P.G. Wodehouse, c. or d.?

Hugh Laurie was a perfect Bertie Wooster - but Stephen Fry was much too young for Jeeves.

Yes, but I laugh with Wodehouse characters. Seinfeld characters I generally wish to kill.

The Blackshirts are lampooned in some of the 30s books, as the Blackshorts. PGW clearly considered them merely absurd, rather than threatening or evil. I think he pretty much lived in an England entirely of his own invention, with major world events and actual grown-up politics as extremely distant background noise.

Molly Keane is a good writer. I think that's how you spell it.

This is true for 'Seinfeld' but not for Wodehouse, therefore N. is wrong QED.

Pssshhh. Not round here it ain't.

Okay PF, put forth your challanger and we'll have a ILE boxing match to settle this one.

Gob, there's me bus. Bye now.

This weekend The Pinefox gave me an excellent early birthday present: Mark Steyn's 'Broadway Babies say goodnight: musicals then and now' which I recommend highly (especially to the Barnet Ape). Among other things, it contains the startling - to me - revelation: "If PG Wodehouse had died in 1918 he would be remembered, not as the creator of Jeeves etc, but as the man who revolutionized the Broadway musical" (I quote from unreliable memory). Quite a claim, but it turns out to be true! With Jerome Kern, in shows such as 'Very good Eddie' and 'Oh, Kay!' Plum apparently staked out a bold new democratic voice on Broadway which paved the way for Porter, the Gershwins, Berlin etc etc. Well, if I liked PGW before, I like him even more now! But does anyone know where I can find the lyrics (or better still - recordings) of these songs?

Imagine therefore how doubly insulting Andrew Lloyd Webbers "Jeeves" would have been....

If you find any more, let me know.

Think how sad a carrot would be if no boiled beef was near
Think how sad an egg would feel if ham should disappear
Think how a sausage's hopes would be dashed if one day it awoke and missed its mash
Or what grief a steak would feel if it found that there wasn't an onion around
(If I Ever Lost you - set to music by Ivor Novelloe!)

Bibliography of Woodehouse musicals here: http://wodehouse.ru/musical.htm (Anything Goes is one of his - makes sense)

I'm so busy

[Marjorie]
I always said
That the man I would wed
Must be one who would work all the time.
One with ambition,
Who'd make it his mission
To win a position sublime.
One whose chief pleasure would be
Making a fortune for me;
One who would toil all the day
Down in the market and say:

Lizzie, Lizzie,
I'm so busy,
Don't know what to do.
Goodbye dear, I'm off to the street.
Can't stop now,
I'm cornering wheat.
I shall keep on till I'm dizzy,
Till the deal goes through.
Lizzie, I'm so busy,
I'm making a pile for you.

[Donald]
Don't be deceived,
If you've ever believed
That my taste for hard labor is small.
Stifle the lurking
Idea that I'm shirking,
I never stop working at all.
I may have loafed in the past,
But I am busy at last,
I've found employment and I'm
Working away all the time.

Lizzie, Lizzie,
I'm so busy,
Busy loving you.
That's the job that suits me the best,
Though I never get any rest.
I shall keep on till I'm dizzy
But I shan't get through.
Lizzie, I'm so busy,
So won't you get busy too?

[Both]
Mm...

As for musicals, I've never seen one of his 'books' available anywhere, nor a soundtrack album. He always described his stories as musical comedies without the music, though. One of my favourite ever lines about writing was from one of his books, where he claims that to change what he writes into serious literature, all you would have to do is take out all the plot and bung in loads of misery.

i finally got around to reading "code of the woosters" this weekend and i must say it's kind of shocking to realize everyone's right about wodehouse; he's not just a wry old artifact you might chuckle at on a rainy sunday when browsing the local used bookstore, he was a bonafide fuckin' genius! i mean god knows how else he was able to write nothing but utterly beautiful, utterly hilarious sentences, one after the other.

I can't believe that Seinfeld comment way above. Ned was not nearly vitriolic enough.

yeah, even if you like seinfeld its attitude toward ppl is clearly the complete opposite of wodehouse - PGW's world is a utopia, seinfeld's is a sort of hell.

