[Jerome Betts]

Just getting in practice for the inevitable competition . . . The answer to the question at the end seems to be that he can.


Chief Whipping Boy

See the labyrinthine webs
Spun by skilful media-spiders !
Traps for hapless pop-celebs
And for Tory cycle-riders
Looking down their lordly nebs
At the rest who’re not insiders
Public school or rich or debs,
Simply tax and vote providers
Also known as ‘effing plebs’ !
Can A. Mitchell brave his chiders
Till the tabloid interest ebbs?

[John Whitworth]

Nice one! But it wasn't just the tabloids, or even the tabloids mainly. And by the way it was the dirty digger who ran with the Rotherham rape story when the Beeb and the Grauniad were too cowardly to do so.

[Jerome Betts]

Thanks, John. Mostly sparked by the curious resuscitation of the word 'plebs', though not fond of toxic Tories. Well, all the papers seem to behave like tabloids now. Wonder if the Cameron-Letterman encounter will surface in any of the competitions?

[John Whitworth]

I cannot believe he really did not know what Magna Carta meant. A boy educated at Eton who knew no Latin? Impossible. I think perhaps he didn't want to sound too clever. No danger of the Labour leadership sounding that, eh?

Right now, how many people know who wrote 'Rule Britannia'? Not the MUSIC - any fool knows that. Who wrote the words? And who wrote the words for 'God save the King!' Off the tops of your heads mind. No looking up Wikipedia.

I bet Ann knows.

[Jerome Betts]

Indeed, probably a pose. Surely words like 'magnanimous' or place-names incorporating 'Magna' would give a clue, or quotations like 'Magna Est Veritas' ?

Letterman supplied the Rule Britannia answers. Off the cuff, I have a feeling God Save The King was part of a patriotic theatrical performance around the time of the 1745 rebellion (hence disrespectful references to the Scots in the verses now not sung out of deference to Salmondian sensibilities) so . . . Colley Cibber? Or someone not remembered for anything else?

[Ann Drysdale]

Oh, all right. It was a bloke called James Thomson who made it for a masque called Alfred.

But for years I thought it was part of Purcell's King Arthur, though I realise now I was confusing it with "Fairest Isle" (Dryden).

Just as I thought Magna Carta was The Great Map (ref. cartography etc.) And only later discovered that there was another word for that, then - mappa, as in mappa mundi.

So a Carta is a charter, after all...

Who was it that came up with that pious truth about "a little learning"? Don't tell me, John. I know.