Norman Wisdom, late of this parish, yes that NW who was to the Fun Fillums of the Fabulous Fifties what Audie Murphy (and from whom Eddie Murphy is quite possibly not descended) was to Gun Fillums of the same gilt-ridden era, based his career around a few physical tricks. Or what might be known in these more sophisticated times, possibly, as dopey tropes.
(But before going into detail, one at this juncture must express one’s sincere gratitude to (gulp) The Unionist Times / TUT for their gracious generosity in granting one permission to use – and with a waived fee ! – one of their uber-select litany of twee phrases – ‘late of this parish’. The only blip of a stipulation was that one refer to them in the spirit of the Festive Season by their all present and politically correct title, (gasp) The Irish Times / TIT. In recognition of their fostering on the high moral ground of Miaow 2 tash-hag Hibernia the anti-concept of McHenpartyism. It’s a truce, Bruce ! )
One of NW’s tricks was the cap in hand, another was his tilted-forward hang-dog look, and, most significantly, his characteristic trip over fresh air which always resulted in his righting himself to the near perpendicular, just in the nick of time at an angle of N by NW. From a roguish pogue in the puss from a hardnosed horizontal. Despite its jovial appearance and apparent absence of difficulty it called for a truly solemn dollop of exquisite eye-to-foot co-ordination.
Speaking of parishes, this trip trick of Norm’s inspired a certain cohort of gurriers on Brandon Road, Drimnagh, Dublin (before it was made 12 and apostleised), to engage in a practice which had its roots in the, erm, Normandy invasion of our boyhood beaches, if not the wisdom. This is where the snotty-nosed Perkin was farmed out to, in the ancient Gaelic manner according to the word of a Superintendent and the dictates of the Special Brehon Court. The better to get him out of harm’s way and to acquaint him with the vagaries of the servant classes for his later-on in Warbeck Towers.
The oafish practice consisted of walking up to a particular lamp-post, located outside the gate of Mr. Grimsdale (not his real name), pretending to give the loaf to the metal surface while actually kicking the base of the lamp-post with the full rigour of one’s right or left boot. (Or indeed either, depending on one’s burgeoning ambidexterity).
This very occasionally resulted in an almighty sound of shoemaker’s leather on metal which re-echoed the l. and b. of Brandon Road. But, alas, far more often than not, with the foul-mouthed bellow associated with a young fellow’s head hitting an even harder surface.
Craniologists trace the deterioration in The Perkin’s mental wellbeing, not to mention the origin of his cratered forehead, from this ill-judged game, which called for, after all, abnormal Norman Wisdom-style sorcery with the feet and he to be in the role of, erm, Pitkin. In fact there was only one of our gang who managed to emerge unscathed. But then he had an advantage: his da had been a contortionist of sorts in a circus, a da who later came to national prominence in the role of the fictional Jim Figerty, the genius who put the figs into fig rolls on the Telly ads.
–Wisdom cries out in the street and no man regards it.
This was spoken by Prince Hal to a prototype of N.W., one, Falstaff, and it certainly applied to the boys of Brandon Road.
All of which brings us to another antecedent of Norman Wisdom’s and which comes neatly wrapped in a seasonal style festive package, containing bronntanas an lae which hallmarks the recently rediscovered de rigeur Deutschland influence on the Donner Und Blitzen of DUBlin.
For starters, back in the day by far and away the most popular breed of dog in Drimnagh and other more or less joyously deprived parishes of DUBlin was the German Shepherd, known in the vernacular as the Aller. This nomenclature curiously carries on to this day as the collective pet name for the foremost forepawed female writers on McHenpartyism in (yes !) The Irish Times. Rapid times, indeed.
Thugadar siúd an ‘mad’ leo on bhfocal ‘madra’.
(Slanguistic note: ‘rapid’ , pronounced ‘rappa’ is DUBlin schoolboy slang for ‘brilliant’. It is actually derived from a distorted pronunciation of ‘rabid’. Think, erm, Rabid Vienna.).
But it is the origin of Norman Wisdom’s trip trick which concerns us here.
It sprang from a short comedy sketch dating from the 1920s. And which later gained popularity on Britain’s seaside piers.
–Dinner for One.
Plot.
(Spoiler Alert for teaser geezers: Does Miss Sophie remind one of any particular hausfrau in Schloss Windsor ?)
