Can anyone[SIZE=“4”][/SIZE], journalist or otherwise, please explain the joke about “cleft sticks” in Evelyn Waugh’s novel,* Scoop*?
I haven’t read this book for some time so I am relying more than somewhat on memory.
Any joke about cleft sticks revolves around a play on the two meanings of the expression. Originally, a cleft stick was a piece of wood with a ‘Y’ shaped end into which a message, or later a piece of newspaper copy, could be inserted for ease of carrying by a messenger. In time, to be in a cleft stick came to mean finding oneself in a situation where difficult choices present themselves. It’s not unlike being in a quandary, or on the horns of a dilemma.
When Lord Copper suggests that Boot should take some cleft sticks with him to Abyssinia, he is implying that his correspondent might encounter some problems. As I recall, Boot does take some actual wooden cleft sticks with him. Whether such implements were in reality still in use at the time of his Abyssinian adventure, I really cannot say.
Thank you so much, Chez Guevara, I’ve wondered about this for 50 years! As a foreign correspondent in the days before the internet, the mechanics of getting copy to editors was always a challenge, though a lot easier than in Boot’s day. We had telex, dictating over the phone copy-takers, then, in the 80’s using a Tandy computer with acoustic couplers - weird rubber cup-like things that you wedged onto a phone receiver. All pretty cumbersome though, compared to the internet.
How dare you insult the TRS-80 Model 100 like that! Flintlocks at dawn! 
I’ve never read any deeper message into that passage. I’ve always just thought it was a comment on how stupid and gullible Lord Copper is.
2 posts were merged into an existing topic: Megburns Troll posts
“Up to a point, Lord Copper” is of relevance here. He doesn’t really know much more than Boot about Africa or how his journalists work, but no-one dares contradict him.