiction of her earlier defence of Burns’ ribaldry.
So, was Burns a predatory sex pest, or a roguish rapscallion? Either way, he wrote fine verse in Scots about social justice, romance and wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beasties?
From ‘To a Mouse: On Turning Her Up In Her Nest With The Plough’
The unearthing in recent years of celebrities of the 1970s and 1980s as sex offenders often brought forth the ‘defence’ that ‘things were different in those days’. I cannot recall that excuse being upheld in the courts, but if Lochhead’s interpretation of Burns’ words is correct (and it may not be) can the passage of 200-plus years allow a ‘they were different days’ defence for Burns and should it detract from his poetry today? Can we celebrate the poetry but not the man?
From ‘To A Louse: On Seeing One On A Lady’s Bonnet, At Church 1786’
I’ll leave the ‘sex pest or loveable rogue’ argument to the experts; meantime, here’s the belated Burns Night limerick …
There once was a Scotsman called Burns Whose verses, one quickly discerns, Concern a wee mouse Or a walkabout louse Or the couplings for which he so yearns.
Postscript: Despite the debate over Burns’ morality, his perspective in the first verse of The Rights of Woman is admirable, even if ‘the rights’ that its later verses espouse lack modernity!
While Europe’s eye is fix’d on mighty things, The fate of Empires and the fall of Kings; While quacks of State must each produce his plan, And even children lisp the Rights of Man; Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention, The Rights of Woman merit some attention.
So, Elton John has told the world that he’ll be through with touring after his next three-year world tour. At the age of 73 he will then be able to spend more time with his young family.
Personally, I’ve never been quite sure what to make of him. I like his music and clearly he’s massively talented, successful and a great showman, but seemingly prone to any number of hissy fits when things don’t quite please him or go his way. I wonder how that will play out when ensconced full-time with a pair of pre-teen kids?
… or as Philip Glenister said playing the character of Daniel Cotton in ‘From There to Here’: “I’m NOT angry; I’m just permanently IRRITATED!”
Actually, the news is full of his strops – just Google ‘Elton John hissy fits’ to see what I mean. Indeed, his partner David Furnish made a movie of some of Elton’s ‘little moments’ and humorously called it Tantrums and Tiaras. Furnish clearly has tener cojones!
I only once heard him perform live; it was in July 2003. I was in Bergen in a hotel on the opposite side of the harbour to Koengen, the city’s outdoor venue where he was appearing. Even in those circumstances you could tell he was a cut above as a musician; shame he’s also such a Prima John-a!
So, here’s the limerick …
Elton’s just broken the news That he’s finished with paying his dues To the music that flowed Down the Yellow Brick Road And that’s why he’s singing the blues!
… there is an equal and opposite reaction; aka Newton’s Third Law of Motion.
It comes as no surprise then, that in response to Donald Trump’s support of the so-called birthing movement that questioned Barack Obama’s true country of origin, a social media reaction has taken place due to the dubiety of Trump’s recent medical report.
The girthing movement as it is known gets its name from doubts over Trump’s recorded weight and height, but it’s greater concern will ultimately comprise the report’s mendacious support of his fitness for office.
No-one could ever accuse Trump of modesty or humblebragging (“I think I am, actually humble. I think I’m much more humble than you would understand.”), but his latest excursion into the realms of fantasy is a hoot, (“[I’m a] a very stable genius”).
Really? When he believes that “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive”?
What an idiot!
And here’s my tuppence-worth for the week …
With veracity ever so sparse ‘The Donald’ continues his farce And fantasy meets Vainglorious tweets That prove he’s a true genie-a**e
