342: parody of A. A. Milne

“The Change at Pooh Corner”
by Alan Coren
in “Punch” 13 October 1976

A contemporary updating of A.A. Milne’s children’s poem “Buckingham”, each verse closely parodying its equivalent in the original. Wised up about the ways and disappointments of the world. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere the Guards were fairly notorious for being available for sexual liaisons. This being 1976, “prominent MP” alludes to revelations about Jeremy Thorpe.

As far as depictions of a gay Guard go, this is par for the course for the mid-70s: a cocked hip, hand resting on that hip, and swinging a handbag. Which doesn’t excuse it, or make it any better than it actually is.

333: Gay Biggles 3 - Alan Coren

"Biggles Strikes Camp"
by Alan Coren
in "Punch" 3 February 1982

First thing to note is that Coren’s title pays tribute to Cyril Connolly’s 1963 gay parody of James Bond, “Bond Strikes Camp”
The second thing to note is that the homosexuals in Coren’s piece have no resemblance whatsoever to the “nancy boys” of TV’s “Brideshead Revisited” which inspire this parody. Here, and in other pieces by Coren, his idea of homosexual behaviour is slightly outdated and probably owes more than a little to first exposure to the stereotypes to be found in 1969’s “The Boys in the Band”.
The idea that a certain sort of homosexual behaviour is incompatible with certain manly ideals has been exploited for comic purpose on numerous occasions, particulalry in regard to the military and cowboys, but in this case I can’t help but think of the earlier “Monty Python” sketch about a Hairdresser’s Expedition on Everest. Coren’s gay Biggles and co are a bunch of bitchy, overemotional hairdressers who just happen to fly aeroplanes on the side. There’s plenty of camp speech, “her’”s all round, with a few touches of actual polari, besides occasional eruptions of flaring condescension when crossed. Otherwise they are concerned with fashion and interior decorating, and deliberately nostalgic references to old film stars. Since Coren has more space than is usual, these caricatures have an additional dimension, where they are constantly angling for each other's affections in attempts to become top dog – which is not unrealistic.

Unlike Graham Chapman’s parody of Biggles, what none of them are is sexual in the slightest. But then Chapman was writing as a gay man with fairly vigorous sexual appetites (by his own account). Coren is writing for the audience of “Punch” and knows what he likes and what is acceptable in terms of funny homosexuals. Also, it’s rather less of a parody of W.E. Johns as well, but that’s not really our concern.

---------------------------
"Biggles Strikes Camp"
by Alan Coren
in "Punch" 3 February 1982

News that Brideshead Revisited star Jeremy Irons is to play Biggles, the fictional aviation figure of the thirties, has raised fears among scholars that the schoolboy hero will be played as a nancy-boy.
- Daily Mirror

