Over on this thread, people were discussing board cliches such as titling a thread “In Which …” as in “In which someone impersonates Penny Lane”
As tomndebb and Eve note, it’s an old convention for novelists to use chapter titles that start with “In which …” Others thought the more recent inspiration was a Penny Lane reference from the movie “Almost Famous.”
I haven’t seen the movie. But I knew Penny Lane was a Beatles song, and I also had a vague memory of John Lennon starting as song with an “In which …” reference, specifically “In which Doris gets her oats.”
A little searching and I found this page, giving excerpts from a book that accompanied the release of the Beatles movie “Let it Be.” The book itself is giving a transcript of what the Beatles said during filming:
This was the odd comment that preceded the song “Two of Us.”
I have no idea who Charles Dawtrey is, what his Deaf Aids are, if they even exist. The whole thing could be an inside joke or the nonsensical ramblings of Lennon. But perhaps this is the source of the “In Which…” ref from “Almost Famous.”
You’re right about “I Dig a Pygmy.”
(On the page I linked, Lennon is rambling on, just trying out different combinations. One of them is “I dig a pony,” which was the title they gave to another song on the album. But right before “Two of Us” he says "pygmy, as you noted. I cut and pasted the darn quote and got the wrong one.)
Thanks for ID’ing Charles Hawtrey.
Deaf Aids anyone?
Ah, so this is beginning to make sense after all these years.
Not really, but at least it’s making a little less nonsense.
The nearest I could come to it, before looking it up, was: “I Dig a Pygmy by Charles Halltree on the Deccas. Phase One in which Doris gets Herr Oates.”
“Getting your oats” is an old expression that means “getting what’s coming to you.” Sorta like reaping the wild oats that you’ve sown. At least, that’s how I’ve understood it when I’ve heard it before.
I actually think the phrase was “In which Doris gets 'er 'orse.” It’s definitely spoken in an “aitch-less” dialect like Cockney and 'orse is just “horse.”
Could be, but it sound like “oats” to me, and the Let It Be book I linked to quotes Lennon as saying “Doris gets her oats.” At any rate, it seems like abitrary nonsensical wordplay without any specific meaning, and without meaning it’s hard to decipher what he really meant.
Wait a minute . . . you guys are trying to extract meaning out of an off-the-cuff Lennon riff? Keep in mind this is the same guy who, later on the same album, changed the first line of “Get Back” to: Sweet Loretta Fat, she thought she was a cleaner, but she was a frying pan!
Oh, it’s more than that! I actually read Lennon’s humor books, “In His Own Write,” and “A Spaniard In the Works,” so I knew his humor tended toward weird non sequitors.
But I did learn something from this thread – that “gets her oats” is slang for sex. I knew the phrase “feeling one’s oats,” but “gets her oats” baffled me.
(And before you posted, I sort of thought he was saying “Sweet Loretta Fart” …)