330: Boy's Own Adventures

Children’s stories – always a temptation for cheap sexual gags. The supposed innocence (or ignorance) of childhood is played off against adult sexual experience, as humorists are tempted to subvert the simple role models of youth. In children’s stories and fairly tales, ideas of heroism, manliness and honourable behaviour are made quite explicit, and therefore ripe for the introduction of a little filth and smut “Playboy”’s cartoon pages would be a lot emptier without regular adult revisions of fairy tale classics.



by Andrew Marshall and David Renwick
from “Bestseller! The Life and Death of Eric Pode of Croydon”, 1981

The very all-male ethos of Boy’s Own stories can’t help but invite homosexual subversion. Not a genre much known to Americans outide of Harry Potter, daring tales of good, clean decent schoolboy pluck and spunk have been a mainstay of generation’s of British childhoods in magazine like “Boy’s Own Paper”, “The Gem” and “The Magnet”. Of course, books like “The Loom of Youth”, “Enemies of Promise”, and films like “If” have been more forthcoming about the affections and attractions young chaps may develop for each other. Let alone late night exploits of The Biscuit Game. And this before you take into account a nostalgic taste for school-boy themed flagellation that holds such an appeal for a particular type of older gentlemen, vide Dennis Price in school cap and blazer begging to be spanked in the 1972 film “The Adventures of Barry McKenzie”.

283: More Gay Espionage

(Academia and espionage make strange bedfellows. But of course so did Oscar Wilde. And the spirit of Wilde would seem to have been one of the guiding influences during those heady, seamy years of varsity shortly before the last war - years when, as we are now only too aware, the enemy began to infiltrate British seats of learning in a most literal manner. ERIC PODE OF CROYDON takes a look back at what went wrong in our failure to counter the Soviet thrust.)

“Beds Under the Reds”

(Academia and espionage make strange bedfellows. But of course so did Oscar Wilde. And the spirit of Wilde would seem to have been one of the guiding influences during those heady, seamy years of varsity shortly before the last war - years when, as we are now only too aware, the enemy began to infiltrate British seats of learning in a most literal manner. ERIC PODE OF CROYDON takes a look back at what went wrong in our failure to counter the Soviet thrust.)


Quentin “Whoopsy” Rampton: Rugby and showers afterwards. Descended from a long line of sailors, usually on Sunday afternoons. Was the first man to reduce dandruff to its present size. His plan to introduce homosexuality as a safe contraceptive for men never caught on.

Quentin "Whoopsy" Rampton recalls those early carefree days spent punting and picknicking by the Cam with wistful nostalgia: "They were undoubtedly the happiest days of one's life. The very idea, though, that Vladimirovich Sovietspy- or Jerry as he become known to me - might be a Russian was at the time unthinkable. He was so frightfully charming . . . gave me lifts to college in his tank, let me try on his fur hat at weekends, that sort of thing."
But beneath the surface a deadly game was being played. In 1934 Sovietspy met William Celery Purse, a second-year embroidery student and the son of three high-ranking brigadiers: auspicious military connections which were strengthened further by an uncle in the navy, Rear Admirer Sir Horatio Purse. After a deep personal relationship lasting close on seven and a half minutes Sovietspy claimed he had photos of Purse winning medals at ice-skating. For Purse, this was the end. His reputation in tatters, he was forced to tell all he knew about British Intelligence.
Again, Rampton claims he had still not begun to suspect. "How was one to know? He was such a frail, sensitive man. He used to catch potato blight from packets of crisps. No, I would never have believed him capable of such outrages."
I put it to Dr Rampton that he was arguably the most outrageous old fairy in the history of Creation.
"Well, yes."
As a leading poove of that period, therefore, what leaks did he know about?
"Well of course we all knew that Guy Rogerson was handing the Russians the Red Army... who until that time were working on the bacon counter at Sainsbury's. And we later discovered that Jocelyn Beddowes was secretly passing them East Germany. He used to smuggle it over a lump at a time inside copies of Bertrand Russell."
Shocking revelations indeed. And were there any others, who even to this day have not yet been exposed?
"Well there was one other colleague who was working as an agent - I believe he entered journalism and became an editor. His name was

