Can't remember the verses, but I do remember the words they used to sing at the same time as the ones you've quoted above, as a counterpoint:

"Love, in other words an intimate affection for a member of the opposite persuasion, scrutinise the awful havoc it has wrought in me;

My matutinal repast is ended, as for dinner it is scornfully rejected

Every day I'm more emaciated, more debilitated and more dolefully dejected

Waste not and you will never come to want and yet in spite of this instructive little motto, anyone can see that I am wasting every day

I'm wasting all my money, wasting all my time and wasting evrything that I possess until it's absolutely certain I shall waste myself away."

(It helps if you have the ability to sing without breathing!)

I remember dear Al Sealey - who didn't exactly look like he was "wasting away" - used to get to the line about "every day I get thinner and thinner", then he'd pause, fix his eye on someone in the audience and scowl: "I can lip-read, and that was very 'urtful."

I saw Dave Sealey, just a couple of days ago, doing a show about Max Miller. If I'd known this was going to come up, I could have asked him then!