Upon My Word - More Stories From My Word

Upon My Word: More Stories from My Word (1974) – Frank Muir and Denis Norden
Methuen | ISBN: 0413326608
Condition: Good | Sold by Crappy Old Books

The English language. A magnificent collection of words, expressions, peculiar spellings and grammatical inconsistencies, lovingly developed over centuries by a nation that has never entirely decided whether communication should be straightforward or an elaborate intellectual obstacle course. It is a language in which words can mean several different things, pronunciation bears only a passing resemblance to spelling, and even the most innocent phrase can become an opportunity for spectacular verbal mischief.

Fortunately, Frank Muir and Denis Norden understood this better than almost anybody.

Welcome to Upon My Word: More Stories from My Word, a delightful collection of linguistic nonsense, inventive storytelling and gloriously improbable explanations associated with the celebrated BBC radio programme My Word!

For decades, Muir and Norden entertained audiences with their extraordinary command of language, literary knowledge and apparently limitless ability to transform the most respectable expressions into elaborate comic adventures.

One of the programme’s great pleasures was the famous round in which the two humorists concocted outrageously convoluted stories designed to culminate in a familiar phrase or saying, frequently twisted into a pun of such magnificently questionable quality that the entire preceding narrative suddenly appeared to have been constructed for no other purpose than to inflict it upon the audience.

Which, naturally, was precisely the point.

These were not ordinary jokes. They were elaborate engineering projects in verbal absurdity, carefully assembled from unlikely characters, improbable coincidences and increasingly suspicious plot developments, before finally collapsing beneath the weight of a punchline that would have made a less accomplished comedian seek immediate professional counselling.

Muir and Norden possessed a particularly British form of humour: intelligent, understated, mischievous and entirely willing to devote considerable intellectual effort to producing something profoundly silly.

Their partnership was a triumph of complementary comic talents. Both were accomplished writers, broadcasters and observers of human absurdity, capable of making literary sophistication coexist quite happily with jokes that might otherwise have been rejected from a school playground.

There is something wonderfully ironic about employing an exceptional command of English literature, classical references and linguistic history to deliver a pun so dreadful that it becomes magnificent.

Published in 1974, this Methuen volume captures an especially appealing period of British radio comedy, when audiences were expected to appreciate wit, wordplay and cultural references without the assistance of flashing lights, celebrity contestants or somebody shouting the answer over dramatic background music.

It also recalls an era when a collection of humorous radio material could become a perfectly respectable book, allowing listeners to revisit their favourite verbal catastrophes at leisure.

This 1974 Methuen edition, offered in Good condition by Crappy Old Books, is an appealing acquisition for lovers of classic British humour, radio nostalgia, linguistic eccentricities and anyone who considers an appalling pun a legitimate form of artistic achievement.

A splendid celebration of the comic possibilities of English, demonstrating that language is not merely a means of communicating information.

It is also an enormously sophisticated instrument for making people groan.

Because anyone can tell a bad joke.

But Frank Muir and Denis Norden could spend several minutes constructing an elaborate literary masterpiece before revealing that the entire enterprise existed solely to justify one spectacularly dreadful pun.

And somehow make you grateful for the experience.

Keep browsing: See more Humour books Other books by Frank Muir and Denis Norden