PGW's world is a utopia

Although I love PGW and have been reading him for about 20 years - he's pretty much my default reading material when feeling low - I remember my father ranting about him (or at least Wooster). As far as he was concerned the world portrayed in the books was a real one, albeit exaggerated, which existed up until WW2 and which was wholly repulsive. Stupid toffs living off various their relatives wealth, wealth which had been achieved at the expense of the working classes, doing nothing constructive and wholly self absorbed in their own petty world. He really couldn't see the joke. Pr at least he could, he just didn't think it was funny.

Oh - I just read the thread and that's basically what maryann was saying I think so what she said otm.

Also someone used the name Mrs Edna Welthorpe back then. Excellent.

Joy in the Morning is perfect from end to end.

The newest editions of these keep showing up remaindered in various local bookshops in Aus--$7 each. Which is great, and somehow I've so far managed to avoid buying any I already own (which is harder than you'd think, given the often interchangeable titles and sometimes interchangeable blurbs--'Oh, this is the one where Jeeves gets Bertie out iof a fix!')

And OTM to Alfred's Joy in the Morning comment

I bought the 2010 Just Enough Jeeves omnibus for $5 used on Friday.

The newest editions of these keep showing up remaindered in various local bookshops in Aus--$7 each.

I hope this proves true for me!

This made a great christmas present:

http://www.thebookpeople.co.uk/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/qs_product_tbp?storeId=10001&catalogId=10051&langId=100&productId=253016&searchTerm=wodehouse

Thread of missing Mrs. Edna Welthorpe

morelike p.u. chodehouse

j/k :)

Watch it, before you get pelted with a bread roll.

Just to continue the discussion about Wodehouse's musical career (from nine years ago, I know, but never mind). PG of course covers this period (mostly for comic reasons) in his non-fiction books "Bring on the Girls" and "Performing Flea" but the definitive source of information and analysis is a book called "PG Wodehouse - A Literary Biography" by Benny Green. This is the same Benny Green that some UK posters will be familiar with as a general UK jazz-dude, from Radio 2 of yore and more auspiciously, in my opinion, as a member of Lord Rockingham's XI. A good third of the book is specifically about Wodehouse's exploits on Broadway and Tin Pan Alley, collaborating with the Gershwins, Jerome Kern, Irvine Berlin, George Grossmith and most other folks you may have heard of from them days. Lots of extracts from letters, excerpts from songs and so on- demonstrating what an influence musical theatre was on his novels, and what an influence he was on the American musical - being a key part of the bridge between Gilbert and Sullivan and the musical theatre of the 20s and 30s. Some quite amazing stories too, like how he wrote the whole of act two of a show in an afternoon, while working on two other Libretti at the same time. Or the full story of the gestation of the song "Bill" from Showboat, which was written in a couple of minutes but took a couple of decades to be finished and included in that show.

I highly recommend this book as my favourite book about Wodehouse and the best analysis of his work that I've read.

Still smiling at Code of the Woosters. Wodehouse has a better impact on my mood than anything. He's like a dose of Jeeves's tissue restorer.

As far as he was concerned the world portrayed in the books was a real one... which existed up until WW2 and which was wholly repulsive. Stupid toffs living off various of their relatives wealth... wholly self absorbed in their own petty world.

Obv, for anyone who actually suffered under the english class system, ruled over by the Bertie Woosters of the world, the joke in PGW may have seemed awfully sour. But what PGW achieves with such a light touch is a rather fierce satire. Money has allowed his characters to develop into charming grotesques, with all the freshness of children and all the thoughtless horror that implies when those traits are transmuted into adult form.

Classic, of course.

been enjoying the hell out of this chappie lately. lots of free books to read online if you like reading that way:

http://www.online-literature.com/pg-wodehouse/

One of my favourite parts: Wodehouse's hilariously ad hoc device for extending a misunderstanding during an early confrontation:

'You say the proprietor of the shop handed it to you. I put it to you that you snatched it up and were making off with it. And now Mr Spode catches you here, with the thing in your hands. How do you explain that? What's your answer to that? Hey?'

'Why, Daddy!' said Madeline.

I dare say you have been wondering at this pancake's silence during all the cut-and-thrust stuff which had been going on. It is readily explained. What had occurred was that shortly after saying 'Nonsense!' in the earlier portion of the proceedings, she had happened to inhale some form of insect life, and since then had been choking quietly in the background. And as the situation was far too tense for us to pay any attention to choking girls, she had been left to carry on under her own steam while the men threshed out the subject on the agenda paper. She now came forward, her eyes still watering a bit.

