Present-day Leacock

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30983, 12 February 1966, Page 4

Present-day Leacock

Oddly Ad Lib. By Paul Jennings. Reinhardt 171 pp.

Humorists are not so mucn an acquired taste as a builtin one. Stephen Leacock, who could be described as the spiritual forbear of Paul Jennings, was not to everyone’s taste. Yet his admirers always had a selection of his works in the spare bedroom for the entertainment of discerning guests; and volumes such as this one could find an equally acceptable place on many a bedside table. It is, perhaps, as a parodist that Paul Jennings is at his most brilliant, and “Noth-i ing Bard,” a superb Shake-! spearian skit, telling in six-| teenth century prose how: England did not get into the Common Market, is the out-; standing example of this gift. “Under Milk Shed” has caught Dylan Thomas at his folksiest, while “The Holly and the Ivy” is told in the sedate phraseology of Ivy Compton - Burnett’s impecc-ably-bred characters. Two gloriously lunatic sketches related with telegraphic brevity, are "Nuits Blanches 1964” and “By Rail Waking.” The first describes a night in a French hotel when the author is suffering from a combination of noisy indigestion, a refractory bolster, and the remorseless chimes of the town clocks. The second is

•the record of another sleepless night, this time on a Continental Express train in which the sufferer’s nocturnal hours were punctuated by a refrain from a lower couchette which rose in the scale to “Hornk,” and subsided to the depths with “Oik.” The art of the ludicrous is also well illustrated in such contributions as “Bubblegabble.” a magnificent language spoken only by those trained to explore the unplumled depths of the ocean. And the reader should on no account miss “Ware, Wye, Watford" —a suggestion that the placenames of England could be used for descriptive purposes viz;—“Chiselhurst n. A carpenter's shop 2 (joc) the I Stock Exchange. “Needham Market” n. A jumble sale and {Redcar n. A cocktail made I with vodka.”

It is difficult for a Jennings fan like this reviewer to be strictly objective—either the man make one roll in the isles, or he doesn’t. The author makes the usual acknowledgments to the various journals, particularly the “Observer” in which these sketches have appeared.

Overheard in the foyer at Covent Garden and reported by “Peterborough” in the “Daily Telegraph,” London: “of course pop records have one big advantage over operatic ones—when they’re worn out you can’t tell the difference.”