The "Master" of Farce is neither Trump nor Boris !

Regular readers of these minor missives of mine will be assuming that this is going to be another rant at "Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson".

Disappointment then, when the real "Master of Farce" turns out not to be a politician (even if I think the above mentioned Etonian is up near the top of the farce league).

No, the undoubted master of the art of farcical humour is Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse K.B.E. known to his friends as "Plum" as well as the author of the Jeeves and Wooster books and a host of plays, films and many other literature gems such as "Lord Emsworth and Blandings" with the Empress of that name (A very fat pig).

The "feather brained" and intellectual lightweight Bertie Wooster and his discerning, not to say sagacious man servant Jeeves !

Notwithstanding his sense of the ridiculousness of the lifestyle which Bertie Wooster and his ilk enjoyed (?) in the twenties; PG Wodehouse himself did have a certain naivety or more probably an innocence towards the real world !

Plum and his wife Ethel had in the 1930's moved to Northern France for reasons best known to rich people in those days; "Tax Avoidance".  

Such was his naivety though, that he didn't escape the German invasion in 1940 and was duly interred. He was  taken into custody and "Von Trapped" into making a short series of broadcasts ostensibly to the USA called "How to be an Internee without Training".

The reaction to what was in essence, mild Wodehouse "digs" at his captors with the 5 broadcasts, backfired spectacularly on the naive Plum back in the UK, ending up with him being truly reviled by the mainstream press. 

In particular, there was a journalist (?) in the Daily Mirror whom I can remember from my early days in the RAF, called "Cassandra" who described PG as a Nazi Collaborator although his naivety surely points in another direction to the innocence of farce !

I have to thank George Orwell for prompting this series of memories which in turn are acting as a nightcap in the futile search for sleep as a Septuagenarian !