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from “Best-seller! : The Life and Death of Eric Pode of Croydon” by Andrew Marshall and David Renwick (1981)

A parody newspaper article from a book collecting many of the best sketches from the late 1970s radio comedy programme “The Burkiss Way”. The programme was a blend of pinpoint accurate media parodies, surrealism and self-referential metafictional conceits, and expertly deployed hoary old gags. Eric Pode of Croydon was a recurring, ghastly, incompetent character, and it is his exploits on which the book is hung. “The Burkiss Way” is regularly repeated on Radio 7 in the UK and well worth a listen.

Anyway, here it’s a parody of the fellow-travelling 1930s and Oxbridge educated gay spies. I don’t think it would disgrace Woody Allen in the pages of the New Yorker, with its sex jokes, and forays into silliness. The sudden ending is a deliberate joke, not a scanning error. I think it captures the various ways that the public thinks that upper-class university types have of indulging homoeroticism, which would only be confirmed by the production of “Brideshead Revisited” a year or two later. The picture they use for Rampton is of W.H.Auden. Who was gay, Oxbridge educated, knocking about in the 1930s, of fellow-travelling lefty inclinations, and even a friend of Burgess and Maclean. “Whoopsy” captures nicely those university-type nicknames, while being blatant about homosexuality. Obligatory mention of Wilde? Check. The ice skater might seem a deliberately silly interjection, but probably refers to John Curry, the 1976 British Olympic skating champion, who had been outed about the time of his victory.

91: "The Burkiss Way" - 'Are You Being Served?' parody

The Burkiss Way, Radio 4, 1976 -80
Written by Andrew Marshall and David Renwick
From an unidentified episode, reprinted in “Bestseller! The Life and Death of Eric Pode of Croydon”, 1981

#1: Good mroning.
#2: Good mroning, can I help you?
#1: Yes, I’d like to see a male assistant please.
#2: I AM a male assistant, sir.
#1: Yes I know, but I want to see a MALE assistant – get the drift?
#2: Oh I see! Mr Different-person!
#3: Yes, Mr Same-person?
#2: Serve this gentleman would you?
#3: Certainly. Now sir, what is it you wish to purchase?
#1: A pair of socks please.
#3: I see, sir. And what size are you?
#1: To the right.
#3: I beg your pardon, sir?
#1: To the right.
#3: I . . . don’t think I’m quite with you yet, sir?
#1: Well put it this way, I incline towards the EASTERN hemisphere.
#3: What?
#1: I put all my eggs in the OFFSIDE basket
#3: ? ? ? Sir, how long did you want these socks?
#1: Well, until they wear out.
#3: I see. In that case I think we’ll put you on the this foot-measurer. Just give me your foot please.
#1: (COUGH COUGH)
#3: I beg your pardon
#1: (COUGH COUGH)?
#3: What did you do that for?
#1: I’m sorry, I thought you wanted me to cough.
#3: Sir, can we please confine this conversation to your feet.
#1: Very well.
#3: Now then, what colour?
#1: Pale blue.
#3: YOU KNOW FULL WELL I MEANT THE SOCKS!!!
#1: I was TALKING about the socks.
#3: Oh, sorry. The central heating’s not working. Now if you’d just slip them on, see how they feel . . .
#1: Hmm. They feel a bit LOOSE for a sock.
#3: (SIGH) They’re supposed to go on your feet, sir.
#1: Are they?
#3: Yes, sir.
#1: In that case why have they got elasticated tops on them?
#3: Because you don’t want them to fall down when it gets cold, do you?
#1: I should say not. All right, I’ll take them.
#3: Thank you, sir, there’s your receipt.
#1: Just a second. These are for gentlemen who . . . well . . to the LEFT, not the right at all.
#3: What on earth are you talking about?
#1: Look – that little sumbol there!
#3: That’s a percentage sign now will you get out of here you nasty, smutty little man and stop wasting my time!
#1: Oh all right then. Good mroning.
#3: Good mroning!