Banjaxed Read online

  Maybe it had something to do with the DG (doesn’t everything?). Perhaps in some misguided attempt at edification I mentioned ‘La Directoire-Générale’. Whatever it was, the Great British Public responded manfully, with detailed pictures and impassioned descriptions of ‘Directoire’ knickers, their uses and abuses in wartime coming in for particularly unnecessary comment. After a couple of days there was little I couldn’t tell you about the public’s preference for the ‘double’ over the ‘kite’ gusset. Or how the fiendish grip of the elastic could cut off a man’s circulation for days – not a tale for the squeamish.

  However, it was not until we became embroiled in wartime reminiscence that things got out of hand. Many a disgruntled former NCO, still bearing the mental scars of being jilted by some slip of a WRAC lass for a callow youth with a couple of pips, claimed that the sturdy nether-garments of these pillars of British womanhood were known to the men as ‘Officers’ Groundsheets’.

  Still more sick at heart at seeing an Englishwoman’s virtue besmirched by the promise of nylons and chewing-gum, a listener said the finely-woven drawers were known to the cognoscenti as ‘Americans’. One yank, apparently, and they were off.

  The nastiest calumny of all, however, on a garment that played a vital role in the war effort, was the nickname ‘Messerschmitt’. These, you may correctly imagine, came down without a fight.

  After all that, it was no surprise to me when the directive from above arrived on my desk. Its message was succinct. ‘Drop the knickers!’ was all it said.

  Spring has sprung

  Of all the seasons. Spring brings out the worst in my listeners. Something to do with the ‘sap’, as they like to call me:

  It was an April morning, and the rain was falling fast;

  And Spring was in the air, as you could tell by the icy blast.

  The daffodils were wincing, and the birds were all off-key,

  But I tried hard to be cheerful, and the brighter side to see.

  ‘At least,’ I said, ‘It’s done its worst; it just can’t get more black.’

  Then Wogan started his programme, and I had to take it back.

  Joan Wells,

  Benfleet, Essex.

  A regular little ray of sunshine, even on the dullest day, that’s me.

  During the Times newspaper stoppage, I boldly put myself forward as a ‘surrogate’ Letters Column for those who were feeling the need to let it all hang out in the old Thunderer. I am still picking letters about the First Cuckoo out of my hair. This, of course, provoked a lot of unkind stuff about being able to hear a cuckoo anytime between the hours of 7.30 and 10.00 in the mornings, on Radio 2.

  Harry Hartill takes it all with the phlegmatic calm of that put-upon breed, the Traffic Warden. I wish we had a few more like him around the Broadcasting House meters:

  Spring Fever

  The joys of spring, my

  Heart stands still.

  The cuckoo, lamb, and

  Pneumatic drill.

  The coned off lanes, the

  Diversion signs,

  The Traffic Wardens, and

  Yellow lines.

  The half dug hole, wet

  Tar and fog,

  The flattened hedgehog,

  The straying dog.

  The jack-knifed tanker, the

  Straying sheep.

  The abnormal loads, behind

  Which we creep.

  The police car siren, the

  Radar trap,

  The breakdown call, the

  Waiting nap.

  Road licence, tax and

  MOT,

  These joys of Spring wait

  You and me.

  Harry Hartill.

  Spring at the BBC is a time of new growth, bustle and vigour. Fresh faces, as yet unacquainted with the ‘Block in Promotion’, new ideas not yet trampled into the dust – even a Radio 3 producer sometimes comes up with an idea! Executives, shaking off the dust of hibernation, begin their childish, harmless clamour for a new carpet. Occasionally, an over-enthusiastic young clerk who has broken the Rules of the Lord by, say, complaining about the switchboard ladies, is found lying senseless and battered in some corridor. Generally, though, cheery bonhomie prevails, and nowhere more so than on the greensward of the BBC roof.

  There, every Thursday in spring, come rain or shine, is held the historic and strangely moving ‘Dance of the Virgins’. The origins of this mysterious rite are, of course, long lost in the mists of time. But the biggest mystery of all remains: why does nobody ever turn up for the thing?

  I will gratefully leave the subject where it lies, with this sturdy little offering, again from Joan Wells:

  That time of year has come again

  When we must alter all the clocks,

  Unstitch the winter underwear

  And wash the piles of dirty socks.

