P. G. Wodehouse

There are some people in the world who think that the character name Gussie Fink-Nottle is about as good as it gets. And that's just one of the folks created, of course, by Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse in his legendary series of Bertie and Jeeves stories. Needless to say, one ought to read Wodehouse, who was a master of language, and for that matter, listening to him via audiobooks is highly recommended, but no one ever went wrong watching Fry and Laurie take on the roles.





Others have also played the parts, with various levels of success, and there was an Andrew Lloyd Webber show, your opinion of which may depend on your love, or lack thereof, for Andrew Lloyd Webber.



Old Plum, as he was known, got into a bit of trouble with the Nazis, raising the question of whether he was, in fact, a sympathizer or merely a naive dupe. Who knows? I have a sense from what I've read that he was pretty much just so wrapped up in his work that he was rather stupidly ignorant, but he's not the first artist to fall into that category. Anyhow, in addition to his books and stories, he did a lot of theater work, including the songs from this little ditty. Talk about a more innocent age...



In the hall of fame it will be Jeeves and Bertie who last the longest. Which is only right. Today is also Michel Foucault's birthday, but I have found that his work is seldom as comic as Wodehouse's, hence I have chosen to profile the one rather than the other.