Pooter crossed with Wooster

J. B. Morton, a bluff Old Harrovian survivor of the Somme, succeeded his fellow Bellocian Roman Catholic convert D. B. Wyndham Lewis (‘the wrong Wyndham Lewis’, according to the tiresome Sitwells) as ‘Beachcomber’ in 1924 and wrote the ‘By the Way’ column in the Daily Express for more than 50 years. He eventually signed off in 1975, aged 82, and died four years later.

To Morton and Wyndham Lewis (who later became ‘Timothy Shy’ on the lamented News Chronicle) we must give thanks for introducing to newspapers what Michael Frayn, editor of The Best of Beachcomber, described as ‘the superb anarchy of the English nonsense-writing tradition, the brief, devastating parody and the permanent stuff of characters’. Many of Morton’s creations have deservedly passed into legend: the Huntingdonshire cabmen; Dr Jan Van Strabismus (Whom God Preserve) of Utrecht; Lady Cabstanleigh, the amply proportioned socialite; the explorer Big White Carstairs; the unscrupulous bounder Captain de Courcy Foulenough; the killjoy sub-editor Prodnose; Dr Smart-Allick, the dubious headmaster of Narkover School; and the dozen dwarfs who plague the life of poor Mr Justice Cocklecarrot (‘Who on earth are those little red-bearded gentry?’). An excellent Radio 4 series in 1989, starring Richard Ingrams, John Wells, Patricia Routledge and John Sessions (lending his best Edward Fox impression to Colonel Wretch, husband of the retired circus performer, Utta), brought them joyfully to life.

I confess that I was hitherto unfamiliar with Oswald Thake, an Old Etonian bachelor whose letters to Beachcomber from his chambers in Jermyn Street and elsewhere (together with the odd contribution from aggrieved women) form the contents of this welcome reprint. The publishers do not give any bibliographical history, but judging from the Twentyish tone of the material Mr Thake would seem to have been among Morton’s early cast.