Classic. Doesn't really hit his stride until after the copyrights kick in, but Right Ho, Jeeves made it in under the wire:

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10554

Ha, have thought that same exact thing.

But what PGW achieves with such a light touch is a rather fierce satire. Money has allowed his characters to develop into charming grotesques, with all the freshness of children and all the thoughtless horror that implies when those traits are transmuted into adult form.

I've been thinking about this as I read (the Jeeves books)... I'm not sure that I see a significant satirical element. I think he focuses on the world of the rich and idle leisure class because it's artistically useful for creating low-stakes comedic fantasies; the lightness of the books depends on ignoring anything really important. It may be because I'm not English, but I don't feel any of the discomfort in reading these books that I would expect from satire. They're more like consoling fairy tales.

A character like Roderick Spode is certainly satirical, but he tends to stand out.

"consoling fairy tales" otm - evelyn waugh said something similar: “Mr. Wodehouse's idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in.”

In a way, the avoidance of satire may be a kind of accomplishment...

lol @ "this pancake's silence"

i don't think wodehouse is satirical mostly but there are weird dark flashes in him. the story jeeves narrates, "bertie changes his mind", is as frothy as everything else i guess but jeeves really comes off as a fascist psycho in it. that strain's always there (jeeves is a slightly scary manipulative instrument we're relieved is employed by a sweetheart like bertie) but it really comes into the foreground when you're inside his clinical head and he's Doing What Must Be Done.

also the half-mean joke of the title. bertie does not change his own mind.

i also like when bingo falls in love with an upper-crust trend-bolshevik named "charlotte corday rowbotham".

i just read that one. bingo falling in love over and over. good stuff. that's the one where bertie overhears jeeves tell the replacement jeeves (jeeves going on holiday) that bertie isn't very smart and bertie gets sad/mad.

i really have to remember to write down the titles of the books i've read cuz i can never remember. can always read them again. no harm in that.

"Bertie Changes His Mind" is also fun because Jeeves is no less opaque than usual. It doesn't come near the mystery of why this embodied guardian angel devotes his omnipotence to the singular task of sheltering Bertie Wooster.

xxp "mentally he is negligible. quite negligible."

i assume jeeves does what he does for money -- but then, sometimes (right ho, jeeves i think? the titles are pretty interchangable. the one with roderick glossop and biffy's hertfordshire estate and the 8293759238592523 uses of the n-word :/) jeeves leaves bertie's employ and still spends all his time helping out.

bingo falling in love endlessly would make him my favorite bertiefriend in a world without gussie fink-nottle. the whole multi-story bingo little arc where bertie has to pretend to be bestselling romance novelist rosie m. banks to appeal to the single streak of sentimentality in bingo's uncle (or whoever) so that bingo can marry a waitress who turns out to be rosie m. banks is great. i wrote a stage adaptation of one of them for a festival when i was in high school but it was pretty embarrassingly inert. i just kind of dumped all the dialogue off the page.

the creepy thing about "bertie changes his mind" tho is that jeeves does for a single sentence give a motive; he says something like "when the wife comes in the front door the valet of the bachelor days goes out the back". he says that to us but he'd never hint of anything like that possessiveness to bertie.

i mean maybe that is sweet and not creepy. but it's creepy.

it kinda casts shade on jeeves' paternal sabotage of bertie's fling with what's-her-name. bobby wickham? who is unsuitably "frivolous" or something (this story contains one of what must be at least three instances in the canon of puncturing people's hot-water bottles with darning needles tied to sticks) and we're meant to believe jeeves has bertie's best interests at heart. but maybe he just can't let go.

"high-spirited". that's the euphemism.

alex cockburn wrote the preface to my copy of 'code of the woosters,' and he has a line i love: 'jeeves is a little like iago, in benign retirement from villainy, redeeming himself with good-natured and stoic penance.'

that's my copy too! i'd forgotten about that line. it's v good.

amy sargeant's excellent recent bfi film classic bk on THE SERVANT also touches on the creepiness of the jeeves and wooster relationship (as does the movie itself, obv)

LOL @ Kirsty Wark on the Late Review pronouncing Wodehouse as Woadhouse, then noticing everybody else's pronunciation and changing it, but LOL again 'cos she'd already recorded a voiceover for a filmed piece and obv. no-one had told her at the time (or knew) she was wrong

I used to make that mistake, when I was in high school.

i still make it like a third of the time

I just call him by his nickname 'Pear' instead, that way there's on danger of embarrassment.

plum

Quite

Always had a blind spot with Wodehouse and the new version of 'Blandings' has just reinforced it.

