My Grandma (born 1920) always used the variation "'Too late!', she cried, as she gaily waved her wooden leg". As she and her family have always lived in the UK, this seems to make her a little unusual, as most of the people reporting the "too late" version seem to be from the Southern Hemisphere.

I asked her about it once, probably in the mid to late 90s, and she told me it was something she'd come up with herself. I'd always beleived her, having never heard it elsewhere until I randomly came across this discussion. Still, I'm sure it wasn't deliberate, most likely something she'd picked up in her youth and long since forgotten the origin of, as everyone else seems to.

It's odd to think how sayings and catchphrases like this could seemingly rapidly make their way round pop culture even before the advent of mass media. Mackay's Extraordinary Popular Delusions has a whole chapter about similar phrases that enjoyed mass popularity in Victorian London, many of them having inscrutable origins.