[Janet Kenny]

Originally Posted by Gail White

Full disclosure: My only recital piece for parties is "The Ramsbottoms at the Seashore", in which little Albert is eaten by Wallace the Lion.

Mine too Gail ;-)

[Holly Martins]

Janet, I remember seeing a British version of the sketch as a child. The humour derives from the two old buffers having served in Khatmandu with Mad Carew, and loudly contradicting all the information in the poem. Well, it made me laugh.

[John Whitworth]

I too heard the sketch, I think on Vic Oliver's Variety Bandbox. According to Google the comedian was called Rene, known as Mo. As I remember I laughed into the bedclothes. I was listening illicitly in my bedroom to my little radio. I must have been about nine or ten.

Incidentally, if you google Mad Carew and The Mudcafe you can find some (rather rude) parodies.

[Janet Kenny]

Variety Bandbox was the delight of my childhood.

[David Anthony]

Here's Hayes's comment to Alec Waugh on his poem.
Along with self-knowledge I think it contains some excellent advice.

"I wrote The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God in five hours, but I had it all planned out. It isn't poetry and it does not pretend to be, but it does what it sets out to do. It appeals to the imagination from the start: those colours, green and yellow, create an atmosphere. Then India, everyone has his own idea of India. Don't tell the public too much. Strike chords. It is no use describing a house; the reader will fix the scene in some spot he knows himself. All you've got to say is 'India' and a man sees something. Then play on his susceptibilities.
His name was Mad Carew. You've got the whole man there. The public will fill in the picture for you. And then the mystery. Leave enough unsaid to make paterfamilias pat himself on the back. 'I've spotted it, he can't fool me. I'm up to that dodge. I know where he went.' No need to explain. Then that final ending where you began. It carries people back. You've got a compact whole. 'A broken-hearted woman tends the grave of Mad Carew' They'll weave a whole story round that woman's life. Every man's a novelist at heart. We all tell ourselves stories. That's what you've got to play on."

[John Whitworth]

It seems to me that what the fellow says is quite excellent advice. I used to tell my Creative Writing students something very similar. Come to that, Samuel Johnson says it too - something about tulips.

[Gregory Dowling]

David, thanks for that quotation. I got curious as to why Alec Waugh would have been interviewing Hayes and it seems they were prisoners of war together in the First World War.

I think the poem is terrific fun. I suppose ultimately the story derives from The Moonstone.