The shattering roar of the engine was bad, but the heat was worse. Trapped in the juddering seat, the whirling blades inches from his head and howling on maximum revs, Biggles wondered whether something might not have gone terribly wrong. He tried to turn, but the restriction of that tiny space prevented him from seeing Algy behind him. He could hear Algy shouting something, but he could not, in the fearful din and the rushing of the air, make out the words. Desperately, Biggles waved a hand, hoping against hope that Flight-Lieutenant the Hon. Algernon Lacy, with whom he had been through so much, would draw on that long partnership now and interpret his brief signal correctly.
Algy did not fail him. A switch was flicked, the motor Cut out, the roaring died, and with it the vibration and the dreadful heat. It was over!
Squadron-Leader James Bigglesworth, DSO, drew a deep breath, and slid out from beneath the hair-drier.
'What was all that shrieking about, you silly mare?' he enquired.
'I suddenly remembered about the conditioner,' said AIgy. 'I suddenly said to myself, oh my Gawd, I said, I never put any hair conditioner on her, she'll frizzle up like nobody's business, I said, you know what her ends go like after a day in an open cockpit!'
Biggles leapt to his feet, shot his trusty co-pilot one of his withering looks, and ran over to the mess mirror. He took a glance, and screamed faintly.
I look like Greer Garson!' he cried. 'It's flying all over everywhere! It's very fine, my hair, it's always been very fine, body is what it lacks, it lacks body, I don't know how many times I’ve told you about not forgetting the conditioner, I remember the night we were over Bremen and that silly old queen Hopcroft caught a tracer bullet in the. head and I was covered in icky blood and brains and everything, I remember saying to you then, I said I’ve just had this streak put in and now it's soaked, I'll have to rinse it out in lemon juice, and you threw one of your fits and said where are we going to get lemon juice, don't you know there’s a war on, and I said never mind that, just remember after the lemon juice you'll have: to put tots and lots of conditioner on otherwise. . .‘
‘You don't half go on,' muttered Algy. 'I've only got one pair of hands, I can't be bloody everywhere, I had to comb out Gimlet's perm in the middle of everything,'
'It looks ever so nice: said Gimlet, from the other side of the mess, examining the moustache in a little mother-of-pearl pocket-mirror. 'It's come up exactly parallel, Algy. I think I look Ward Bond. Do you think I look like Ward Bond, Skip?'
Biggles glared at his navigator.
‘Skip?' he mimicked, dropping his voice an octave. 'Ward ? Our little friend would appear to be feeling very masculine this morning, Algy. What do you suppose has come over him, if you'll pardon the expression?'
Algy removed the Kirby grips from his mouth.
‘I blame that hormone cream she uses on her legs,' he said. ‘Start with that, you never know where it's going to end. Personally, give me a good pluck every time.'
Biggles nodded.
‘She thinks she looks like Ward Bond,' he said. 'If you want my opinion, dear, 1'd say it was more like Anne Baxter tucking into a piece of shredded wheat!'
Algy shrieked, and fell against his captain. They foxtrotted briefly, and when they broke apart again, breathless, Gimlet had gone, slamming the hardboard door.
'Temper!' shouted Biggles. He sat down, and his co-pilot began skilfully to comb him out. Biggles, soothed, closed his eyes; but at the tap on the door, they snapped open again. 'That'll be Gimlet back to say she's sorry,' he said confidently. 'I can read her like a book!'
'Be firm,' murmured AIgy, the tail-comb flicking.
But it was not the trusty Gimlet who strode into the mess. It was a tall, slim, freckled, red-headed youth, who saluted formally, and then, shyly, grinned.
'Who's this?' said Biggles.
'Call me Ginger,' said the youth, 'everybody does.'
'Yes, well, they would, wouldn't they, dear?' said Biggles.
'What can we do for you, if it isn't a silly answer?'
'Gimlet has told the Wing-Commander that he's not going to fly with you any more,' said Ginger, 'so I've been assigned to your crew instead.'
Biggles sprang from the chair. Vogue slid! from his lap.
'You?' he screamed. 'You, fly with us?'
Ginger's soft face fell. His lower lip trembled.
'Why not?' he enquired.
Biggies grabbed him by the arm, and dragged both him and Algy to the mirror.
'Look!' he cried. 'Algy's brunette, I'm ash-blonde, and you're a redhead! We look like the Andrews Sisters! It's such bad taste!'
'You don't have to be blonde," murmured Algy. I could put a nice tawny tint on it. Or you could wear a wig.'
Biggles reeled!
'Me? A wig? Gumming it on like some poor old poof behind the scout hut, before going out to paste Jerry over the Ruhr, is that what you think this war is an about?'
'I think it's a super idea!' cried Ginger, dapping his hands. 'If you got shot down and it flew off and you were captured, the RAF could drop a spare into the camp, just like Douglas Bader!'
Algy giggled, and clapped him on the shoulder, gently.
'I think I'm going to like you,' he said. 'By the way, we haven't been introduced, I'm - '
'You have to be the faithful Algy,' said Ginger, offering his hand.
Algy held it.
'No have to about it, dear,' he murmured.
'I'll kill you!' hissed Biggles.
