Cheney’s Lingerie Legacy

I confess I chuckled heartily when I saw the eyebrow-raising words “Cheney’s Lingerie Legacy” at Andrew Sullivan’s site.  Two more words popped up, unprompted but irresistably and immediately. No prizes – not even for the bright pupils of Market Snodsbury Grammar School – for guessing that Spode was one and Eulalie the other.

This sort of thing happens more often than you might think and not just to me either. Here, for instance, is how Christopher Hitchens began his review of Robert McCrum’s excellent biography of Wodehouse:

I daresay that one can claim, without running overmuch risk of contradiction, to have been reading Frederick Taylor’s recent history of the obliteration of Dresden with no intention of looking for laughs. And yet when I reached page 46, I found myself open-mouthed with joy, and eager to share my mirth. Taylor carefully sets the scene of pre-war Nazi Saxony, and devotes several paragraphs to the unpleasing figure of Martin Mutschmann, the party gauleiter.