Dark Doings at Brinkley

On Radio 4 Extra I am listening to Meet Mr Mulliner (1927) and Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit (1954).

The Queen Mother is supposed to have said she liked reading Wodehouse in bed – it helped her get to sleep. That’s a double-edged compliment but I know what she meant and I’m doing the same. I can report I have stayed awake until the end every time but I do feel ready for a spot of shut-eye.

Mr Mulliner, I regret, does not compare to Jeeves and the FS. Mr M is has much less of the stylistic gymnastics employed when Bertie and Jeeves are centre stage with the author making asides. Having Richard Briers as Bertie and Michael Horden as Jeeves gives it a head start. (Jonathan Cecil is wasted in a minor role.) It was first broadcast in 1979 and of course has not dated – the best writing does not date. To digress, I have a friend who is so like Aunt Dahlia I expect her to instruct me to steal her pig, pearl necklace or similar and she has a carrying voice.

Mr M is played by Richard Griffiths but the stories first are inferior to Jeeves  and secondly don’t lend themselves to a radio adaptation. I wonder if it’s because they are always short stories (I think) and Plum reverts to the style of his early writing? He must have felt likewise as the last short stories featuring that crasher of a bar bore is Eggs, Beans and Crumpets in 1940. The Jeeves novels are peak Wodehouse, ones where you need an oxygen mask to recover from fits of laughter. Meanwhile I commend the short (circa ten minutes) Friday podcasts by patrons of the PGW Soc on the the Society’s website.

I am also listening, on same channel, to Sherlock Holmes. Clive Morrison is Sherlock and Michael Williams, Watson. My problem is I soon remember the story which makes it less gripping. I am noticing how many villains escape justice. In the one about the pips they drown at sea but that could happen to anyone and does. I was pleased the beautiful opera singer, Irene Adler, outwits Holmes and escapes and he was pleased too. Incidentally Scandal In Bohemia was the first Sherlock Holmes short story, published in The Strand Magazine in 1891.

The Lamborghini Miura P400 was the fastest production car in the world when it was released in 1966 – a stylish choice for the opening sequence of a 1969 film, The Italian Job. A film as cool as the car plus a crooning Matt Munro. Nerdy comment: it is the Great St Bernard Pass but there are continuity problems with the snow.