There is no telling what might have happened then, if the klaxon had not clanged, summoning them to the morning's briefing. Ginger and Algy instantly snatched up their flight-pads and teddies and ran; Biggles, caught in indecision between his pastel-blue flying scarf and the cerise with the polka-dots, followed on. When he arrived at the briefing hut, it was already full, and buzzing with excited gossip, in which Biggles had no chance to join, for at that very moment the door to the left of the dais opened, and the impressive figure of the Group-Captain limped in, followed, as always, by the loyal and almost equally impressive figure of his trusty cat, Bosie.
'He's so, oooh, I don't know,' murmured Algy. 'Very few people can get away with a game leg.'
'You could, Algy,' whispered Ginger. 'You've got the presence.'
Biggles hit him with his flight-bag. Sequins flew. Men went shoosh!
‘Right, chaps,' bellowed the Group-Captain, taking a corner of the green baize that hung down over the blackboard, 'shan't keep you in suspense!'
He flung back the cloth.
The hut, as one man, gasped!
Pinned to the blackboard was a detailed drawing of the mess, covered in multi-coloured squiggles. Here and there, swatches of cloth dangled from pins, with paint-charts beside them.
‘It's the new wallpaper and curtains!' breathed Algy.
The Group-Captain tapped the board with his pointer.
‘Now,' he said, 'I've had a word with our chums the boffins, and they tell me that if we want an apricot dado, there is - '
‘PELMETS!’ thundered a voice.
The men swivelled, craned. The Group-Captain's face darkened.
‘There will be an apportunity for questions later, Bgglesworth,' he said. 'Meanwhile, if you would be so - '
'They went out with the ark, pelmets!' cried Biggles. 'We might as well have plaster ducks going up the wall, dear! We might as well have regency stripes!'
A terrible silence fell over the hut. The Group-Captain stared at Biggles for a very long time. Then his cat began to cough. Without another word, the Group-Captain snatched Bosie from the floor, and stomped out, echoingly.
The men cleared their throats, and shuffled, and murmured. After a few minutes, the door opened again, and the Group-Captain's aide-de-camp hurried in, with tiny, precise steps, and tossed back a golden forelock.
'He's very, very hurt,' he said. 'He's having one of his migraines. He says you're all to go off right this minute and bomb Hanover!'
The door slammed"
The men got up, slowly, and began to move out. Everyone ignored Biggles.
'It's suicide, putting a pelmet up in a room like that!' cried Biggles, but nobody listened.
'I hate Hanover,' muttered Algy to Ginger. 'It's such a boring route. '
'I could navigate a pretty way,' murmured Ginger, squeezing Algy's arm, as they walked towards their Wellington. 'We could go in low over Holland. The tulips'll be out. That'd be bona, wouldn't it, Biggles?'
'Go to hell!' snarled his Squadron-Leader, and pulled himself up into the plane. Algy rolled his eyes.
'Gawd belp us all,' he muttered, 'she's come over masterfu1!'
He allowed Ginger to climb up through the belly batch first, and helped him with an unhurried push. Biggles was already at the controls. The starboard engine fired, the port engine followed, the bomber swung out onto the runway, lumbered over the rutted concrete, and finally heaved itself into the cold East Anglian sky.
'Makes a change, having a closed cockpit,' shouted Algy from the co-pilot's seat, to break the frigid atmosphere, 'better for my rash.'
Biggles said nothing.
'Be like that,' said Algy. He pulled his mask over his mouth, and flicked the communications switch. 'Co-pilot to navigator,' he said, 'you wouldn't fancy that new Judy Garland tonight and a skate dinner on me, by any chance, dear?'
'Love it!' came back Ginger's eager crackle, on the open channel.
Squadron-Leader Bigglesworth, trained to a hair's breadth, did not react. His experienced eyes, emphasised with just the merest hint of mascara, stared straight ahead towards the Dutch coast, unmoistening. Only the sudden whitening of his knuckles on the controls betrayed the tensions of the inner man.
Which was why, betrayed by that rigid glower, he did not spot the Me 109 hurtling in on his starboard quarter until it was too late and the bullets were pumping into wing and fuselage! Too late, he heard the anguished cry of Algy in his ears:
'Ooooh, they've hit a fuel lead, the port engine's packed up, there's oil pouring in all over me, we're losing height, what're we do?'
'Hang on!' cried Biggles. 'Don't panic, I've had oil on my flying-suit a dozen times, you just soak it in a lukewarm solution of soap-flakes and engine solvent, but,' and here his voice rose above the stricken starboard motor, 'whatever you do, don't try boiling it!'
Algy gripped his knee.
'I didn't mean that about her skate dinner,' he shouted. Then he kicked open the bomb doors, and dropped. Ginger and the mid-upper gunner followed him. The tail-gunner was long gone.
Biggles waited until their parachutes flowered open, then he unbuckled his seatbelt, grabbed his douche-bag, and went out through the yawning bomb-bay.
It was not until the precise second when he pulled the rip-cord that he remembered about his parachute. But he was Biggles, so he merely grinned: some people would give their all for silk pyjamas, and some wouldn't. That was what life was all about.
He had just enough time to glance up through the shrouds and see the remnant tatters of his chute before he hit the Rotterdam ring-road, like a brick.

