Cocktail Time

Frederick, 5th Earl of Ickenham, is my favourite PG Wodehouse character and if you have the misfortune not to be acquainted with him where better to be introduced than by reading Cocktail Time, published in 1958. Then you can call him Uncle Fred.

I’m just about to re-read it to celebrate a cocktail that I have invented. It was Robert’s idea to mix limoncello and gin 50:50 but it’s a bit sweet. My improved version – the Bellew Version – is to mix one part limoncello, one part lime juice cordial and two parts gin. Pop in a few ice cubes, a slice of lemon or lime, a good dollop of soda and call yourself the bartender at The Ritz.  I’m calling it an Uncle Fred Fizz.

I feel keenly for UF – Ickers, if you prefer – as we are both younger sons. He was a cowboy, a soda jerk (a job that I very much doubt still exists),  a newspaper reporter and a prospector in the Mojave Desert before a series of unexpected deaths hands him the Earldom on a plate. It isn’t a bed of roses thanks to his American wife, Jane, who seldom allows him to stray beyond the confines of their home in Hampshire. However, while there he consoles himself by taking a bath with Joyeuse. This is an astonishing PGW invention. True, Uncle Fred is depicted as being eccentric at best and in the eyes of his nephew, Pongo, completely loopy but to call one’s sponge after Charlemagne’s sword is unusual. I mean it’s unusual to give a name to a sponge, isn’t it?

His insouciance in the face of seemingly certain disaster wins me over every time. On a train, heading Blandings-wards, he introduces himself to a fellow passenger who it transpires is also bound for Blandings, as Sir Roderick Glossop. His new friend replies that this is a remarkable coincidence as he is also Sir Roderick Glossop. His impersonation of the man sent to clip the parrot’s claws is one of the funniest pieces of writing in English.

While I have one more Uncle Fred Fizz to sip as I read, I’m going to leave you with something completely different. It’s the trailer for the re-make of The Magnificent Seven and it seems to me that it is ripping off the magnificent Hateful Eight trailer that I showed you in January this year. Probably best to watch Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai.