1956-07-28 — Page 14

ARTIE

AL.

**... in reply to you: letter of the -Oh! well bowled sir 1-1 wins to inform you -Oh! well plures, sir!..."

26

A British

2

THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, JULY 28, 1956.

CYRIL STAPLETON'S

HOW TO Column

**I'

**

The Most Unforgettable

WRITE A CRAZY SONG Character

walking backwards for many of its more serious someone had forgotten to

Christmas,

Across the Irish Seo,

I've tried walking sideways and 'walking to the front, But people ail say It i

publicity stunt,***

i

HOSE remarkable lines record come from 8

outselling currently

Crossword Puzzle

12

13

14

15

ACROSS

3 Very humstry (81.

8 Decayed (8).

9 Choso (8).

11 Disciple (B).

12 Lake (4)

13 Below

(3).

18 Hinder (5).

19 Narrative (4).

22 Scurns (8).

24 Awakening call (8).

25 Trial (6).

20 Accidente (8).

22

DOWN

| Reinforcement (5).

2 Vestment (5).

3 Echo (7).

4. Afresh (4).

5 Always (4).

G Groom (8).

Unexpected (8).

10 Flat (5).

14 Wickert spirit (5).

15 Maniers (7).

10

Ragey (0).

17 Able (0).

Skindint(0).

21 Devotional song (5).

22 Expires (4).

23 Frult (4).

YESTERDAY'S CROSSWORD.--Across: 3 Dainties, 7 Rider,

18

17 Minster, 15 Ante, 6 Agitates, 10 Allame, 13 Discard, Bestial, 20 Ide, 21 Nations, 20 Thrust, 27 Engineer, 28 Enter, 29 Titmouse, Dawn: Broad, 2 Idols, 3 Drama, 4 Note, 5 Intent. 8 Sister, German, 1 Fired, 12 Acute, 14 Dilute, 15 Astir, 16 Terns, 18 Bisect, 19 Slight, 22 Three, 23 Ousts, 24 Sturt, 25 Undo,

competitors. It is the now engage a choir. Spike rang Goon song "I'm Walking up

11

few scriptwriter Backwards for Christmas," friends and dragged them to and i am so fascinated by It the recording studio.

1 went to see its inventors. i found Harry Secombe and the author of the song, Spike Milligan (he plays Eccles), in Secombe's Palla- dium dressing-room.

Spike "Milligoon" said: "Yes, I admit it. I wrote it Just to send up all those silly songs about Christmas and ireland, 1 wanted to create the silliest song ever.

"I dashed it off in a few minutes on the tube the The Northern Line it was. Northern Line's good for pop songs, but the Bakerlou better for symphonies. Something to do with how the rails sound.

IN

"That's why," he said, "we can claim to have the worst choir on record."

Was

"But," Harry joined in, "that doesn't say it cheap. They were expen- sive scriptwriters."

A

by

MAN and fah: they are the back of most of the world's beat stories.

Remember "Moby Dick," "The Old Man and the Sea," "The Story of Jonah"?, Anel then think of OLD FOUR I asked them if they LEGS, The Story of the were likely to repeat their Coelacanth (Longmans, efforts. "Not half," they is.), by Professor J. L, B. replied. "We've now evolved Smith, a story of the pas the most successful record-sion of one man for a fish. ing thought of."

"What is it?" I asked.

Indeed, it's even more "You Lake

who than that. So deep in Smith แ man well, like Harry in his devotion to his four- augs

and make him finued friend, his ancestor, Secombe, taik, a man who talks well, that he might have retitled like Peter Selters, and make his book "Portrait of him play the pluno, and Artist as a Young Fish." then a great musician like Spike Milligan, and let him sing. You can't go wrong. It's so lousy it must be a hit."

•

ROUND UP

one

of singing He

A CHOIR...

Milligan, who was wear- ing a brown corduroy cap, 4. macintosh cut off short, and a three-day growth of beard, glared at me and bissed: "Record companies are mad. much They record tvo

Mel Torme,

fine If America's material. American

London. America

under the stars, is in waves tomorrow, there is going to sing in our would only be about four "Saturday Show," and British songs left

are about to ... and Vogue/Coral one of those would be 'Walk release another long-playing

IL'H record of his. ing Backwarda.'"

callex "Mel Torme with the marty dick-tette." Some paich title, that, but I don't know what it means!

weni

At that moment Harry Secombe broke into song "By the Fountains of Rome." Milligan picked up a

1 see that Teresa Brewer's glass of water, emptied it

"A Sweet Old- over Harry

"*1 record and said: knew that song would make Fushani Gat" has hit the best-

sellers with a bang this week. a splash."

the

It seems that Pat Dixon, Goon Show producer, heard song and persuaded Decca to record it.

