It's time for Part Seven of our latest Tale for Our Time: The Girl on the Boat is P G Wodehouse's nautical entertainment of 1922 - and very different from last month's Armageddonpalooza.
Thank you for all your comments on this latest offering. Israel Pickholtz, an Israeli member of The Mark Steyn Club, appreciated a gag from Episode Two:
I'm not one for laughing out loud, but the line about the deaf-and-dumb hospital. Well. That's in a league of its own.
Had I been mid-drink, it would have come straight out of my nose.
That's good, Israel. From hereon in, make sure each installment is accesorised with a suitable beverage.
In tonight's episode, Sam has to a) tell Eustace that he's now engaged to the girl who jilted Eustace while b) inveigling Eustace into serving as his accompanist in the ship's concert:
"I'm not going to sing. I'm going to do that imitation of Frank Tinney which I did at the Trinity smoker. You haven't forgotten that? You were at the piano taking the part of the conductor of the orchestra. What a riot I was—we were! I say, Eustace, old man, I suppose you don't feel well enough to come up now and take your old part? You could do it without a rehearsal. You remember how it went.... 'Hullo, Ernest!' 'Hullo, Frank!' Why not come along?"
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear me read Part Seven of our tale simply by clicking here and logging-in. And, if you're playing catch-up with The Girl on the Boat, you can start fresh with Part One and have a good old binge-listen here.
Frank Tinney is a real person, by the way: that's him at top right. He was, like my compatriots Joni Mitchell and Justin Trudeau, a blackface entertainer, and considered by many to be the funniest comic in America. At the time Wodehouse wrote this novel, Tinney was at the peak of his success. Two years later - in 1924 - he was arrested for the brutal beating of his mistress, a dancer in the Ziegfeld Follies, Imogene "Bubbles" Wilson. The resulting publicity killed his career, his health declined, his wealth was swallowed by legal and medical bills, and he wound up moving back in with his father. One of the biggest stars of the day, Frank Tinney is today entirely forgotten save for his minor role in a P G Wodehouse caper.
If you'd like to join Israel in The Mark Steyn Club, we'd love to have you along for this eighth season. So do click here for more info - and don't forget, for fellow fans of classic fiction and/or poetry, our Steyn Club Gift Membership.
