Word Botching

Do you remember this chap?

Frank Herbert Muir was an English comedy writer, radio and television personality, and raconteur. His writing and performing partnership with Denis Norden endured for most of their careers. Together they wrote BBC radio’s Take It From Here for over 10 years, and then appeared on BBC radio quizzes My Word! and My Music for another 35 years. Frank became Assistant Head of Light Entertainment at the BBC in the 1960s, and was then London Weekend Television’s founding Head of Entertainment.

On one occasion, Frank was seated alongside another guest on an evening chat show. It was a long time ago and nobody can remember whose show it was or who the other guests were, except they were chatting about birds, and the other guest said “I’m not actually an orthinologist”. That’s when Frank Muir interjected in a split second quip with “I would say you’re more of a word-botcher.”

I think this is one of his funniest quotes: “It has been said that a bride’s attitude towards her betrothed can be summed up in three words: Aisle. Alter. Hymn.”

Then a long time ago, there was a TV show called: “What’s my Line” and another called “Twenty Questions”, featuring a man with a deep voice, Gilbert Harding, whose many careers included schoolmaster, journalist, policeman, disc-jockey, actor, interviewer and television presenter.  See a video about him here.

Gilbert had a wicked sense of humour. For example, he said:

“A judge said that all his experience, both as counsel and judge, had been spent sorting out the difficulties of people who, upon the recommendation of people they did not know, signed documents which they did not read, to buy goods they did not need, with money they had not got.”

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Martin Pollins

Managing Director at One Smart Place

Martin Pollins is a Chartered Accountant and MBA with wide experience in corporate finance and business management. He has served on the boards of several companies, including those listed on the London Stock Exchange, AIM and OFEX. He is Chairman and Founder of OneSmartPlace and was a Council member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales from 1988 to 1996. He was managing partner of PRB Martin Pollins, based in Sussex, the first Accountancy firm to advertise on British television.He went on to create and launch the CharterGroup Partnership (the UK’s first Accountancy network) and then LawGroup UK (at the time, one of the largest networks of lawyers in the UK). In recent years, he helped to raise several £millions to fund British films such as The Da Vinci Code, Bridge of San Luis Rey, Head in the Clouds and Merchant of Venice with actors such as Charlize Theron, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, F. Murray Abraham. Kathy Bates, Gabriel Byrne, Geraldine Chaplin, Tom Hanks, Ian McKellen, Audrey Tautou, Penélope Cruz, Steven Berkoff, Lynn Collins, Jeremy Irons, Joseph Fiennes and many more.

He has written over 700 business publications (see Glossaries at https://onesmartplace.com/resources/glossaries/) and is editor of Better Business Focus (see https://onesmartplace.com/resources/better-business-focus-magazine). His Blog, on a wide range of subjects can be found at: https://onesmartplace.com/blog/

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