The art of the witty riposte

One hundred or so years ago, a down-in-the-dumps Joseph Roth wrote to Stefan Zweig: ‘The barbarians have taken over.’ Later on, Zweig committed suicide and Roth drank himself to death. They were both talented writers depressed about the state of the world. Reading their correspondence last week I had to laugh. Neither Roth nor Zweig had experienced Hollywood, and obviously would have died much earlier if they had done so. Which brings me to what everyone is still talking about, how a trained seal smacked another seal half its size during the Academy Awards. It was done in order to protect his wife from the barbs of the smaller one, although in my experience, whenever someone is that savagely protective of his woman, it is more often than not because he has such a slender hold on her.

It’s also Hollywood at its best. One kicks downwards and bootlicks upwards. And what did we really expect? The deep bow that Talleyrand gave to Napoleon after the emperor angrily called his foreign secretary ‘a shit in a silk stocking’? That would have been a bit out of character for the likes of Will Smith.

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Ameer Kotecha

Lindt has cheapened itself

Never mind. Wit and a devastating retort cannot be easily produced by those who know only how to read a teleprompter. When the Earl of Sandwich, speaking in parliament, told John Wilkes that the latter would either die on the gallows or of the pox, Wilkes politely responded that it would depend on whether he embraced the earl’s principles or his mistress.

Voltaire was once rhapsodising about a certain critic but was informed by a friend that the critic had just called Voltaire the biggest fraud in France. ‘We’re both wrong,’ said the great man. Noël Coward was a very witty and civilised man who was once rudely addressed by a ruffian in Las Vegas as follows: ‘Where’s de toilet?’ ‘Go to the end of the room,’ answered Sir Noël, ‘turn left and you will see a sign saying gentlemen.