11 NOVEMBER 1966, Page 14

Party Fun

AFTERTHOUGHT

By JOHN WELLS

CREDITABLE though the efforts of Whacker Wilson, The Prime Minister of Mirth, and Laughing Ted, Mr Wibbly Wobbly him- self, have undoubtedly been to introduce an atmo- sphere of Old Tyme Music Hall into the House of Commons, it must be ad- mitted that their excur- sions into the field of abusive cross-talk have so far been only very tentative. Neither party has been observed to collapse on the death-dealing punch-line, and neither has so far slunk from the chamber glow- ing red with embarrassment or dragging his knuckles along the floor in broken dejection. Given the licence of parliamentary privilege, the fundamentally fatuous situation, and the massed banks of spectators ready to clap, jeer, hiss and jump up and down in infantile delight, not to mention the galleries of beady-eyed men waiting to splash sensational accounts of any clash across the front page of our national news- papers—HEATH SAVAGES WILSON IN MOTHER-IN- LAW RUMBLE-FANS SMASH BARRIERS-it seems that both comedians have a great deal still to learn about the technique of invective and the use of skilled abuse.

The secret of all successful custard-pie humour lies in the timing. The pie can be poked home with a quick left-hand jab or weighed in the hand for minutes before being swung back and slapped up the unsuspecting kilt, but the essen- tial condition is that the recipient should be coaxed into a state of maximum spiritual repose in which he is totally unprepared for the assault. Then, at exactly the right moment, the pie can be pushed in with devastating effect. Similarly with the balloon joke. Little is to be gained in the way of entertainment or satisfaction by attacking a man with an uninflated balloon: let him blow it up to the precise moment when it is at full stretch, a bright luminous red and a sud- den stab with a hatpin or a sharp jab in the fleshy parts will produce a bang or a long-drawn-out rude noise of infinite aesthetic beauty. In the same way the master of abuse must allow his victim to expand his fantasy, his absurd thesis, or his innate pomposity to the extreme before plunging in the barb and producing the pop.

My first experience of well-controlled invective was, as far as I can remember, when I was nine. We were taught English at that time by a huge round booming man with a red face and popping blue eyes.. He was particularly fond of reading The Jumblies out loud whenever possible, and also the recipe for making Amblongus Pie. Much given to puffing out his cheeks and rolling his eyes, he would come into the room chuckling or humming to himself, and always smoking his pipe. He would then sit down and remark 'Pipes out' or 'One more puff,' continuing to pull away at his pipe in a contented manner and beaming about the room. In this way we felt ourselves in- cluded in some sort of grown-up conspiracy against the Head Master, who clearly dis- approved of masters smoking in the class-room, and allowed ourselves to be lulled into a feeling of permissive camaraderie. He would then lay his pipe on the desk, and ask us questions. Be- lieving ourselves to be omniscient adults we would answer them with an easy confidence, until someone made a mistake. Immediately there was a thunder of rage as Beefy hammered on the in- side of the desk with his feet, and the inevitable 'Bumbling Baboon,' Cheesemite' or 'Walking Stench' smacked in with unerring accuracy and destructive effect.

A similar technique was employed by the drill sergeant at the barracks of the Middlesex Regi- ment at Mill Hill. Once again his timing was im- peccable. Controlling himself With the greatest difficulty, he would permit the squad to lollop up and down the square for some time, only shouting the occasional command and grinding his teeth quietly. Half-hypnotised by the regular crunch of boots on the finely gravelled surface, even the most awkward limped along with head thrown back and thumbs forced down, secretly imagining himself to resemble the men in bear- skins at the Trooping of the Colour. The sergeant permitted these fantasies to develop, occasionally lifting his shining and blue-polished chin to give the time. Then, at exactly the right moment, he would raise his voice to the level of screaming incantation affected by the professional drill in- structor, and shout 'Great Big Mary.' Every mem- ber of the squad felt himself personally reduced to a dwarf-sized scarecrow in an ill-fitting uni- form, and he would then call the whole demoral- ised heap to a halt, comparing our bearing and deportment on the march to that of a Piccadilly Penguin with an orange up its arse.

The fundamental aim in good abuse being to reduce some high-flown human illusion by a sudden and shocking comparison, it is perhaps inevitable that the best examples should be un- printable. What seems to endear these obscene comparisons to most of us, apart from the sheer joy of shouting them as poetry—the harsh glottal plosives, ringing nasals and labio-dentals----is the ultimate reduction they offer of an elegant, well- dressed and supercilious human being to less than an animal, to one of the less presentable parts of the human body. We see the victim suddenly de- prived of all intellectual and spiritual aspiration, a grotesque gargoyle of solid flesh, vulnerable and submissive to the outrageous whims of for- tune and yet somehow of even less value than the original from which the image was taken. If the leaders of both parties could just study

these simple rules, permitting their adversary to wax pompous, long-winded, and even more

absurd than at present, and then suddenly punc- turing him with the trenchant monosyllabic bark, the House of Commons might well prove a bonnier, place to be.