Sweet is revenge, especially to
women
(Byron, Don Juan)
?
By? Byron.? I ask that because the authorship of this
plays rather a large part when it was said at another time by a family whose
name is Glum.? I don't know if that rings
a bell in any way.? But there was a young
man called Ron Glum.? And he has a fiance
called Eth. And they have been engaged for seven years because they'd made a
pact not to get married until he got a job.
?
And while they're waiting for him
to get a job for them to get married naturally they try every means possible to
raise some money.? And they're rather
addicted to go in newspaper competitions .?
And they go in for these thigns and very unsuccessfully.
?
One day there was a competition
in the newspaper for a new after-shave lotion.?
Now I don't know if you notice with after-shave lotions that they do a
rather special thing with these men's toilet preparations.
?
With women's stuff they rather go
into rather lyrical, provocative names like Surrender and Caress and Suave qui
Purr.
?
With men's after-shave lotion
there are rugged names like Saddle Cloth and Dreadnaught and this new one,
which was actually called Revenge.? And
they were offering a competition as to who could think of the best slogan to
sell this after-shave lotion for Revenge.
?
At any rate Ron thought it was
worth going in for. So he went and bought a bottle of the after-shave lotion
and he tried it. In fact he drank half the bottle before they'd explained to
him how it was used.
?
But his father said, "Well,
I'll tell you what, here's an easy way to do a slogan. Let's get a dictionary
of quotations and we'll look up all the the quotations about revenge and see
whether we can send one of those in."
?
So they looked it up, "And I
have tasted revenge" and so on.? It
didn't say whether or not they'd tasted it.
?
And then suddenly Mr. Glum, he
saw this quotation, " Sweet is revenge, especially to women."
?
And he thought just the thing for
an after-shave lotion, so he said to Eth, "Now you send it off in your
name and I bet we win."
?
And the prize was a very good
prize.? It was two hundred and fifty
pounds plus a washing machine plus a year's supply of dirty washing, which was
worth having for a young engaged couple.
?
So Eth said, "Do you think
we'll get found out?"
?
And he said, "No.? No.?
Not a chance of getting found out.?
Nothing risque, nothing gained."
?
And they sent it off. And sure
enough they got a letter, "Our representative will be calling on
you."? And the representative called
on them and he didn't have a check.
?
And they said, "Well, why
not?"
?
He said,? "It was a very good one.? It was, no doubt, the very best one we
got.? But it is not original."
?
So Mr. Glum shot up in what he
called high dungeon, "What do you mean, it's not original?"
?
The man said, "It's not by
Eth."
?
"No, but it is by Ron."
?
Denis Norden 580618b
?
(The Glums were the subjects of
Take It From Here, which ran on the BBC for 11 years.? The show's writers were Muir and Norden)