On the day of the session, Harry Secombe

گانی

A

Of My

NANCY SPAIN)

PROFESSOR J. L. #. SMITH CRAZY ABOUT FISH

aircraft and crew to some hare- brained scientist to fetch it."

Old Man Important Ash, Coelacanth was all of that. He gave a clue to the savage Hie, perhaps the very same as that I'ved 50,000,000 years ago, now lived in the Seven Seas,

He

gave

needed

V

Week

very funny wartime moryel, YOUNG GIRL'S TOUCH Weidenfald and Nicholson, 128. Od.)?

35elincha is attractive to boys she can't help it, it in her But sho doesn't like nature, the boys who like her. No, sho very is obressed by Darcy,

foot-looge, attractive naughty, cad who witches girls almost os Cast as he switches regiments.

SU

D

Nothing really happens to poor Melinda, although ← se gocs lo all sorts of foreign much

Parts

Top Secret Con- smuck in the eye to scientists

idential Secretary and meets a said he was doad (1.e. who

very strange king called Yo Yo. extimet). He opened up thousand thrilling paths of the Indeed, this book is so very imagination as he filled some feminine that one can hardly, of the gaps in our knowledge make out there is & WAT on at of past life.

ail. It

Ilke П game 01 played by debe and debs' delights, and just about да

inconclusive. Such remarks as "She had a weak- ness for befriending lame ducks And often had to lame them Jirst

maternal need' ate two a penny.

*

$1

Yet, when I had finished this charades, charmingly exciting book it was not the wh that

Alled my mind, It was the unforgettable pleture of a inarvellous man, restless as humming birci, enthusiastic as a child of three, determined as a still acting as terrier, who is impresario to the most im

scientifie And of the

Then one day in 1988 he had Misa from mesuge

with cros Courtenay-Lalimer (to

wonderful book

describing a weird.

portant creature she had

from pushod back

the century. handcari, She

the this

dedicated)

horny, realy

on

Because of this, Professor Most Smith is easily The Unforgettable Character of the Week. Tough, thin, wiry as a schoolboy, hla að- Lonishing resources of charm and physical energy were all needed to present his fish to the world.

the Smith was born in Karoo in 1897, did well at school, studied chemistry at Cambridge, and them by way of angiing and deep seu alid into u by. Rahing product. He became crazy about classifying fish.

A rum lot

just quay enclosed a sketch.

It was the first Cocliconth (pronounce it seelakanth, please) alive and licking when caught. Yet scientists looking at fossil

coelacanths had extinct believed

them 50,000,000 years,

Important fish

for

Another coelacanth lurned up after the war in 1952 in a very

island ungelatable

near Madagascar. And the coelacanth was decaying all the time.

The strangler

NOW two novels by woRICH,

BETWEEN THE STRIRRUP AND THE GROUND (Cassel, 158,) Is well-tok tale

ย

of Ronnie, the civil serval, who went a little mad and strangled from the Ministry u secretary typing pool.

No both interesting

Mra Diana Raymond telis why Kormie's mum was melancholy mad, end Ronnie, though brilliant al school, always suspected he had the seed of Lunacy in him. Then ho married Harriet far-from- balanced girl.

An inspired Professor Smith approached De Malart. thes South African Prime Minister, asking

Malan had matrimony for help. read a book by Smith on deep

fasher and promptly pro-

airplane and crew

astounded, for

Sca

WIN

The fishes off the coast of Africa are a rum lot. Her Arst hit ("Music, Music,

rum, indeed, that they Music") was 4 bright near-

most absorbed him. comedy

number. Bong

Her

went out in trawlers real tear-jerker, second, a her third and latest, a mixture

was fearfully seasick. By triumph. of the two,

Winifred Atwell is out with unother French tune to up her successful "Poor People of Paris." Same Composer. Title: "The Left Bank."

So dueed an

Smith ul. Smuts had once turned down He such

♫ request. And they and fetched back the coelacanth and

1938 hundreds of people, With extraordinary imagina- zoologists, trawler skippers, ton Smith realised

*Coppright reserved Mitigan

by

Spike

кими

lighthouse

wero

keepers follow

rooting for the professor. sending him news of fish.

VIGNETTES OF LIFE

'LISTEN! HE SAYS,

'I DONT CARE

HOW MUCH THE OTHER GIRLS

EXPOSE THEMSELVES,

BUT I DONT

WANT MY

WIFE TO

MAKE A SHOW

OF HERSELF!"

