My wife kindly bought tickets for us both to see “The Importance Of Being Earnest”. David Suchet as Lady Bracknell, beamed live to local theatres all over the country from the Vaudeville in the West End. Our auditorium, in our small town in Surrey, was packed to the gills, mostly with over-65s.
We arrived with minutes to spare, but I still found time to pop to the bar and order a couple of large gin and tonics – plastic glasses, of course, you know how rowdy pensioners can get. The young woman who served me asked if I would like a loyalty card. I’d noticed on the way in that next week they were showing the Cumberbatch “Hamlet”. So I said, “Oh, we don’t really come here regularly, but I think we might try the…” Now this is went it all went wrong. I can’t vouch for the precise form of syllables; however, in attempting to say “the Benedict Cumberbatch Hamlet”, I said something like “the Benecunt Hamberditch…” The c*** syllable certainly featured and the rest was garbage. I lamely added “Hamlet thing” and slunk away with my drinks.
At the interval, I braved the bar again. This time it was packed. I queued. I waited and waited. This time there were two bar staff. I prayed I wouldn’t get the same young lady when I reached the front. But of course, I did. Perhaps she wouldn’t remember me. She made eye contact. “Hello,” she said. In an unnecessary panic, I blurted something between “Hi” and “Hello.” It popped out, in one clipped but agonising syllable, as: “Ho!”. Thankfully for me, she didn’t bat an eyelid.
Somehow, the second gaffe felt worse than the first.
Suchet was marvellous. Not sure I’ll bother with Benecunt Hamberditch.
I’m sure saying daft things happens more as we get older. The other night The Light and I were talking about the niggling aches that come with middle age. I mentioned than in addition to a right knee which sometimes aches when I walk down stairs, my right foot had some kind of muscle strain that gives me sharp pains when I twist my ankle a certain way. She looked thoughtful for a moment, then said, ‘Do you think your foot is connected to your knee?’
Benecunt Hamberditch he shall forever be!
Afterword t-shirt?
My favourite word mangling story was told by the late great Humphrey Lyttleton.
A radio interviewer once said to him, “I hear you’re a bit of an orthinologist.” Humph said that the answer: “No, I’m more of a word-botcher,” only occurred to him when he was driving home on the motorway.
I remember Dickie Davies once announcing an afternoon of ‘FA cock sucker’.
Commentatora sometimes talk about “a cross-cum-shot. I know what they mean, but it always creates an inappropriate image.
I’m more of a Cumberdick Bendybatch man myself.
Or Bendydick Cumsabunch.
My GLW mangles words a lll the time and mrs in our best friend couple does the same. We have talked about compiling a book of them. Earlier this week my wife came out with two in the same night. There was a news report about a new leisure complex opening within the NEC and my wife said – ‘I think that’s going to be a white skeleton’. Later in the evening we watched Joanna Lumleys Trans Siberian rail adventure. We got talking to thinking about doing it ourselves. I mentioned that apart from Beijing to Moscow you could also do the alternate route of Moscow to Vladivostock. By which time she had googled it on her phone and said ‘Look, you can even go from St. Pancreas’.
Unrelated other than the c word and the equal manglietude of Engelbert the H, I read an interview with Tom Jones in the Metro free paper just yesterday, which raised the question of whether time had cooled the friction between the two of them. The answer, assuming I read the asterisks correctly was in the negative as “once a cunt, always a cunt.”
Anyone know what they fell out about?
We’ve all done the “popcorn/cop porn” one, haven’t we?