There's a recent BBC tribute to him that's available on Youtube. It shows some clips from various adaptations, and interviews with the man himself, but primarily it's a a heap of television types vaporing about their love of 'Plum', which isn't much fun. And it's presented by this man Terry Wogan -- well, I presume he's greatly loved by the octogenarian set.

Ah, here it is: P.G. Wodehouse: Life and Works

Always had a blind spot with Wodehouse and the new version of 'Blandings' has just reinforced it.

Always had a blind spot with this amazing writer of sentences and this new TV thing containing no sentences has just reinforced it.

I read a lot of his sentences, about 3 books worth of them and still missed what others saw in him. Not enough fart gags I guess.

Actually I have started mispronouncing again every once in a while, the same way I have started mixing up things that I originally posted as a joke on

Oh! I Always Get Those Two Mixed Up!

amy sargeant's excellent recent bfi film classic bk on THE SERVANT also touches on the creepiness of the jeeves and wooster relationship (as does the movie itself, obv)

― Ward Fowler, Friday, July 13, 2012 5:31 PM (6 months ago)
this sounds pretty good.

The most offensive thing I read all year is when Naipaul and his terrible wife scoffed at the notion that one could spend a couple months reading nothing but Wodehouse.

I forgot about that. What was their specific objection again, if any?

Like a Corner poster, he/she claimed to have secret knowledge that at MLA conventions "everyone" secretly Jane Austen, which I can believe because MLA conventioneers can't write.

*secretly hates

Yes, that I remember. Although I think my friend Stone Cold Jane Austen would take exception.

I think there is more than one person using that name. This is the one I am referring to: http://mizzouweekly.missouri.edu/archive/2010/32-7/round-she-goes-mu-professor-is-stone-cold-derby-dame/index.php

http://andrewhickey.info/2013/03/09/that-new-jeeves-book/

I sent this one off on my way to the Drones, where I spent a restful afternoon throwing cards into a top-hat with some of the better element.

that kind of thing is about as light as satire gets of course but feel like it gives a lil bit of the lie to people who say that wodehouse's fantasy universe thoughtlessly glorifies edwardian class privilege

read Jeeves in the Offing on my way back from NYC two days ago.

yes

http://sarahdeming.typepad.com/spiralstaircase/2007/05/wodehouse_du_jo.html

So do Jeeves and Wooster fuck, or what

they would have found the idea rather peculiar. not at all the done thing.

each other, or anyone? no.

It’s probably a failure of my own imagination that I want to read the intensity of their relationship as sexual

understandable; iirc jeeves treats bertie's rare actual girlfriends (as distinct from his more common accidental/unwanted engagements) the same way he treats ascots he disapproves of.

jeeves could do so much better

his talents could probably be better used within a different mode of social organization, but under the droneocracy he's about as lucky as bertie. he could be with gussie fink-nottle, or bingo.

i guess he and mr. mulliner could keep a cottage.

I'm not sure why anyone would choose sex when one could mix a martini.

sex has more volume than a dinky martini

Whether referring to headphones or in bed, volume is overrated.

is there a consensus "best" Jeeves and Wooster? I've been a little gunshy about committing, there seem to be a fair amount of options.

Man, go to your local library and scan the shelf. The consistency is such that I've read 30 pages of one novel only to realize I've read it already.

Right Ho Jeeves, Thank You Jeeves, Joy in the Morning and Code of the Woosters are the canonical J&W classics, imo.

Joy is my favourite - the density of jokes and beautiful sentences is astonishing. But they're all worth reading. I haven't read any of the post-war work yet.

I'm not sure there's a consensus best, but I'd guess that The Code of the Woosters and Joy in the Morning (the third and fourth of the novels) are among the most read.

I've always just grabbed the books at random without thinking about how they fit together sequentially or the overall arc of the story. Might be interesting to go through them chronologically some day.

