The Idler, Monday, February 15, 2010

You ain't seen nothin'

DISTURBING news for those who disapprove of presidential polygamy – a well-placed source tells me Jacob Zuma has barely started out on the path of matrimony.

Apparently there is an alternative interpretation at Nkandla of that line in the marriage service: "Four better, four worse, four richer, four poorer …"

Four times four is 16. That means 16 wives are required. Which means the president still has 13 to go – twelve-and-a-half if you take into account the current fiancée.

 

Stand by, Guinness Book of World Records! This one will run and run!

 

 

JZ has arrived

 

MEANWHILE, the president has made it into the Glenda Slagg column of Britain's satirical Private Eye magazine. This is a send-up of the shrill hackettes of Fleet Street, where Glenda contradicts herself every other paragraph, with a profusion of exclamation marks and question marks, then ends up naming her favourite hunks.

 

"Here they are – Glenda's Valentine's Day Valentinos?!?!

 

·         Keith Schilling!?!! Mr Superinjunction, they call him!!?! You can come round and gag me with your big writ anytime!?!!

·         Mr Justice Tugendhat. Hats off to Britain's sexiest judge!?!! Fancy invading my privacy, Your Lordship – cos I'm gagging for it?! Geddit?!?

·         President Jacob Zuma!?! Crazy name, crazy wives!?!!

 

"Byeee!"

 

When you appear in the Glenda Slagg column, you've arrived.

 

 

 

The muse awakens

 

LAST week we discussed the way Americans use the correct Hindi version of the word "pajama" instead of "pyjama", the way we have it. This awakens the muse in reader Andrew Dale:

 

President Barack Obama

Goes to bed in a flannel pajama.

His wife is more crude,

She sleeps in the nude.

Footnote: Americans, I do suspect,

In this regard are more correct

Than you or I,

With "a" not "y".

 

That's very good. I'm not sure where he gets the information about Michelle, but who am I to contradict him?

 

Truthful James

 

The same Andrew Dale recalls my writing recently about a "Truthful James" – whose real name I could not remember at the time - who for many years contributed a weekly poem of great wit to one of our sister newspapers. He wonders whether some clue to the author is provided by the poems of Francis Bret Harte, who often used that name. In The Society upon the Stanislaus, he wrote:

 

I reside at Table Mountain, and my name is Truthful James;

I am not up to small deceit, or any sinful games.

 

Bang on! Those are the very lines on which Truthful James based his nom de plume. However, they can't refer to Cape Town's Table Mountain (or Maritzburg's, for that matter). There must also be a Table Mountain in California, which is where Francis Bret Harte lived and wrote in the 19^th century.

 

Meanwhile, I've at last got the name of our own Truthful James. He was Herbert Lanham, a delightful retired policeman of the British colonial service, who was involved in the investigations that led to the sensational "White Mischief" murder trial in Kenya in the 1950s.

 

He left Durban many years ago to live with his daughter in the Eastern Cape. Somebody somewhere must have possession of a wonderful collection of his work, all of it very witty and superbly crafted; some of it very saucy and never published.

 

Tailpiece

THIS fellow spots a sign: "Talking dog for sale". He is taken round the back to meet the dog.

"Do you really talk?"

"Yep," says the dog. "I discovered this gift when I was young. I got in touch with the secret service and in no time they had me jetting from country to country, sitting in rooms with spies and world leaders because nobody would think a dog could be eavesdropping. I was one of their most valuable spies. The jetting around really tired me out though so I switched to a job at the airport, listening in on drug dealers and so on. I got a load of medals."

"How much for this dog?" the fellow asks the owner.

"Fifty bucks."

"Fifty bucks! Why so cheap?"

"I gotta tell ya. He's a big liar. He didn't do half that stuff."

Last word

There are lots of ways of being miserable, but there's only one way of being comfortable, and that is to stop running round after happiness. If you make up your mind not to be happy there's no reason why you shouldn't have a fairly good time.

Edith Wharton

GRAHAM LINSCOTT