Tuesday 11 September 2007
Poor Wee Peter
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This isn’t strictly a spelling and grammar entry, I just like it. I like all three of the story headlines for the possibilities they conjure up: Did the zebra kick Peter, then try to get into a fight? Did the hair perform mouth to mouth? Was a ‘club woman’ a version of a clubbed foot? Imagine that.
It’s from a copy of the Daily Record dated Monday June 1st, 1970, found inside a cardboard box. I love the whole thing and keep it in my desk drawer to cheer me up. It’s nice that tabloid newspapers have changed in some ways, but really they have stayed the same (Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, to be pretentious about it).
That’s all.
It’s from a copy of the Daily Record dated Monday June 1st, 1970, found inside a cardboard box. I love the whole thing and keep it in my desk drawer to cheer me up. It’s nice that tabloid newspapers have changed in some ways, but really they have stayed the same (Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, to be pretentious about it).That’s all.
posted by Dan at 10:05 am
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6 Comments:
Brilliant, in my head there is a really aggro zebra talking in a cockney accent:
"So I kicked a kid in the mush, you wanna make sammink of it, you mug?"
I love that old fashioned way of including people's ages in headlines. You'd never see it these days. I wonder if they sometimes went even further and had headlines like:
"ASTHMATIC INTROVERT PHILIP, 24 FROM WELWYN GARDEN CITY, SON OF PETER AND DOROTHY FROM THE BOTTOM END OF THE VILLAGE, BUDDHIST, WITNESSES BIRTH OF PUPPIES."
It really should be brought back in. They should do it for everyone:
"PRIME MINISTER BROWN, 56, SAYS BRITISH WITHDRAWAL FROM BASRA IS NOT A SIGN OF DEFEAT".
I tried to find Zebra Peter, 40 this year, on the internet, but to no avail. Perhaps I should look up copies of the Daily Record from the days subsequent to the kicking to see if they did a follow up.
Christ, what if he still can't speak properly because he got kicked in the mouth by a zebra?
By the way, my Dad, 56, is called Peter and lives in Welwyn Garden City. I don't know of a Dorothy or a Philip, though, except for the characters of the same names on Neighbours in the mid-1990's.
Another one of those tomorrow.
What makes these headlines extra funny is that they refer to people by their first names. They assume an interesting level of familiarity and read almost like those terrible xmas letters that people send to their friends and loved ones at xmas. "Dear all, Peter was kicked by a zebra this year. And oh yes, in remarkable news, Cathy was saved by her hair!"
Oops, flagrant overuse of the word "xmas" in that one sentence. Sorry.
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