A Word In Your Shell-Like. Nigel Rees

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СКАЧАТЬ of ‘tailpiece’ had first been established by ITN in the 1950s. A book called And Finally (edited by Martyn Lewis) collected some of these tailpieces and was published in 1984.

      and how! An intensifying phrase of agreement, almost certainly of American origin from, probably, the 1920s. ‘“I should say she was pretty,” said a loud and cheery voice just behind him…“Pneumatic too. And how!”’ – Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Chap. 4 (1932).

      and I don’t mean maybe! An intensifier to show that the speaker has just issued a command, not simply expressed a wish. Mencken lists it as an ‘American saying circa 1920’. The second line of the song ‘Yes, Sir, That’s My Baby’ (circa 1922) is: ‘…No, sir, don’t mean maybe’. OED2 has it by 1926, and it is in James Joyce, Anna Livia Plurabelle (1928).

      and I’m like, hello? An expression of mock incredulity, popularized in the mid-1990s by the American TV show Friends. ‘Did you see that vicar the other day who made all the kiddies cry by telling them that Father Christmas couldn’t possibly exist – I mean, I was like, hello, why don’t you tell us about your boss, then, and how he manages?’ – The Independent (17 December 2002).

      and in a packed programme tonight…A worn-out TV presentation phrase gently mocked by Ronnie Barker at the start of each edition of the BBC TV comedy show The Two Ronnies (1971–88). Compare his similar mocking of the dual presenters’ IT’S GOODNIGHT FROM ME…

      and I quote Rather portentous indication of a quoted remark coming up – as though putting spoken quotation marks around whatever it is the speaker is about to say. The Complete Naff Guide (1983) lists it under ‘Naff Expressions’. Fritz Spiegl commented in MediaSpeak (1989): ‘On TV, “and I quote” may be replaced by the now fashionable, quaint “I quote” gesture: both hands raised aloft, first and second fingers sticking up like rabbit’s ears and brought down once or twice to meet the thumb.’ These finger-waggling ‘air quotes’ were known by 1977.

      and I wish I was dead See NOW THERE’S A BEAUT.

      and justice for all This phrase comes from the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag (put into its final form by Francis Bellamy in 1892, though further amended in the 1920s and 50s): ‘I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.’ The idea of ‘justice for all’ is, however, one that goes back to the Greeks. It also gave rise to the remark by Lord Justice Sir James Mathew (d. 1908): ‘In England, justice is open to all, like the Ritz Hotel.’ And Justice for All was the title of a film (1979) about the US legal system. See also ONE NATION UNDER GOD.

      and no heavy lifting Phrase used in a jokey description of the demands made – or not made – by a job, usually in politics. In an interview with Hunter Davies in The Independent (18 January 1994), Diane Abbott, the British Labour politician, said: ‘Being an MP is a good job, the sort of job all working-class parents want for their children – clean, indoors and no heavy lifting. What could be nicer?’ Much the same claim had earlier been made by Senator Robert Dole about the US vice-presidency (ABC TV broadcast, 24 July 1988): ‘It is inside work with no heavy lifting.’ And then J. K. Galbraith, Name-Dropping, Chap. 8 (1999), had: ‘[John F.] Kennedy also knew how to identify himself with…the larger electorate. At the end of his 1960 campaign, he addressed a vast crowd in the old Boston Garden… He asked himself, as though from the floor, why he was running for president. In reply, he listed some issues, all relevant to his audience, that needed attention; then he ended by saying that the presidency was a wellpaid job with no heavy lifting. The largely working-class gathering responded with appreciation, affection and joy. He was one of them.’

      ---, and no mistake! An intensifying phrase of affirmation, dating from the 1810s.

      and now a word from our sponsor One of the various ways of getting into a commercial break, taken from American radio and television and much employed in British parodies of same in the 1950s and 60s – though never used in earnest in the UK (for the simple reason that sponsored TV of any type was not permitted until much later).

      and now for something completely different…Catchphrase from BBC TV, Monty Python’s Flying Circus (1969–74) and used as the title of the comedy team’s first cinema feature in 1971. Like most graduate comedy shows of the 1960s and 70s, Monty Python rather frowned upon the use of catchphrases as something belonging to another type of show business. Usually delivered by John Cleese as a dinner-jacketed BBC announcer, seated before a microphone on a desk in some unlikely setting, the phrase had hitherto been a slightly arch ‘link’ much loved by magazine programme presenters. These people were thus deprived of a very useful phrase. After all, there is not much else you can say to get from an interview with the Prime Minister to an item about beerdrinking budgerigars. The children’s BBC TV series Blue Peter is sometimes said to have provoked the Python use of the phrase. It was first delivered by Eric Idle in the second edition of Python (12 October 1969), though it had also featured in some of the same team’s earlier series, At Last the 1948 Show, on ITV (1967), where it was uttered by ‘the lovely Aimi Macdonald’ in her introductions.

      and now, her nibs, Miss Georgia Gibbs! The standard introduction to the singer of that name on the US radio show The Camel Caravan (1943–7).

      and pigs might fly (or a pig may fly). An expression of the unlikelihood or impossibility of something actually taking place. Thomas Fuller, the proverb collector, had ‘That is as likely as to see an hog fly’ in 1732 though, earlier, The Spectator (2 April 1711) was bemoaning absurd inn signs including ‘flying Pigs’, which would seem to refer to this saying. From Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Chap. 9 (1865): ‘“I’ve a right to think,” said Alice…“Just about as much right,” said the Duchess, “as pigs have to fly”.’

      and so forth ‘And similarly, and then onwards’ – now mostly used after breaking off a list or quotation. This is a very old phrase indeed. Aelfric was writing ‘And swa forþ’ circa AD 1000 (see YE OLDE TEA SHOPPE). A would-be humorous elaboration of it, dating from the mid-20th century, is and so forth and so fifth!

      and so it goes Mildly irritated or amused and philosophical phrase used when presented with yet another example of the way things are in the world. A catchphrase in Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse-Five (1969). So It Goes was the title of a British TV pop show devoted mainly to punk (by 1976). ‘And so it goes: hassle, hassle, hassle, one horrible death after another, and yet the put-upon lad’s soul is a butterfly that transmutes (on the spiritual sphere, you understand) into an Airfix Spitfire. By MTV standards, Hirst could be the next Francis Ford Coppola’ – The Observer (25 February 1996); ‘Sausages are brilliant all-rounders, everyone knows that. Fried up for breakfast, sandwiched between two slices of bread at lunch, grilled with mustard and mash for supper, cold on sticks at children’s parties, hot on sticks with a spicy dip at grown-up dos, and so it goes’ – The Sunday Times (25 February 1996).

      and so to bed Samuel Pepys’s famous signing-off line in his diary entries appears first on 15 January 1660. However, on that particular occasion, they are not quite his last words. He writes: ‘I went to supper, and after that to make an end of this week’s notes in this book, and so to bed.’ Then he adds: ‘It being a cold day and a great snow, my physic did not work so well as it should have done’. And So To Bed was the title of a play (1926) by J. B. Fagan, which was then turned into a musical by Vivian Ellis (1951).

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