Alan Taylor
A. P. Herbert was described by Winston Churchill as the “…funniest man in a England and perhaps the wisest…”
[A. P. Herbert ] regularly wrote for “Punch” and “The Observer”. When he stood as an independent MP, he penned a very unconventional 5,000 word election address containing the disarmingly honest statement “ … Agriculture: I know nothing about agriculture…”.
Once elected to parliament, he made his highly entertaining maiden speech on the second day of business. Churchill said “Call that a maiden speech? It was a brazen hussy of a speech. Never did such a painted lady of a speech parade itself before a modest parliament.”
He loved the river Thames and lived beside the river at Hammersmith. During WW2 he joined the River Emergency Service. One of the crew working on the boat with him was Magnus Pike. Herbert was also asked to join in with planning the Festival of Britain.
He wrote more than a hundred ‘Misleading Cases’; witty satires of absurd court cases. One example posed the question “If a road becomes flooded, should traffic follow the rules of the highway, or of the river?” Apparently they were so perfectly achieved that professionals were beguiled into believing that they were transcripts of actual court cases.
I would think that he must have been a most entertaining interviewer. We could do with some people of his quality on TV shows these days. Come to think of it, we could do with some people of his calibre in parliament too.
Pat Heigham
Churchill was also given to the witty ‘bon mot’.
Magnus Pike was always amusing, too, waving his arms about like a demented windmill!
Normally, I hate presenters who use their arms too much, for emphasis, but loved Adam Hart-Davies, who described himself as a ‘testiculator’:
” I wave my arms about and talk bollocks!”
Totally agree with your last comment, too!
Tony Grant
As for Winston Churchill, he was once asked about his position on whiskey. Here’s how he answered:
“If you mean whiskey, the devil’s brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea, literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children; If you mean that evil drink that topples men and women from the pinnacles of righteous and gracious living into the bottomless pit of degradation, shame, despair, helplessness and hopelessness, then, my friend, I am opposed to it with every fibre of my being.”
“However, if by whiskey you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine, the elixir of life, the ale that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in their hearts and the warm glow of contentment in their eyes; If you mean good cheer, the stimulating sip that puts a little spring in the step of an elderly gentleman on a frosty morning; If you mean that drink that enables man to magnify his joy, and to forget life’s great tragedies and heartbreaks and sorrow; If you mean that drink the sale of which pours into our treasuries untold millions of pounds each year, that provides tender care for our little crippled children, our blind, our deaf, our dumb, our pitifully aged and infirm, to build the finest highways, hospitals, universities, and community colleges in this nation…
“Then my friend, I am absolutely, unequivocally in favour of it..!!!
“This is my position, and as always, I refuse to compromise on matters of principle.”
Alan Taylor
I see your Churchill and raise you some more A. P. Herbert, talking about alcohol.
There’s alcohol in plant and tree.
It must be nature’s plan
That there should be, in fair degree,
Some alcohol in man.
Barry Austin
I remember “Misleading Cases” being made into series of 30 minute sitcoms, in TV Centre, 3 series around 1970. Early ones in black and white, later ones in colour.
I think John Howard Davies produced some, and Michael Mills the rest. I seem to remember Otis Eddy or Bill Bailey lighting and Norman Grieves or Robin Luxford on sound, ‘fraid can’t remember the camera crew.
Roy Doltrice played A.P. Herbert, Alistair Sim the judge, Avril Landone the wife and Thorley Walters the prosecutor. How’s that for a sitcom cast. There were also some really big names in individual episodes in cameo roles for that one episode. They were made, if my memory serves me well, just as a normal sitcom, i.e. shot multicamera, top to bottom, rehearsed morning and afternoon, recorded in the evening in front of an audience, in one studio day, weekly. They were quite wordy scripts, the bulk of each episode being the court proceedings in various cases of law involving A.P.Herbert testing various oddities and nonsenses in our laws, and I thought very funny.
I remember the “rights of way” one, it was about Thames riverside roads in Chiswick that flood regularly, not deep enough to stop cars, but deep enough to row a boat on. A.P. Herbert rowed his little boat a long this flooded road keeping to the right, as you should on waterways, and came across a motorist keeping to the left, as you should on the road. An argument about which one was in the right ensued and it went to court, can’t remember the outcome.
I remember another one, where A.P. decided, for some reason, to pay his taxes by putting a cheque in a bottle and floating it down the Thames to government, claiming it was a legitimate way to deliver his tax. Again, don’t remember the outcome.
Also, there were episodes about whether swearing on a golf course was alright, because the game of golf caused men to forget they were gentlemen, and whether a cheque written on the leather from the side of a cow was legitimate.
They don’t make ‘em like that anymore…
p.s. Hope my memory’s not playing tricks, and all the above is correct !
David Brunt
Your memory is quite correct.
Three seasons, 1967, 1968 and 1971. Mills the first one, JHD the later ones.
Sadly, most of the episodes have long been wiped. Only one each from the first two seasons and two from the third surviving. And off-air home audio recordings of another seven.
One of the survivors is ‘Right of Way’ from 1968. 1967’s is “Is Britain a Free Country?”, the colour ones are “The Usual Channel” and “Regina Versus Sagittarius” (the final episode of the run, with John Cleese guesting).
“The Negotiable Cow” and “Is a Golfer a Gentleman?” were the first two episodes, and are two of the existing audio recordings.
Alan Taylor
One amusing thing I forgot to mention about A.P. Herbert is that he once drafted a Bill in Parliament in verse.
Prior to becoming a permanent member of the sound department, I was working in Sound Test Room and had built a piece of sound equipment. It needed some instructions to be written, but I knew that nobody reads instructions. Therefore I tried to make them amusing, writing them in rhyming couplets. People might not pay attention to the instructions, but at least they might read them.
