Watching ‘A Spy Among Friends’ last night Kim Philby excuses himself and says “must point Percy at the porcelain ” I thought that was not quite right.
Of course it was a phrased coined in the seventies by Barry Humphries and used in the Barry Mackenzie strip in Private Eye (I did a check to make sure).
It jarred in an otherwise excellent series, although the filming is set to colour washout and gloom.
Do any of our Antipodean allies know if it was in use in the sixties and would Philby have known of its use?
Anachronism
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I was familiar with the term in the sixties and seventies and pre-dating the Barry McKenzie stuff. In fact we grandsons used to joke about my grandfather the Reverend Percy Hunter saying they needed to point Percy at the pulpit.
Thanks Junes.
I still don’t think Philby would have known of its use in 63 though.
Around that time, Philby was a journo with, I think, The Observer. Whole load of Aussies working on Fleet Street and as foreign correspondents in those days so he could well have been aware of the usage.
When I worked in Bahrain in the early 80s I knew a journo called Tony Purdy who used to drink with KP when they were both posted to Beirut. I later got to know T’s daughter, Debby who was iirc KP’s god-daughter. Poor D eventually got motor neurons disease and became a hugely prominent figure in the assisted dying movement before sadly succumbing to the disease herself
There are several anachronisms that get my goat. One of the laziest being screenwriters having characters in films set any time before 2000 using the ghastly “reach out”
I think it quite plausible that he heard it , it amused him and he then used it himself.
Thanks again,I just wanted to be sure before writing a stiff letter of complaint to the Radio Times.
I cant think of anything in the Bazza McKenzie stuff that wasn’t already in idiomatic usage to some extent.
Wasn’t the Bazza version “point Percy at the pommy porcelain”?
Of course in 71 there was Percy by the Kinks about the world’s first penis transplant.
Based on a book written by Robyn Hitchcock’s dad
Although Call the Midwife is very wholesome and teeming with well-educated nuns, I think it’s a bit of a stretch that every character seems to express themselves with such polite and flowery eloquence.
Awful programme.
Or “perfectly horrid” as someone in CTM might put it
Or “perfectly horrid” as someone in CTM might put it
I’m a bit taken aback by your strong reaction to Call The Midwife, @NigelT ! Why do you hate it so much? I’m curious.
I’ve never watched it, but I just assumed it was harmless and easily ignored.
That is true, but I find the whole thing sentimental, predictable and unconvincing. I grew up in the East End in the 50s/60s and I just don’t recognise it at all. I would actually prefer it if they didn’t shoehorn social issues and clumsy political point making into it – this is the sort of thing that makes the BBC open to the accusations we have all read, but it is all so dreadfully written as well.
Just to explain – I only see it because Mrs. T watches it!
Christmas Eve – snow etc – a young teenage couple, female heavily pregnant, knock on the heavy wooden door of Novartis House.
Nice Sister Jenny Agutter answers – “Many felicitations of the Season to you both! How may I be of assistance?”
Young man, cockney accent, clutching his cloth cap with both hands – “I regret this intrusion on your enjoyment of this special festival, but Lucy and I find ourselves without accommodation due to the prevailing hostility directed towards us across both of our families ever since they discovered Lucy was in the (whispers) family way.”
Nice Sister Jenny Agutter – “I sorely sympathise with your plight, but Novartis House is not set up for emergency accommodation services. Also, regrettably, you’re not Catholic and you’re not married. Why on earth would you think we would give you any assistance at all? As things stand, I must say I agree with your parents!”
Lucy – “I am so sorry for this imposition and our sinful ways ‘n all…but we find ourselves in a state of extreme desperation.”
NSJA – “Very well. Fred has pigs in the back yard and he treats them like royalty! There will be a warm and dry spot there, I’m sure.”
(You know the rest…) Lucy gives birth among the pigs just after midnight, on Christmas Day. Trixie and the “Lennie Bennett” midwife deliver the baby with good humour and there’s an all-round air of goodwill and professional marvellousness. Lucy rests happily with her new baby.
As day breaks, we see Fred politely but firmly shoo-ing the young family off down the street. The couple pause for a moment and look back to Novartis House, where The Senile Elderly Nun is watching them from behind a net curtain.
Senile Elderly Nun – ” Amdist all the troubles of the world, every day yields another miracle…one just needs to keep one’s eyes open – and one’s heart ! Open to His glory. Verily…unto us a child is born! Alleluia! ”
Young couple and baby, homeless, disappear into the gloom. (credits)
I demand we pin this to the top of the blog until we sort this out. It’s much too important. 🙂
Once in an episode of the nineties Sunday evening ITV drama, Heartbeat , a plod procedural set in the Yorkshire Dales at a non-specified period in the 1960s, a new character was described as being ‘a bit touchy-feely’. I emitted a deep growl, but continued watching.
