From couplet meister to cake maker

Sandwiched immediately between The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations' two cursory contributions from Neil Kinnock and two more from Henry Kissinger sit four pages attributed to Rudyard Kipling, who wrote the poem Tommy:

"It's Tommy this and Tommy that, an' 'Chuck 'im out, the brute',

But it's saviour of 'is country when the guns begin to shoot."

How often in recent years have those lines come to mind on the last bus to Catterick Garrison, or indeed on most of the others?

KIPLING, apparently named Rudyard by his parents after they were entranced by a North Staffordshire lake of that name, also wrote The Jungle Book and Just So Stories and the celebrated lines about being a man, my son - reckoned Britain's best loved poem.

Neil Kinnock is merely remembered for his advice to British voters before the 1983 general election - "I warn you not to be ordinary, I warn you not to be young, I warn you not to fall ill and I warn you not to grow old" - and much good did it do him.

Rudyard Kipling, who died in 1936 and was clearly racist, became in 1907 the first Englishman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature but turned down both the Poet Laureate's post and the Order of Merit.

The Army, in turn, refused him because of his short sightedness, which mutual myopia leads us conveniently back to Neil Kinnock...

It was a large ballroom at the Park Lane Hotel in London, the column seated in some dark and distant corner for the 1994 UK Press awards and aware only from the voice over the public address that the reputed Welsh Windbag was doing the glad handing.

Unexpectedly honoured, we headed in what appeared to be the direction of the amplified voice - and, with the former Labour leader 20 yards away, ended up shaking hands with the doorman.

MORECAMBE and Wise, quite shamefully, warrant not so much as a mention in the 1996 edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, not even the bit about short, fat hairy legs. It's a particular shame because - as John Briggs recalls over the planning meeting in the Brit - it was Ernie who once asked Eric if he liked Kipling. "I dunno," said Eric, "I've never kippled."

WHAT'S brought all this about, lest anyone wondered, is a note from Chris Eddowes in Hartlepool. "Did you know that there never was a Mr Kipling? I felt let down when I found out. Is nothing sacred?"

Chris refers to the cake maker, of course: the greater surprise is that she ever thought it otherwise.

The Mr Kipling brand was introduced in 1967, the line about "exceedingly good cakes" attached to it from the start. By 1976 it had become market leader and has remained so ever since, selling around 64 million apple pies every year and to 50 per cent of British households.

The company also makes 36 million Battenberg cakes annually - enough to circle the M25 eight times, apparently named after a village in West Germany and a confection much loved by Queen Victoria - and if the mood takes them can turn out 864 French fancies a minute.

The television voice, however, is always that of a "friend" and has been assumed by three different actors. The avuncular Mr Kipling is too busy selling like hot cakes.

THE wordy, worthy tomes which shunt for shelf space in this office are a frequent disappointment, the Oxford Dictionary of Catchphrases particularly surprising in its omission of "exceedingly good cakes".

The diligent may learn that it was Snagglepuss who claimed "Exit, stage left", the Daleks, memorably, who ordered "Exterminate, exterminate" and that Friends of Animals Inc. came up with the barely breathtaking line "Extinct is for ever".

Poor Mr Kipling doesn't even make the "advertisements" section at the back, not even a crumb of comfort.

EVER one of the theme team, we also headed to Kiplin Hall, the stately home between Scorton and Northallerton, built in 1620 as a hunting lodge for George Calvert - Secretary of State to James I, founder of Maryland and the first Lord Baltimore - and now owned by a trust. Sadly, its Sunday afternoon opening has ceased until the Spring. More of that when the light nights come again.

WHAT Chris Eddowes really wrote about was the word "mardy" - broadly meaning querulous - which last week's column uncomplainingly examined.

In her Sheffield childhood, she says, the bairns would sing:

Mardy bum, mardy bum

Tell your mother to smack your bum

which may explain why Sheffield is much more famous for its cutlery than for its poetry. Bob Harbron in Norton-on-Tees recalls that in his Far Eastern forces days the expression meant hopeless or useless - "As in 'the local beer is dead mardy'" - a military background which might also explain his easy way of remembering the Echo's postcode.

It's DL1 1NF - Durham Light Infantry, 1 Northumberland Fusiliers.

"AS a fully paid up member of the campaign against irritating radio adverts," writes Paul Dobson from Bishop Auckland - referring particularly to the column's long time fury at the commercials for Frank's Factory Flooring - "you will have been interested to see the piece in last Thursday's Echo about Fraser Goodwillie."

Mr Goodwillie, whose father owns Court Homemakers in Portrack Lane, Stockton, has long "featured" in the company's local radio campaigns - though whether the filial role is taken by an actor is unclear.

"Whatever it is," says Paul, "the voice is extremely, perhaps deliberately, annoying."

Since Fraser Goodwillie has been jailed for three-and-a-half years for drugs offences and ordered to repay £49,000 of his proceeds, it seems likely that we will not be hearing from him for some time.

...and finally back to Rudyard Kipling, who also wrote the first guide to journalism:

I keep six honest serving men

They taught me all I knew

Their names are What and Why and When

And How and Where and Who.

With little regard for any of them, save that it's likely to be on Wednesday, the column returns next week.

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