The sketch presents the 90th birthday of upper-class Englishwoman Miss Sophie, who hosts a celebration dinner every year for her friends Mr Pomeroy, Mr Winterbottom, Sir Toby and Admiral von Schneider. The problem is that due to Miss Sophie’s considerable age, she has outlived all of her friends, and so her equally aged manservant James makes his way around the table, impersonating each of the guests in turn.
Miss Sophie decides on appropriate drinks to accompany the menu: mulligatawny soup (Miss Sophie orders dry sherry), North Sea haddock (with white wine), chicken (with champagne), and fruit for dessert (with port) served by James, who finds himself raising (and emptying) his glass four times per course. This takes its toll, increasingly noticeable in James’ behaviour: his growing difficulty in pouring the drinks, his mistaking a vase of flowers for a wine glass, and his propensity for bursting into song.
Even before the alcohol begins to exert its influence, he keeps tripping up on the head of a tiger skin lying on the floor on his way from the dinner table to the buffet, although on one occasion he surprises himself by avoiding it – only to trip on it on his return from the buffet instead. A bit later, he stops in front of the tiger’s head, then performs an exaggerated jump across it.
The crucial exchange during every course is:
James: The same procedure as last year, Miss Sophie?
Miss Sophie: The same procedure as every year, James!
By the end of the dinner, James has consumed sixteen glasses of wine and is severely inebriated. Miss Sophie, who has herself had four rounds of wine, still appears sober; she tells the very drunk James that she wishes to retire to bed. Hand in hand, they head to the staircase, at which point the closing lines of dialogue are uttered:
James: By the way, the same procedure as last year, Miss Sophie?
Miss Sophie (delightedly): The same procedure as every year, James!
James (slyly): Well, I’ll do my very best!
Now, a not uninteresting thing about Dinner for One, is that this comedy sketch, originally written by British author Lauri Wylie, for the theatre, is the 18-minute single-take black-and-white videotape recording featuring British comedians Freddie Frinton and May Warden. It was made by a German television station in 1963. It has since become the most frequently repeated television programme ever.
The sketch has become a tradition in German-speaking countries, where up to half the population may watch it every year on New Year’s Eve. This proportion is confidently expected to soar far higher this year. Which may, sadly, have something to do with their Schadenfreude at the soreheaded barminess of their Englische cousins with their (allegedly) all-conquering armies. And never more, tragically, that in this, the era of (sob) Die Brexit. Think Die Backstop, think the character called (gasp) Mr. Pomeroy.
Although the sketch is most popular in non-English-speaking countries, it is typically shown in the original English without dubbing or subtitles. It is easy to understand with even a basic knowledge of English due to the general physical nature of the comedy.
The performance remains practically unknown to the English-speaking world, go háirithe san aon tír nach labhartar ach an Béarla éigeantach amháin / not least in the only compulsory English-only speaking country left in the EU.
British people are surprised when encountering fans’ ability to quote dialogue. The line “Same procedure as every year” (in the original English) has become a very popular catchphrase in Germany. The phrase has even entered everyday vocabulary in Deutschland, and is used in newspaper headlines and advertisements.
(Answer to the teaser geezer :Too true, Missy Sophie Saxe-Coburg-Gotha aka Queenie Lizardbeth the Second of Anglo-Saxony).
Yes, indeed, this is the particular hausfrau in Schloss Windsor who’s glued to the TV every New Year’s Eve waching Dinner for One. And her eyes nude of glasses as she can repeat every line verbatim in (gasp) Die Konigin’s Englisch ! In a roundabout long way to Triperary kinda way.
With Prince Philip, late of the banks of the Dodder in Dublin 4, being heard to mutter ‘same procedure as every year, dear ?’. Which, alas, is all Greek to Missy Sophie as this stage of her advanced yet still effervescent decrepitude.
And just as the Yunes, north and the Yunes, south of the Black Sow’s Dyke are glued, with full, button-bursting bellies, to their correctly-buttoned tellies for Queenie’s (recorded) cosy one-bar heaterside talk on Christmas Day, quite unknown to them, Die Sie is actually engaged in conducting the petrified familial gathering (with traces of Black Forest crumbs still on their chinless faces) in a carousing chorus of a (live) version of:
O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum
Wie treu sind deine Blätter
Du grünst nicht nur zur Sommerzeit,
Nein, auch im Winter, wenn es schneit.
