The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #67442   Message #1128093
Posted By: GUEST
02-Mar-04 - 08:27 PM
Thread Name: Your Favourite Audience Insult/Comeback?
Subject: RE: Your Favourite Audience Insult/Comeback?
As an all-purpose response to heckers, etc, what about "You're what Dr. Spooner would call a Shining Wit"?

For the benefit of anyone (eg in the USA) who may not be familiar with Reverend Doctor W.A. (?William Archibald) Spooner, Warden of New College, Oxford, he was apparently the accidental inventor of "spoonerisms" (where the first part of successive or nearby words are transposed, as in the examples following (intended form in brackets):

"It is a lace bible" (base libel)
"The Lord is indeed a shoving leopard" (loving shepherd)
"Ah come in Mr. Smith, I have already detected several prowlers in your hose" (howlers in your prose).
"You have deliberately tasted two whole worms (wasted two whole terms); you have hissed all my mystery lectures (missed all my history lectures) and been caught fighting a liar (lighting a fire) in the quad. You will leave by the next town drain." (down train).

"Let us drink a toast to the queer old Dean" (dear old Queen). This was actually not one of Spooner's, but was spoken by British TV Comic Ronnie Barker when he played Rev. Spooner in a sketch on the long running and extremely popular (and soon to be revived) BBC TV comedy series "The Two Ronnies" (with Scottish comic Ronnie Corbett).

Spoonerisms are not to be confused with malapropisms, but it is too late at night to try and explain the difference - anyone interested can look up the Internet.