  It is the time, the jolly time

  When all the kids get chickenpox,

  And when you’ve settled all the bills

  Your bank account is on the rocks.

  But it is spring, so let us sing

  Hey ho, and jolly hollyhocks;

  Hail (also snow, and fog, and sleet)

  The merry vernal equinox.

  Songs for Swingers

  ‘Songs for Swinging . . .’ is an idea as old as time, or Acker Bilk. It was that scrumpy-loving rascal who gave me the idea, as we journeyed together to the fair town of Castlebar, in the West of Ireland, for the annual International Song Contest. Acker had a million examples of Swinging Songs, garnered over the years by his merry Paramount Jazz Band, and when I mentioned it over the air, in a moment of passing weakness, I found that everyone else in the country had a million of ’em as well. I don’t think anything on the programme before or since has promoted such a volume of mail. Herewith, from the thousands, some telling examples of the genre:

  Songs for Swinging Homicidal Maniacs:

  ‘When you grow too old to scream

  I’ll have you to dismember.’

  Songs for Swinging Doctors:

  ‘Isn’t it Rheumatic’

  ‘Let’s Cut the Whole Thing Off’

  ‘A Pretty Girl is like a Malady’.

  Songs for Swinging Silicone Manufacturers:

  ‘Mammaries are Made of This’.

  Songs for Swinging Monarchs:

  ‘Might as well Reign until September’

  ‘Kings Ain’t What They Used to be’.

  Songs for Swinging Wrestlers:

  ‘As Long as He Knees Me’

  ‘I’ve Got You under My Shin’.

  Songs for Swinging Perverts:

  ‘Never Smile at a Paedophile’

  ‘Doin’ What Comes Unnaturally’.

  Songs for Swinging Amateur Photographers:

  ‘Someday My Prints Will Come’.

  Songs for Swinging Sewer Men:

  ‘You Stepped out of a Drain’

  ‘Great Falls of Mire’.

  Songs for Swinging Magistrates:

  ‘Someday I’ll Fine You’.

  Songs for Swinging Dentists:

  ‘Decay We Were’

  ‘Gummy the Moonlight’

  ‘Plaque in the Old Routine’.

  Songs for Swinging Drunks:

  ‘The Soaks who Live on the Hill’.

  Songs for Swinging Knights:

  ‘I Could Have Lanced All Night’.

  Songs for Swinging Antique Dealers:

  ‘Just One of Those Mings’.

  Songs for Swinging Arabs:

  ‘The Shriek of Agony’.

  Songs for Swinging Murderers:

  ‘Stranglers in the Night’.

  Songs for Swinging Bed Bugs:

  ‘On the Sheet Where You Live’.

  Songs for Swinging Ornithologists:

  ‘Give Me Five Linnets More’

  ‘Boiled Beef and Parrots’.

  Songs for Swinging Londoners:

  ‘I Get a Kick out of Kew’

  ‘Putney A
mong the Girls’

  ‘What Kind of Fulham I?’

  ‘Hendoneath the Arches’

  ‘Harrow Young Lovers’

  ‘Wembley Red Red Robin

  Comes Bob, Bob, Bobbin Along’.

  Songs for Swinging Nuns:

  ‘I Left My Heart with Some Franciscans’.

  Songs for Swinging Bakers:

  ‘Kiss Me Buns and Kiss Me Pies and Kiss Me Buns Again’

  ‘I Get a Cake Out of You’.

  Songs for Swinging Eunuchs:

  ‘I Can’t Give You Anything But Laughs, Baby’.

  Songs for Swinging German Asylum Doctors:

  ‘God Rest Ye Jerry Mentalmen’.

  Songs for Swinging Longbow Manufacturers:

  ‘I’ve Got Yew Under My Skin’.

  Songs for Swinging Bookworms:

  ‘Paperback Biter’.

  Songs for Swinging German Gays:

  ‘You Need Hans’.

  Songs for Swinging Cricketers:

  ‘Amazing W G Grace’.

  Songs for Swinging Oyster Fishermen:

  ‘Has Anybody Seen My Pearl?’

  Songs for Swinging Undertakers:

  ‘Painting the Shrouds with Sunshine’.

