STORY OF A COUPLET

Evening Star, Issue 20636, 8 November 1930, Page 15

STORY OF A COUPLET

LONDON LAUGHING SHOCKED OLD MAIDS. LONDON, October 30. This is the story of the theatre manager, the Marylebone Borough Council, the curate, the old ladies, the poster, arid the couplet that has set all London laughing. , . ... The theatre manager was puttmg_on a new play at a fashionable London theatre. It was called ‘ Her First Affair.’ So, to advertise effectively, he got a friend to write two lines of verse for a poster reading as follows: “ Two answers to a maiden’s prayer, a latch key and her first affair.” The poster ~was duly broadcast on hoardings throughout London, including the borough of Marylebone. Then trouble started. The old ladies saw it in the course of their afternoon promenade with their lap dogs and nearly fainted in the street. When they dragged themselves home they wroteto the curate. He was a man of action and ho wrote to the borough council. The council, horrified at such an outbreak of naughtiness, sent the borough engineer to. report. He thought - it “Wasn’t done, you know.” . So within an hour the _ offending poster vanished from Marylebone. As, however, it still remained on all other London hoardings, Marylebone s attempt to protect public morals has onlv provoked comicalities at the erpense of. her borough councillors, who are told that London at last knows _ why the borough’s name, translated into-Eng-lish, means “ Mary the Good. •