They also have played some records from the early 70s I believe. Appalling!
That’s all explained towards the end of S16 when they were running out of plot ideas and had Ventris invent a Time Machine
This is nit-picking of the highest order. Nothing wrong whatsoever in dropping in modern phrases/jargon into period pieces.
The funniest series currently showing, The Great, is peppered with 2023 one-liners and all the better for it.
A documentary purporting to be realistic is one thing, drama is another. Artistic licence and all that
It’s fine in The Great as it does say it’s loosely based on Catherine’s life and not to be taken seriously.
Years ago I appeared in a production of The Lion in Winter one of the characters (Henry 11 possibly) is placing presents under the Christmas tree, several centuries out of date.
The Percilage phrase just seemed out of place I’m glad there’s a good chance he could have known the phrase.
No Nit Unpicked. This is the AW way.
Which is why I asked if it could have been in use in the sixties and could Philby have known of its use.
In Derek Jarman’s film Caravaggio the titular painter listens to the football results on the radio and his lover rides a motorbike. Talk about sloppy research!
Anachrony In The UK
🎵 It’s coming some time that is historically inaccurate 🎵
Oh Anachrony, thou relentless foe,
Thou bring’st my fate to a heavy blow.
Thy twist of time and space, so cruel,
My life forever stuck in a duel.
No peace in past or present day,
Only reminders of what’s been taken away.
Forlorn hope of a future bright,
Lost in the shadows of thy might.
Oh Anachrony, thou doth haunt me so,
Never letting go, forever to and fro.
My life but a mere pawn in thy game,
Crushed under thy unyielding fame.
So I resign myself to thy decree,
For in thy grasp I shall never be free.
Oh Anachrony, thou will be the death of me,
Until thy hold on my soul doth finally flee.
In the current BBC Sunday night drama set in WWII the Hurricane pilots talk to each other constantly over their radios during combat – this is a constant annoyance (and is done in countless films) as it’s completely inaccurate.
However in the episode shown on Sunday (set in 1941) one of the Hurricanes is damaged and his wing mate tells the pilot to eject. Ejector seats weren’t generally fitted to prototype and military planes in the RAF until the late 40’s and the first combat aircraft to use them in any capacity (a German night fighter) wasn’t introduced until 1942.
Oh do getta life!
Oi!
I like @clemfandagos accuracy.
It was the Heinkel He 280 although this plane never went into service.
The first operational plane with an ejector seat was the Heinkel He 219
Don’t get me started about the number of errors in Rush (the Hunt/Lauda film from a few years ago)
I agree – anomalies & the odd boob is understandable & forgivable, but major clunkers included by lazy writers are infuriating.
The odd boob is entirely forgivable…hurrr.
‘I’m going for a piss outa one of me dicks’ often used oop north.
In what context? And I’m assuming you must mean the north east as I never heard it in well over a decade living in Lancashire.
Nor a lifetime in Yorkshire.
Lots of planets have a North..
How many dicks have you got, Baron?
I recently observed a number of inexcusably careless production errors of this kind in Ken Russell’s otherwise superbly accurate biopic “Lisztomania”. Firstly, Ringo Starr was an odd choice to play Pope Pius IX, being nowhere near old enough and quite incapable of sounding convincingly Italian. Furthermore, Richard Wagner wasn’t a vampire, he didn’t rise from his grave as the Frankenstein monster, and he wasn’t the same person as Adolf Hitler. And neither Hitler nor Wagner had an electric guitar that was also a machine-gun.
Also, to the best of my knowledge Franz Liszt was never struck by a train while chained to an exploding piano, he didn’t win the Second World War by firing rainbow death-rays at Frankenstein Hitler from a flying perspex organ, and last but not least, I’m fairly sure his willy wasn’t ten feet long.
I feel that if the production had paid more attention to detail, these trivial but annoying inaccuracies could have been avoided, and this great historical drama would be taken as seriously as it deserves to be.
(borrowed from Viz)
Yeah, that’s outrageous.
And in the film “One Million Years B.C.” Raquel Welch is wearing a bikini made from animal skins, when anyone with half a brain knows that the bikini was introduced by Louis Réard in 1946 and named after the Bikini Atoll of atom bomb notoriety. Tcoh!