  Contributions from Francis Lamb, London E6;

  Bob and Barbara Ross, Cyffylliog, Clwyd;

  Rosemary Gilbert, Andover, Hampshire;

  O H Thomas, Malvern, Worcestershire;

  David Snell, Tillingham, Essex; Lorna Parkins,

  Streatham, London; Wug Plumb and Rosie Jarbo,

  Worcester; H W (Lon) Chaney, Ickenham,

  Middlesex; Edith Mateer, Twickenham, Middlesex.

  Jimmy Young

  As you will know from reading the lives of other great stars, it’s a Lonely Life At The Top. Picture, if you will, the great disc-jockey: a solitary figure, hunched over his microphone, engrossed in the fine art of communicating his thoughts to millions of listeners, avid as they are for his every word, smiling at his nuances, chuckling heartily as the bons mots trip off his sensitive lips. A man, you would say, at the Top of the Tree, with the World at his Feet. A social lion, you would aver, with wet-lipped lovelies catering for his every whim, the rich and famous beating paths to his door.

  Yes, but it’s not all fun being Jimmy Young . . . It can be lonely too – pathetic, even.

  Sometimes, of a morning, I feel a surge of pity as the nurse wheels the grand old broadcaster into my studio in his bath-chair, and after wetting his dry, cracked lips with a sponge, we get a few weak, rambling sentences from him. Often the cry goes up: ‘Nurse! The screens!’ But it’s usually too late. Hard to believe that this shattered husk was once the Singing Baker’s Boy, The Man From Laramie, the one who was Too Young, the Donny Osmond of his day.

  I never show him the letters, of course. For they would surely break the old chap’s heart. How can people be so horrid?

  ‘When are they going to put Jimmy Young out of his misery?’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be kinder to have him shot?’

  Sometimes, they even criticize me:

  ‘Why don’t you two get married?’

  ‘What’s the matter, is he your father or something?’

  Cruel, cruel world! There, there, Jimbo . . .

  Give the boy a Goldfish

  Perish the thought that all that ever comes an honest broadcaster’s way from his doughty band of listeners is but dog’s abuse and the discouraging word. There was, for instance, a wonderful woman called Lady Angela who followed my every move in a Volkswagen bus, which she dubbed the ‘Wogan Wagon’. It was plastered with photos and posters of our mutual idol, and wherever I went, be it to open a fete or close down a supermarket, there would be the ‘Wogan Wagon’ with Lady Angela and a band of young people I she had bribed heavily to come along and cheer on the ageing funster with word and gesture.

  Lady Angela turned up at the dingy portals of the BBC, on birthdays and anniversaries, bearing crates of champagne, bouquets of flowers and cakes moulded into the shape of gramophones. If I attempted to refuse the largesse she became hurt and angered, and when I tried to thank her she blushed and ran. Lovely, generous woman. I’ve often wondered if she just felt sorry for me.

  Other listeners remember my family’s birthdays and anniversaries better than I do. Indeed, when my mother was in hospital some years ago, a couple of listeners, hearing me read out a request for her, sent my mother cards and gifts!

  Listeners send cheques and money to my ‘starving’ children at Christmas and birthday time, which naturally I return, if possible, with thanks, or else send on to the BBC Charities office.

  I get eggs at Easter, shamrock on St Patrick’s Day, primroses on Primrose Day, roses on St George’s Day, ‘Fisherman’s Friend’ lozenges when I’m wheezy, toys, ties, socks, pet rocks, sweets and Smurfs. I get bits of cake from weddings, and haggis for no good reason whatsoever.

  A few years ago, a goldfish which my children had won at a fair passed away to the sounds of great weeping, wailing and the gnashing of milk teeth. Believing, as I do, that I should hold nothing back from my listeners, I bruited the sad news abroad. Two days later, I was the recipient of a polythene bag full of water and a dozen goldfish! I proudly carried them to Paddington and we all took the train home. The eldest survivor died only last year. Do you think if I said the ashtrays in my wife’s Ferrari were full . . .?

  ‘Can they smell us from here?’

  Occasionally, in a vain attempt to revitalize the jaded listener, I will refer to my ‘bronicals’ being stuffed, or my ‘various’ veins causing me agony. Sometimes of an early morn, goaded beyond endurance by thirst, I will shriek that unless some passing Samaritan gets me a cup of coffee, I will assuredly go beresk. Now, you would imagine that this piteous whingeing, if not provoking waves of sympathy, would at least bring a trickle of condolence. Instead the letters pour in, pointing out my appalling ignorance.

  Dear Sir,

  The word you are searching for is ‘berserk’, which I believe has its roots in unseemly behaviour by the Norse. Still, being Irish, I suppose you couldn’t be expected to know these things . . .’

  I have been known to slip in the odd Latin tag, with the passing Classical scholar in mind. ‘Sic transit Gloria Swanson,’ I intone, hoping for a scholarly reaction. So far – zilch. If he’s out there, he’s not with me. Probably a Radio 1 man. Hoping to snag the ear of the sleeping Celt, I slip easily into my native Erse: ‘Tá sé mahogany gaspipe!’ (Give the woman in the bed more porther!) No answer, comes the stern reply.

  Yet, one word of French – a ‘phrase utile’ to help the ‘O’ levels along, and I’m up to my oxters in:

  Everyday French: ‘Avez-vous de jupes-culottes?’ (Have you any cami-knickers?)

  French Pronunciation Simplified: Toto: Good day, my uncle. I to-you wish a good and happy year. Mamma to-me has said that if you to-me give a sovereign, I am-to take well care to not it lose . . .’

  A passing piece of South African ‘kwela’ music, played if I’m not mistaken on the old nose-flute and called ‘Tom Hark’, followed by a hearty ‘Jambo!’ to calm the natives, produced from a demented old Africa hand a Swahili phrase book, full of such pithy pars as: ‘That man is a witch-doctor. He has a frog in his pocket.’ This was immediately followed by a letter from Sheila Thomas containing some more beauties of the bush, kloof and veldt.

  Dear Terry Wogan,

  Hearing your African interlude this morning re ‘Tom Hark’ etc., reminded me of an incident which happened a couple of years ago.

  There was great excitement in the parish when we heard that an African Minister from Uganda was to visit the Vicarage for a month. The Vicar appealed for offers of help to entertain him as he wanted to sample life with a typical English family. Being more ‘typical’ than most, we offered to have him to stay for a weekend. As the Vicar wasn’t sure whether or not he spoke English we borrowed an English–Swahili phrase book from someone who had spent several years in Uganda. The phrases
had us nearly helpless with laughter.

  Examples:

  Do not expectorate about here!

  Usiteme mate huku!

  Put in the rubble and beat it well.

  Tia kokoto kapigilie sana.

  Can they smell us from here?

  Watapata kutuona kutoka hapa?

  Split the skull and give the brains to the cook.

  Pasua kichwa koripe mpishi ule ubongo.

  How old are these droppings?

  Mavi haya ya lini?

  The white ants have eaten the timbers.

  Miti yake imeliwa na mehwa.

  A snake has bitten me.

  Nimeumwa na nyoka.

  Needless to say, when he arrived he spoke faultless English, lived in a bungalow with colour TV and every mod. con. and the nearest he had been to a lion or tiger was at the National Game Reserve Park near Kampala. He couldn’t understand Swahili and said his native language was Luandan.

  Sheila M Thomas,

  Rossendale,

  Lancashire.

  As we used to say in Ireland when I was a lad: ‘Póg mo thóin!’ And if you think I’m going to translate that . . .

  The haunted fish tank

  I am, by nature, placid. Boring, even. The fiery Celtic blood that ought to course through my veins appears to have diluted. Only rarely do my eyes start from my head, and flecks of foam appear on my chiselled lips. That occurs when people say things like:

  ‘Put your name there. I can’t stand you myself, but it’s for my daughter.’

  ‘Only 2½ hours work a day, eh?

  Not bad.’

  ‘You Irish – such wonderful talkers.’

  ‘Golf is basically a simple game.’

  ‘I never watch television, myself.’

  I watch it all the time, and I don’t care who knows it. Whenever I’m in the States, I have it with my wheatybangs for breakfast. I watch television for amusement and relaxation. If any information or education happens to slip through while my brain is resting, fine. So I often refer to whatever epic I’ve been watching on the ‘haunted fish tank’ the night before. I may pass comment on Kate Jackson’s astounding acting in ‘Charlie’s Angels’, or on Petrocelli’s tardiness in building his house, a task he appears to have been at for ever, but which is still barely past the foundations. Listeners quickly riposte that even if the raunchy young lawyer does get it up, since he appears to be building it down a gulch in the middle of the New Mexico Desert, his chances of mains drainage are limited!