O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
Wie treu sind deine Blätter.
O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
Du kannst mir sehr gefallen.
Wie oft hat nicht zur Weihnachtszeit
Ein Baum von dir mich hoch erfreut.
O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
Du kannst mir sehr gefallen.
Christmas is nigh: season of mistletoes and mellow futility; all mince pies, a mincing Ryan Tubridy and mulled wine in Mullinalaghta. And for the nonce, at least, Ponsietta Time in Government Buildings on Merrion Street, D 2, with the current incumbent ensconced there.
The general consensus in the Free Southern Stateen is that the highlight of the Festive Season is indubitably the Toy Show with the banal-retentive Boy Wonder, Skinny Malink Tubs shyly yet slyly playing his favourite tune on the melodeon in the Key of K, and him to be wearing a grin as wide as Cardigan Bay itself:
–500,000 squids a year, kids / I’m clearing 500,000 squids from the kids.
With a brain more scrawny than brawny it was equally inevitable than RT would be banal-retentive AND a natural bow-tie protegé of Gay Byrne in two respects, at the very least: like GB he thrice failed traumatically to make a go go go of it in GB and is now back in Montrose and, ho, ho, ho in the process of making moola hand over bony fist. Like his mentor GB it is actually all about Pocket Science with RT.
–Fógra: Tubs ag obair.
Yes, RT of RTE, the same publicly-funded station which recently celebrated the 1918 Elections for Dáil Éireann as a resounding triumph. For Sinn Féin?. Well, no. Who, so? Why, for Sinn Fem, ar ndóigh.
RT of RTE and his mentor G.B. both turned a similar cold shoulder to G.A. while differing in other minor details, mainly to do with style. Whereas G.B. witheld his own snow-white hand from the rad hond of Mr. Adams (mar is é a bhí ann !) much more recently R.T. opted, cute-hourly, to report the gnashing of teeth out there in RadioLand. Gnash is one of R.T.’s favourite words: it rhymes with cash.
It being the Season of O, Holy Night (composer Adolf Adam) it is only right and gob-stopper proper that Gerry ‘Adolf’ Adams should be a target, oops, guest of RTE.
Mick (sic) Heaney, the widely respected wireless critic of (yes) The Irish Times took, curiously enough, the side of R.T. in his head to head clash with G.A. It might be said that the product of one Blackrock was not at all enamoured of the performance by the representative of a different Blackrock.
Certain folk of a snide disposition are known to opine the notion that Mick (sic) is a token
bloke among the Scarlet O Haras of Tara Street, home of (yes) The Irish Times. The Perkin, of the
excessive hair lotion, begs to disagree:
-Mick (sic) Heaney is his own man. His organ of record, (yes) The Irish Times would have it no other way.
The (yes) Irish Times is, mar is eol, the print edish of RTE which has just voted as Team of the Year some female team, whose sport eludes one, but which went down to the most marvellous of moral victories when they were hockeyed by a cricket score to the tune of: 6-0. In the final of whatever tournament or other they had reached.
If the adorable Handel were still living on Liffeyside he would, incontestably, have composed an oratorio in honour of the Golden (?) Gals, possibly entitled:
-The Ms. Iah.
On the same Sports Show of the Year on RTE, Ray ‘Hootsmon’ Houghton, resplendent in his national attire of a wee kilt and bulging sporran, was inducted into the Hall of Fame, dating back to the days of yore when the Mull of Kintyre and the Giant’s Causeway were joined at the hype. Oh, mist rolling in, this lowers the boom on the time of the (sob) PLASTIC Paddies.
4 as a Chéile
Ni bhfuair na Dinosaurs an nod
Gradam a fháil i Spóirt na bProd
Dinah Shore
Glór an Óir
D’éalaigh Dino is Dinah ón slad.
For once, The Perkin, in true festive spirit, must beg to differ: for him there can be no question about the highpointer of this year’s Season of Good Will. Despite there being a damper put on what was the hearth-and- heart-warming hamper of a ceremony in the artful Cathedral of Christchurch of Ireland:
-The Canine Carol Service.
To which the tail-wagging wags appointed the anointed bow-band ‘Dog in a Manger’ to howl:
-Bark, the Herald Angels !