227: Alan Coren - Chapter VIII, Two Hearts Beat As One

"Chapter VIII: Two Hearts Beat As One"
by Alan Coren
in "Punch" 27 Jan 1971
(from a series of parodies inspired by a news story about modern romance magazines)

Mrs Belweather was nervous; and what mother would not be?

She had done their weekend cottage out from top to bottom, and the little house shone like a brass button; the scent of lavender and pine was everywhere and the rich brown parquet was a mirror of chintz and dimity, and the bright flowers of the spotless curtains, moving gently in the soft spring breeze, were for all the world like the real flowers of her lovely little garden beyond! The horse-brasses winked in the cosy ingle-nook, and the porcelain dog smiled beneath his lampshade, and her collection of reproduction Delft soup-plates sent the friendly rays of the spring sun dancing back into the room, and Crippen the cat sat on the white window-ledge blinking contentedly as he rubbed his furry paws over his fine long whiskers, and the bronzette kettle sang happily on the hob. Yes, thought Mrs Belweather, wonderfully presented for sixty, I have done my bit! Shall I have just a little glass of Stone’s Ginger Wine for my palpitations? After all, I do deserve it, and it isn’t every day that a mummy’s only son brings his fiancée home!

She had just washed up the wine glass and popped a Polo into her moth when the wheels of Nigel’s little two-seater rasped on the gravel, and his horn peep-peeped, the way it always did when he came down to Volehaven from his important job in the city. Hurriedly she smoothed her hair. The door chimed gently. She ran to it.

Nigel stood there smiling, filling the doorway with his fine, lean frame, his handsome face tanned form the drive, his grey eyes twinkling with customary merriment.

'Hello, Mumsy!" he said, with his wonderful voice. He put down his cricket bag and his squash racket and his riding boots and his gleaming twelve-bore, and threw his strong arms around her.

“Hello, darling!" cried Mrs. Belwether. My goodness, she thought, am I really about to weep? Silly old me! "Where's . . .”

Nigel laughed his rich laugh.

“In the car, Mumsy,” he replied. “No peeking! I wanted to have you all to myself, just for a minute."

They walked into the parlour, arm-in-arm, and Nigel was about to tell her about his job and his new flat in fashionable Fulham Road, when she slapped his wrist playfully!

"Nigel, I can't wait a moment longer! It really is too naughty of you! Look, there’s Father coming in from the radishes now."

“Very well, you silly old thing!" said Nige1, and, with a light laugh, he went out the door.

The lovers returned hand in hand, smiling over some private joke, as lovers will. Mr and Mrs Belwether waited by the fireplace.

"Mumsy, Father, this is Julian," said Nigel.

They all shook hands. Mr. Belwether, retired from the bank now but still sprightly, poured sherry, and looked Julian up and down, as fathers will.

“So,” he said, "this is the young fella who’s going to take our 1ittle boy away, is it?”

Everyone chuckled! He's so good with people, thought Mrs. Belwether hugging herself mentally.

“Don't think of it as losing a son Mr Belwether," said Julian. "Think of it as gaining a son."

Mrs Belwether nudged Nigel.

"I think Father wants to be alone with Julian," she said. "Shall I show you my cotoneaster?"

"Right-o!" said Nigel.

When they had gone, Mr. Belwether poured Julian another glass of sherry.

"Now, young fella-me-lad," he said. "This job of yours-pays well, does it? Good prospects?"

