Little Tartan Socks
Dec 4th, 2007 by Eats Wombats
There’s a very funny post on Guido Fawke’s blog about Sean Connery’s shocks.
Actually, there are several laughs. Mishter Bond shplashing Mish Craig, Harman the umbrella thief and more. I can’t remember when British politics was last so entertaining. I saw a fine cartoon yesterday of a Labour Advent calendar, with a new crisis for each day.
Meanwhile, this line appeared elsewhere:
Following the uproar caused in Sudan after a Teddy was named Mohammed. Sooty has announced the cancellation of his Jamaican tour!
Sooty is one of those people known to everybody in the country and, I think, to fewer outside it; a much loved glove puppet.
Strangely enough, as of writing this post I now understand a former English colleague’s occasional use of the expression
Sooty did it!
I thought this was just one of his little eccentricities, just and in-joke with someone old enough to have seen Sooty in black and white.
Now I find this:
Another controversy was ignited by one of Sooty’s favourite props, a harmless, puppet sized balsa wood hammer. The then head of BBC children’s television, Freda Lingstrom disapproved strongly with the inclusion of the hammer, claiming it set a bad example to youngsters. This fear was borne out when the story surfaced of a man who was reading his Sunday paper at home when his son, without warning, hit him over the head with a real hammer - so forcibly that he had to go to hospital for stitches to the potentially fatal wound. When questioned by his mother over why he did such a thing, the child replied: “Well, Sooty did it.“
So, I finally get the joke, years late.
The Labour party is trying that other defence loved by naughty children — when “It wasn’t me!” fails to convince: “Everyone else did it too!” How long then before Sooty is unmasked as an anonymous donor? And why not, after all, to whom would one give the money back?
Knowing the hammer story I also now belatedly understand another joke that cost someone his job and which was the talk of BP when I worked for the company as a consultant many years ago. Imagine a roomful of very important people gathered around a television screen in Aberdeen, following TV pictures of the inspection of an offshore pipeline that has been shut down, at some telephone number cost per day.
I’ve found something
said the diver. “Yes, I’ve found the problem”. People in Aberdeen craned their necks to see. “Yes, this is definitely it” said the diver. Onshore the suspense began to build, then suddenly there he was.
It was Sooty!
said the diver, as the little bear appeared on screen and waved. Sooty’s friend was fired before he surfaced, and quite famous before he got back to land.
