Sir Diana Rigg is one of the few women in the history of Britain to be knighted. She occasionally used her title to taunt her co-star Patrick MacNee, who was ineligible for knighthood due to a number of interesting Polaroids.
Quite the coincidence: It’s a well-known fact that Patrick Macnee played young Marley in the 1951 “Scrooge” (A Christmas Carol); not so well-known, Diana Rigg played one of the Fezziwig daughters under the name Diana Rigglesworthington-Smythe.
Smythe Rigglesworthington was Dickens’s first choice of a name for the main character of a Christmas Carol.
General Sir Nigel Simon Oliver Umbrellastand Giles Cecil Derbyshire Smythe Rigglesworthington-Phartuccio (of the Manchester Rigglesworthington-Phartuccios, not the Liverpool Rigglesworthington-Phartuccios - a common mistake) was named Baron Blawnox in 1774 by King George III, but died of the pox before he could take ship west to claim his title in Pennsylvania.
General Sir Nigel Simon Oliver Umbrellastand Giles Cecil Derbyshire Smythe Rigglesworthington-Phartuccio’s real name was Sylvia Penn. She changed it when she decided she was a man trapped in a woman’s body.
As Sylvia Plenn, the former general lost his British military pension and his entree to the Court of St. James’s, but gained four lovers of various shapes, sizes, colors, plumbing and proclivities, all of them pleasing and only one of them infectious.
Ruprecht van Homily, Arcane Master of the Ninth Secret, Holder of the Keys to the Sun and the Moon, Doorman to the Gate of the Pheasant, Unrestriced Warden of the Prison of Illusion, Blessed and Accursed Knight of Smoke and Mirrors, lives just down the street from the Court of St. James in an efficiency apartment. The plumbing’s lousy.
St James is best known for inventing toast.
St. James is the patron saint of infirmaries.
St. James Place is a key part of the coveted “orange properties,” the only Monopoly properties whose cost is inversely proportional to the expected rent (hence the color). The pattern holds true when there are one, two, or three houses, but not with four houses or a hotel. The orange properties are the best color set to own in the game according to Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera.
Juan Felipe Herrera’s epic poem Ode to Something I Can No Longer Remember started a fad in poetrie realism, which, alas, alack, alackaday, could not rise to the immortal status of the original, and so died ablazing in a cauldron of mockable doggerel.
Not in play. I just have to say that “died ablazing in a cauldron of mockable doggerel” is my favorite phrase of the week.
Ablazing Steers: Poems for Branding, Rhymes for Rodeo is the name of the latest book of verse from “Cowboy” Tex Felipe, the current U.S. Poet Lariat.
Previous Poets Lariat include Wild Bill Wordslinger, Lord Alfred Tennessee, and John Bet-your-ass.
What, no mention of Buffalo Bill Odey?
Buffalo Bill Odey was Poet Laureate to Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show from 1873-1881. Among his little-known writings during this time were “O The Horses, The Horses!,” “Sitting Bull Agonistes,” “Ode to Cotton Candy Lady Barbara” and “The Pungent, Plangent Aromas of the Midway.”
Othe Horses, Bull Agonistes, Cotton Candy Lady Barbara, and Pungent Plangent Aromas were among the 1,272,473 women who accused Buffalo Bill Odey* of rape.
*great-great grandfather of Bill Cosby
The Cosby Show Complete Series is currently on sale for $1.99. It is available streaming or in tablet form.
And, as an added bonus, you get Cos The Complete Series.
Bill Cosby LPs, such as Why Is There Air, Drink This and Smile for the Camera, and Sexy Passed Out Wimmins are selling like asphalt pancakes.