195: Jeremy Thorpe 13

“Lloyd George Knew My Father”
by Alan Coren
in “Punch”, 26 October 1977

It is with a heavy heart and a lovely thick nib that I now set down the dire events in which I became inextricably enmeshed more than a year ago. Events that were ultimately to shake the entire civilised world; or, at any rate, that part of it which feels that man's dark destiny and the future of the Parliamentary Liberal Party are really one and the same thing.
It was at a small souper intime in September 1976 that I first made the acquaintance of Mr X. The acquaintance was Mr Y, and Mr X was very nice about it, really, although I must say he did give me a couple of those very sharp Looks of his when Mr Y and I came in from the balcony, but I think it was only because we just happened to have chosen the same emerald green for our safari suits, and though I says it as shouldn't, you have to be slim for emerald, and Mr X is, well, let's say a little bit portly compared with some people not a million miles from this desk!
Where was I?
Oh, yes, that little supper in Polperro.
Well, after the avgolemono soup (everybody had to bring one course; 1'd done the lime sorbet, which would have been really terrific if I hadn't stopped the car on the way to chat to this nice boy at a Greenline stop, and it went all runny), I was just peeling one of Mr Y's plover's eggs for him (he's got these huge fumbly hands, not one of your delicate ones at all, great big pink fingers like saveloys), when suddenly Lord Z looked up, terribly seriously, and said: "Look here, someone's going to have to do something about this bugger, sorry, this swine who's trying to blackmail the entire Liberal Party with his vile innuendo!"
We stared, aghast! Many a mouth dropped open.
"Vile Innuendo?" enquired W, first of us to recover. "Wasn't he that whippy little Wop that T found on the Spanish Steps during last summer's fact-finding mission?"
"You shut up!" cried T, purpling. "You just shut your rotten face!"
"Stop that!" thundered Lord Z, who can be terribly masterful at times, "This is no time for personal slanging matches. A piece of absolute muck has threatened to sell his grimy tale to the Sunday rags unless he hears from me in folding oncers by the end of the month!"
"Is there any truth in the rumour?" shrieked E.
"There is no truth in the rumour," replied Lord Z firmly. "The person in question, a stoker who is totally unknown to me – “
""Incredible," murmured that spiteful little bitch J.
"- claims to have compromised the entire Parliamentary Liberal Party on the upper deck of a Number Eleven bus during our visit to the London Planetarium last April. "
"1 remember that trip," murmured E absently. "W went all funny when the moon came up. I never realised he had hair on his hands till that moment."
"Never mind that," snapped Lord Z. "The fact of the matter, as many of you here know full well, is that nothing at all untoward happened on that day. Even the stationmaster at Baker Street Underground went out of his way to remark that he had never met a group of gentlemen who had used his Foto-Me booth with more discretion. "
"An absolute sweetie," said J, nodding. "I do like those new little brimless caps they wear."
"You wouldn't say the red piping's superfluous?" enquired X.
"GENTLEMEN!" shouted Lord Z, with rather more force than accuracy. "Can we not address ourselves whole-heartedly to the fact that the great and glorious party of which several of us here are proud members is presently teetering on the brink of outrageous scandal? What are we to do about this awful stoker person?"
"Pay him off?" suggested T. "Personally, I have often found that a bag of boiled sweets and a Judy Garland LP will work wonders on the most - "
"He wants," muttered Lord Z, "twenty thousand pounds. In practical terms, that represents the Party's entire political broadcast budget."
"That's not our fault," protested W, "my friend and I offered to do one for nothing. I got this snotty little note from Party HQ, didn't I, saying the executive didn't feel that the tango was a vote catcher at this moment in time. They're so hidebound, sometimes, you could scream!"
"Why didn't we offer him a safe Liberal seat?" asked X.
Nobody said anything at all. I mean, we all enjoy a joke as much as the next man, but there's a time and a place for everything.
"I know," said V, who up until then had. said nothing, "why don't we lean on him a little? 1 could put you in touch with a couple of big navvies who would go round there and scratch his eyes out."
There were one or two "Oooohs!" at this, but I happened to catch Lord Z's eye, and I could see that it was a suggestion with which he was not totally unsympathetic.
"I had thought of something like that," he said quietly. "But would it not be better it the arrangement were rather more, er, permanent?"
There was a very long, and very uneasy silence.
I cleared my throat.
"Don't these, ahem, matters cost rather a lot of money, too?" I said.
Lord Z peered tetchily through his diamantine lorgnette.