The sequence in Joy, where Bertie has a chapter-length existential crisis about whether or not to kick young Edwin in the backside, is a really incredible piece of writing.

Various details definitely accumulate and reappear as the canon goes on, though of course for Jeeves and Bertie every story ends at the status quo ante.

the two best novels are prob joy/jeeves in the morning and code of the woosters. (as everybody says, xposts.) and find a short story omnibus. thank you jeeves is good but a lil mean and right ho jeeves refers to the lighthearted comic device of "a troupe of n-- minstrels" more often than you will probably like. (big fan of pauline stoker the american heiress tho.)

throw it open to PGW in general and i rly have no idea, can't remember which blandings book is which. liked the monty bodkin books a lot even tho i read them entirely out of order. whichever mulliner collection has "honeysuckle cottage" and "a slice of life" is worth it.

ILB was (correctly) raving about Leave it to Psmith a few months ago

Collectors and aesthetes will want to seek out the Overlook Press editions

http://overlookpress.com/p-g-wodehouse.html

xpost

("thank you" is the minstrels book, he pedanted)

Joy in the Morning is perfect from end to end.

― lumber up, limbaugh down (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, January 2, 2012 5:11 PM (six years ago)

oh so it is xpost. exchange that and "right ho"-- which i have just been reminded has gussie's school prizegiving and is thus essential after all

but alfred is otm you should go for that one first. code of the woosters has 1) spode (more now than ever) and 2) the best macguffin, "the cow-creamer", which i just like it when characters invoke, but it is not as flawless.

My parents owned one for years until the tail snapped. Jeeves would never have allowed this to happen.

https://www.williams-sonoma.com/wsimgs/ab/images/dp/wcm/201802/0008/img10c.jpg

The fuckin cow creamer

I want to be Dahlia Travers when I grow old

read all of them when i was about 12/13 but code of the woosters is the only one that comes to mind. obviously a profound influence

the pg wodehouse book that probably drew the most ecstatic response from me was as i've said before probably standalone 'hot water'

My parents owned one for years until the tail snapped

modern dutch

would love to see whit stillman take on a wodehouse

Hot Water is next in my queue. Good to know!

bear in mind this is preteen imago you're taking your tips from

I've always just grabbed the books at random without thinking about how they fit together sequentially or the overall arc of the story. Might be interesting to go through them chronologically some day.

Due to the short stories being collected semi-haphazardly, one would need to draw up a map and flit from book to book to pull this off (I tried when I was 12 to figure out a Wooster / Blandings / Psmith chronology but failed early for lack of resources.)

flit

and sip

A Damsel in Distress is another really good stand-alone.

Agreed! The ADiD movie adaptation is less faithful, more a Fred Astaire showcase with the Wodehouse framework, but still fun.

HI DERE

The movie is ADiD is Fred Astaire with ... George Burns and Gracie Allen, correct? And Fred and Gracie resurrect one of Fred and Adele’s signature numbers, iirc.

i saw this set in a thrift store years ago and i think they wanted like 50 bucks for the whole thing and i didn't get it and i still kick myself:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/PG-Wodehouse-20-Vol-hardcover-Heron-Books-vintage-set-40-titles-British-humor/152905775633?hash=item2399e4fa11:g:~b4AAOSw8RZagkvF

for the hardcore:

https://historical.ha.com/itm/books/literature-1900-up/p-g-wodehouse-plum-stones-the-hidden-p-g-wodehouse-complete-in-twelve-volumes-london-galahad-books-total-12-items-/a/6064-36390.s

bertie! this is amazing! do you really read spinoza?

A developing mind is so fascinating.

Oh this looks fun

https://hotelfred.blogspot.com/2018/06/wodehouse.html

This was quite good:

https://edwardbindloss.wordpress.com/2018/11/09/on-p-g-wodehouse/

Contains some transcripts of the war-time broadcasts discussed above.

i feel like i've read versions of this piece before (cockburn in the early 80s, hitchens in the early 90s): coming from some way left (lol hitchens but this is fair for the times) they were faintly more generous to PGW and didn't include any extracts -- so that's new

i was totally brought up to disdain him: "not funny". i'm guessing because my parents and grandparents were a certain age and well read politically informed and lived through the actual real blitz and were pretty impatient w/his choices. i've never hated one that i read but i never got addicted either. of course he has a phenomenal comic ear and we still live in the shadow of his sense of rhythm…

