Dics of fun quots

A few years back I had an argument with Ned Sherrin (now, but not then, a friend), which I have to say he won. Reviewing the first edition of his Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations — now reissued in a third edition — I complained that there were too many old chestnuts in it.

Varying the metaphor, I wrote, ‘As a child, I would politely decline the gobstopper that three other kids had already sucked.’ Ned rightly retorted that it is precisely for familiar quotations, half-forgotten, that people often turn to dics of quots. (‘To be or …’ — how does it go?). I had a more serious reservation about the book. As his recent autobiography shows, Sherrin is himself a fountain of wit, with few living rivals — among them, Tom Stoppard, Michael Frayn, Alan Bennett, Stephen Fry, possibly Clive James. But I felt the Humorous Quotations anthology was too lazily compiled. For example, there were and, alas, still are no fewer than 35 quotations from P. J. O’Rourke (born 1947), whom I find wildly unfunny. As someone who relishes Bernard Shaw’s prefaces more than his plays, I feel rather the same about this new edition of Sherrin’s dictionary. It contains his amusing prefaces to the first and second editions and a preface to the new edition. (The second takes me to task for the gobstoppers remark.) They are among the most enjoyable parts of the book.

Of the quotations, Sherrin says he has bidden goodbye to some old friends (I wish these had included a charabanc of O’Rourkes) and welcomed some new ones. Among the welcome newcomers is Nigella Lawson, defending toad in the hole to an American audience: ‘No amphibian is harmed in making this dish.’ One small correction to Sherrin’s new preface: Sydney Smith did not say of Brighton Pavilion that it was ‘as if St Paul’s had come down and littered’.