ISN'T THAT JUST LIKE

A MAN ? →

Out In The Noonday Sun

J

So Ronnie found no peace in

And he

drite into a relationship with a truly awful beauty from the typing pool called Met, and killed her one day, maddened by jealousy and unnatural tension.

Yet Ronnie gets off on a polul of law in an appeal at the High Court. And Harriet goes away with him to an island in

and the Hebrides,

we know there is hope for them both.

But is then? hope

Melinda Prime beautiful

Paleface, heroine of Barbara Skelton's

wrote down the Bud reactions of the air crew une: "It must be a pretty

if the Important sh Minister is prepared to give an

BY HARRY WEINERT

for

to full her

Working author

AND then what about George

Scott.

editor

of Trulli, whose memoiro, hopefully written at the age of 30, TIME AND PLACE (Staples, 10z.).

I have very much enjoyed?

Scott was born in Middles- Bald brough where his father penny-a-week life insurance to housewives and took his son to football matches.

Young Scott did well at school and Oxford and joined the Daily Express still wearing his naval uniformy black buttons instead of gold). Then he become editor of Truth.

Is

on

an

As 10 author he engaging companion with ere for character rather than

•

•

BOOKS TO BUY

•

OR BORROW

•

"IT'S ALL DUE

•

TO THE

GULF STREAM-

BLAH BLAH.......

.

THE PROVING FLIGHT. David Beaty, Tension story ► about try-out of a Bug Airplano.

THIN ICE, Sir Comptes Mackenzie. Well handled story of a deviationist MF who trombita elestially on ● the brink of arrest for criminal offences.

TEN NORTH FREDERICK. John O'Hara, May well be d the great Amerkan novel, this one. Very, vory loo exploration of the ko and times of Joe, AMETICED clitres.

A MIRROR FOR NAR- ● CINSUB, Neplay Farson. This one has caught on Just like "The Transpress a sor" did, on account of i humanity, brilliant writing ●

THE OUTSIDER,

Culm WOOL Yes,

siili wa the move, which original Mr Wlism has apparently e found a bit embarrassing, Thi Birante mixture blography philosophy and Journal is frankly goog popular stunt.

AS USUAL THERE ARE SOME PEOPLE WHO GET

· MORE THAN THEIR SHARE OF EVERYTHING –

VIOLET RAYS INCLUDED.

"THOSE WERE THE

DAYS WHEN THE BEACHES WERE INFESTED' WITH

HANDSOME DEVILS

WITH HANDLE-BAR

· MUSTACHES

AND AN EYE FOR

A SHAPELY

ANKLE

IT ISN'T

THAT HE'S ANTI-SOCIAL-`

IT'S JUST THAT HE HATES

SUNBURN.

COM. 1954 BY GENERAL FEATURES COMP.TM-WORLD RIGHTS RESCRYLO.

AND THEY

· KNEW NOTHING

OF ULTRA-VIOLET

RAYE

-OR

IF IT'S TOO HOT OR TOO COLD, THERE IS ALWAYS

SOMEONE TO

EXPLAIN †--

"ANYBODY SER

A SMALL BOY WHO WASN'T WEARING

THIS?"

anogdote. But he is so full of thoortes I lind him very exhausting.

Ho is also, however, my answer to last week's prayer for a working author, In a most revealing chapter he dis- CUESTA his elders Isherwood, Auden, Spender, and John Lehmann with exasperation.

Says he: "However, much they rebellod against middle- class conventions, these wer part of their.......Inheritańcó ́ and they could na more escape their influence completely an a dog can rid himself of fleas." Particularly to John Eelmanh, Miy's Scott: "There was stili something remarkable snd wonderful about the idea of a *worker who could write.**

Well, Scott is that worker, most triumphantly arrived, And I must say I wish him joy, But, just one thing.... • •*.

Those ghastly, boring political theories, Mr Scott. It' you. Toet so hotly about "elling a little die into the Welfare State" why on earth don't you stand for Parliament and do something about it?

"LETS GO TEN MINUTES IS ENOUGH

FOR THE

FIRST DAY.

BE SURE TO FOLLOW THE COOKING DIRECTIONS

BRING TO A SLOW BOIL AND LET SIMMER.

CLIPPERS TO CHINA; by Captain *: Frank” Knight. Macmillan,, London, 10/6. century

TUTE

story

Inst

sailing ships plying be tween England and Chins," whose races stirred. mon far more than today's Bluo. Atband. contest across. the Atlanilorga

This is written for a young people and is, illustrated: “by. Patrick Jobson,

· Captain Knight, is well-known

for "The Golden Monkey, and "Voyage

to

about sailing ahli

times---BOH.