Need 20K words from Perry Anderson in the LRB to solve this issue for us.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DeMLXGpVMAA9pV5.jpg

i reckon seven of the PA words here you could easily find in PGW

"when life gives you degringos, make dégringolade" is forever mine tho

I will look for them when I dive into his short stories in a week or two

for the full #perryandersonvocabulary bingo card, put these in order of likely occurrence:
accidie
attentat
capsisal
castellar
cursus
defalcations
dubitative
ecumene
eructations
fellation
malversation
nescience
obnubilating

one of these is a highly unlikely plumword

HI DERE

What ho

tinkerty tonk

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/06/01/wartime-for-wodehouse

This is really nice. I should pick up more and re-read Code again

That was great, thanks. Learned a new word too, popliteal. Wondering what the second imprisonment in 1944 was about, was he in Berlin all that time?

Ah, no, he was in Paris during the liberation and the French arrested him.

yeah that was nice, thanks for sharing

This is an interesting, more critical take on what Wodehouse was up to.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think Wodehouse was remotely a Nazi sympathiser, but the defences of his broadcasts from Berlin - such as Christopher Hitchens’ here - really have to do some work to make it stick. pic.twitter.com/HGk20rjGG1

— Elvis Buñuelo (@Mr_Considerate) August 11, 2020

"Tea?"

"Yes, your lordship."

"Oh?" said Lord Emsworth. "Ah? Tea, eh? Tea? Yes. Tea. Quite so. To be sure, tea. Capital."

One gathered from his remarks that he realized that the tea hour had arrived and was glad of it. He proceeded to impart his discovery to his niece, Millicent, who, lured by that same silent call, had just appeared at his side.

"Tea, Millicent."

"Yes."

"Er - tea," said Lord Emsworth, driving home his point.

I was reading a book recently where an Indian writer was saying how P.G. was very popular with him and amongst contemporaries of his because he didn't sully his reputation doing racist Empire propaganda for the Raj and the only work he did for the BE was briefly working in a Hong Kong bank or something. A rare example he gave where he mentions the Raj, that made him chortle was (which is from memory so I'm probably not doing it much justice) where a character explains the Indian independence movement as thus: "the problem is they only get a cup of rice to eat every day over there, once someone serves them a good steak they'll soon jolly well simmer down".

watch me deal with him, gussie. it may amuse you.

This is kind of weird.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Only_a_Factory_Girl?wprov=sfti1

This is kind of weird.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Only_a_Factory_Girl?wprov=sfti1

This is kind of weird.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Only_a_Factory_Girl?wprov=sfti1

What’s weird about it

That it posted twice.

I thought he made that title up himself. Didn’t realize it preceded him.

Third time wasn’t weird then

It seems to be multiplying!

Thought maybe somebody made this film up but those citations seem legit. Rosie M. Banks is rotating in her final resting place.

Not that I subscribe to any Wodehouse newsletters or the like but I have never anyone mention the provenance of that title. I believe I am in need of one of Jeeves’s pick-me-ups.

How did Encyclopedia Redd know that Bertie had let a pal down?

Maybe there were even earlier uses of that title. I seem to see some theatrical performance of something with that title in Baton Rouge in the nineteenth century along with a Victorian short story from 1881. Maybe it’s just a title that one naturally arrives at. Maybe I need to go to sleep and awake to find out it was all just a kooky dream.

Bingo reported three days later that Rosie M. Banks was the goods and beyond a question the stuff to give the troops. Old Little had jibbed somewhat at first at the proposed change of literary diet, he not being much of a lad for fiction and having stuck hitherto exclusively to the heavier monthly reviews; but Bingo had got chapter one of All for Love past his guard before he knew what was happening, and after that there was nothing to it. Since then they had finished A Red, Red Summer Rose, Madcap Myrtle and Only a Factory Girl, and were half-way through The Courtship of Lord Strathmorlick.

Considering Wodehouse's enormous popularity in India it's such a shame they never made a bollywood Jeeves & Wooster.

With Johnny Walker and Guru Dutt! #onethread

1. picked up a gorgeous old copy of "the old reliable" the other day -- will maybe report back.

2. still haven't read any of the psmith stories -- really want to, though.

B-b-but what about The Courtship of Lord Strathmorlick?