"Who said that?" he enquired.
"It was C," said T. "She's ever such a quiet one. You haven't opened your mouth all evening, have you, C?"
Despite the unseemly tittering, I persisted. Y's little squeeze on my forearm helped.
"It's just that I've heard about these things," I said, "and I'm not sure that Party funds would cover it."
"We've got twenty-eight pounds forty in the kitty, to my certain knowledge," snap¬ped Lord Z, "and we haven't had our jumble sale yet."
"Won't, either," muttered T bitterly. "I understand that the scout hut will not be made available this year. I'm not naming any names, but there's some little unpleasantness still hanging over from last year when that big red-headed Ranger won the cherry cake."
"He guessed its weight fair and square!" shouted J.
"Guessed?" shrieked T. "Guessed? I suppose it couldn't be that the person who made the cake might have written down its weight on a piece of paper just large enough to be pressed into a sweaty little palm while that person and the person with the sweaty little palm were putting up. the bunting together?"
"I'm not listening to any more of this slander!" cried J, shoving back his chair.
"All the thanks I get, you can have a bloody shop gateau this year, I hope it chokes - "
"Now, now," interrupted Lord Z. "Let us put the Party first. Are you telling me, C, that we could not get this person shot for £28.40?"
"I do not," I replied, "believe we could buy a gun for less than about a hundred, let alone someone to fire it."
"Couldn't we have him stabbed?" said T.
"You can buy a hatpin for under a pound."
"Not of any quality," murmured W.
"God knows that's true," nodded X. "I've never known Kirby grips snap as much as they do these days."
"We could poison him," suggested T. "J's probably got a cake or two put by, haven't you, dear?"
"Oh, God," said W, "now you've made him cry, you silly cow!"
"Good training," replied T, firmly, "he'll have to get used to heckling. No good dreaming about being Prime Minister one day if you break down and blub every time the going gets personal."
"Is there no cheaper way of getting at this beast?" cried Lord Z. "Couldn't we frighten him?"
"Has he got a dog?" enquired X. "We could shoot it for him."
"Very risky, that," countered T. "It could cost untold votes, shooting someone's dog. I can't see anyone in the Party wishing to associate themselves with anything of that order."
"Blighter hasn't got a dog, anyway," said Lord Z. "Closest he comes is a ginger teddy-bear with one eye. Got a great sentimental attachment to it, mind. I understand he's had it since he was thirty."
"Perhaps we could knock it about a bit?" offered X. "Pull its other eye off, something of that order."
"Doubt if it'd frighten him much," said Lord Z, shaking his head. "'Make him nastier, if anything. No, our only course is to have him put away for good. No messing about. Bang, bang, and on to the broad sunny uplands of the next election, that's what I say."
"But surely," I said, blushing even as I put myself forward, "we have not dealt with the matter of the fee? It could run as high as ten thousand pounds. Whom do we know who would be prepared to back us with that kind of money?"
We were all silent for a time. Then X said, very slowly:
"No individual would take the risk, of course. Nor is the Liberal Party in a position to offer, er, favours to any businesses, industries, property men, that kind of thing, is it? I mean, we're not ever going to be able to put anything their way, are we, or even - "
"Oh, do get on, dear, for heaven's sake!" cried T. "I know you when you've got something up your sleeve."
"And that's not all," said J, who had blown his nose, retouched his eyeliner, and was almost back to his old self.
"All right," said X, smirking rather unappealingly. "There is just one powerful and rich organisation who might be prepared to carry out the mission on our behalf, provided we could offer them something concrete in return!"
We held our breath! We craned! We positively gawped!
"Do we have something concrete to offer?" breathed Lord Z.
X paused for a long time. He can be such a tease, on occasion.
"Well, it's just a silly idea off the top of my thingy," he said, at last, "but how would you feel about some kind of political pact?"

102: GLC 4 - Coren / Mahood

August
Mr Ken Livingstone announces GLC plans for a gay bus route. Travellers will be able to go anywhere for 10p. The necessary subsidy will be met by dimming streetlights by thirty per cent.

From “Old Coren’s Almanac”, by Alan Coren. Illustration by Kenneth Mahood.
in “Punch” 16 December 1981

--------------------------

One of Livingstone’s more notable actions had been to lower bus fares. So, ho ho, this through the magic of associational satire becomes “Gay Bus Routes”.

The creature in the Mahood cartoon has now become a stereotype that has nothing whatsoever to do with contemporary homosexuals. High heeled shoes, flowery tie, bouffant hair, handbag and a limp wrists. This is a shopworn cliché even in the early 70s.