Sadly, the damper in question was the absence of the Moderator of Madra Matters. Now, whoever could that possibly be? A clue with the hint of lint:
–God looks in the mirror and reads Dog.
While:
–Dog looks in the mirror and reads God.
Yes, indeed, who else only (sob) The Linguistic Lapdog with a Laptop of (yes) The Irish Times. Alas, the absence of 3L was unavoidable, regrettably so. For it is not for nawt that our very own globally mobile canine candidate for the Nobel Prize in Wising Up the World, is known as, yes:
– Lionel Itchie-paws.
Once, twice, three Times an eye-shady editor, a true-blue Gideon McDuck of plucky Dublin, equipped with green (gan dabht) eyeshades, waistcoat and Mississippi gambler arm-bands.
Yes, The Irish Times, the (burp) New York Times, The Times, aka, (trouser cough) The Thunderer. The last named is, ní gá a rá, the Ked Doddy of them all The Timeses in the English-barking cities of the world. And where, today, The Diddy Men aka the phenomenon known as The Femmy Men have cleared their systems of Toxic masculinity.
Thus, clearing the way in turn for The Linguistic Lapdog with a Laptop to go forth where udders have feared to breed and tap out with an unusual absence (for him) of the prolix:
–Never mind the Rhymescheme !
Thus the 3L’s mobile phone is constantly on priority call from London and New York, ready at a mo’s no to fall in and hop on a fixed wing plane at the airport of the capital city of the only English-only barking stateen left in the EU. Whence to fly into the future tense as a lopsided sop to where the yawning gap in a wider and deeper understanding of the creepy and fawning Free Southern Stateen’s most recent pawning of its family tintawn, needs plugging. The 3 Brass Balled 3L was your only dog. The solitary Sir PC with an obligatory CP (cattle-prod) and his legendary PT: Predictive Text.
Truly, is our 3L the designer drug de jour for all those group-huggers of hackland who haw-haw-haughtily disdain the prayer mat of nationalism.
Hence his obligatory absence. Be sure and certain, however, that if the Linguistic Lapdog with a Laptop had his druthers he’d have been there with his brother tykes south of the Black Sow’s Dyke in Christchurch at the pelt-melting (gulp) Canine Carol Service.
Happily, His presence was still felt in His absence. As the message being relayed by the orgy of corgis and other bowlers who Brexited one of the two cheek-by-jowl Church of Ireland (sic) Cathedrals in Dublin 8 last week was of the instructions left by the God-like doggie in the stained glass window, the one with the waggly tail.
For FOTUS (for it is still he ! Fintan O Toole Uber Shoneen) is uniquely positioned to tell the toll as it was, is, and ought to be for he is descended from the less than enlighened, Leprechaun-speaking Labhrás O Tuathail, Ard-Easpag Átha Cliath from whom the RC Christchurch Cathedral was (burp) borrowed in 1180 and never (trouser cough) returned. One of those lapse of memory thingies, no doubt.
Finty and Sloinntí
Ó Tuathail darb ainm dó Labhrás
Gur daoradh a theanga chun báis
Hark ! at Yule
To Toole drool:
Around Irish necks, an albatross.
FOTUS, in fairness to hymn-singing him, to employ some butty footie-speak, fully recognises that the burden of spoof rests upon him.
The very last thing The Humourless One wants to do is to delve into the twelve days of whizdom from Norman Wisdom: this is no time to draw the, erm, Strongbow-wow.
The message was as follows:
On New Year’s Eve, in a spirit of atonement will the ding-dong tones of the bells of Christchurch ring-a-ding out across the roofs, galley proofs and woofs of a city with a RC No-Cathedral / gan ArdEaglais Chaitliceach dá laghad.
They will will be tolled in the bing-bong Big Ben manner of the later Liffeyside Handel, in which he managed to interweave massive but simple harmonic passages with contrapuntal sections of great ingenuity, as a reminder of the Deutschland DNA of Donner-und-Blitzen DUBlin:
–Pray, let us play Another Somebody done Somebody wrong Song.
Louder, please.
–PRAY, let us play ANOTHER SOMEBODY done SOMEBODY wrong SONG.
Such will be their New Year Resolution for the resolute yet modest perpetuation of the effortlessly ineffeable moral superiority of the Church of Ireland (sic).
Re-spect.
TUILLEADH LE TEACHT : TO BE CONTINUED
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