Jokes and Stories from this months issue.

*SIR MICHAEL CAINE can vividly recall his first television role back in 1954. It is a nightmare ingrained in his memory for all time and also one of his favourite after dinner stories. First, he had to change his professional (stage) name from Michael Scott to Michael Caine to satisfy Equity regulations. His real name, of course, is Maurice Joseph Micklewhite, born in Rotherhithe, South London , on 14 March 1933.

The television play was ‘The Lark' by Jean Anouilh and Caine had landed a walk-on part of a prison warder escorting Joan of Arc (played by Hazel Penwarden) to trial. The play is set in 1431, when Joan was put on trial for heresy and then burned at the stake by English barons.

Recalls Caine, “They got all the camera movements wrong to start with. On top of that there was the panic of knowing that hundreds of thousands of people would be watching you. There could not be any re-takes. This was live TV. Everyone was on a knife-edge of tension.

“I had to come through a room at the top of a Norman tower where they were keeping Joan of Arc, grab her by an arm, and take her out to be interrogated. I came in, and I had on one of those helmets that looks like twenty-five pounds of shell. Being tall (1.93 metres/6' 4”), I knocked it on the arch as I entered – and it went all lopsided on me. I looked like a slightly drunken guard, but I was too nervous to notice or do anything about it. I had three lines of dialogue, and I'd forgotten them all. As I turned to take Joan out, I found the camera had tracked in and was blocking the door. So you had this unforgettable shot of me coming right up to lens and saying, ‘Oh bugger it!' in close up, before looking in panic for the nearest exit. Unfortunately it happened to be the window. Umpteen thousand people saw me help Joan of Arc up on the ledge and scramble out of the top of a Norman tower supposedly eighty feet up!” (From the biography, ‘Arise Sir Michael Caine' by William Hall, John Blake Publishing, 2001).

*THE ABOVE biography only briefly touches on what I felt was one of Caine's best supporting roles: he played a London gangster named ‘Mortwell' in the 1986 film, ‘Mona Lisa', directed by Neil Jordan. Caine said that it was his favourite villain's role. I guess the movie is not listed in the bibliography as it starred Bob Hoskins and Cathy Tyson. And because it was first published in the year 2000, there is no mention of what I feel is Caine's finest work to date. He played the world-weary and cynical ‘London Times' journalist Thomas Fowler in the 2001 adaptation of Graham Greene's novel, ‘The Quiet American'. Starring alongside Brendan Fraser and the hauntingly beautiful Do Hai Yen, Caine put out an astonishing performance that I felt was Oscar winning material. But the movie bombed in the USA , where in the current patriotic climate, it's anti-American undertone was not appreciated. In the novel and film, (set in 1952), Greene starkly exposed the ill-defined and ultimately disastrous role of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Vietnam . The movie was directed by Philip Noyce and the locations are real – this is the first Vietnam movie for many years to be shot on location in that country.

*OPERATION BERNHARD was an ingenious plan devised by the Nazis to flood wartime Britain with forged currency. It actually started way back in 1938, when Hitler's government put together 140 Jewish experts in forgery during the massive roundups of German Jews into concentration camps. These men were put to work to make near-perfect copies of British five and ten pound notes, and the operation was finally launched in 1942. The idea was to put so many forged notes into the system that the economy of the United Kingdom would collapse. But British agents working undercover in Germany soon found out and intelligence agencies tipped off the Bank of England, which refused to honour notes above the value of one pound. The forgers were duly purged alongside millions of others in extermination camps when Hitler and his ruling elite realised that their clever plan had failed. (History Channel, UBC).

*MONEY QUOTES: “Everything is subject to gravity except the tax rate.” (Denis Healey)

“Junk food is not so expensive if you pay for it with junk money.” (Christopher Reeve, 1952-2004)

“A luxury item begins to look ordinary by the time you get to where you can afford it.” (Ben Elton)

“One thing about easy money is that it is about as easy to spend as it is to make.” (Roger Moore)

“Inflation is one form of taxation that can be imposed without government legislation.” (Milton Friedman)

“Inflation is being broke with a lot of cash in your pockets.” (Stephen Fry)

“Father Christmas (Santa Claus) does not come through the chimney anymore. He pours through a large hole in your bank balance.” (Paul Merton)

“The purpose of drive-in banks is to make it possible for cars to meet their real owners.” (Jeremy Clarkson)

“We all live in a state of ambitious poverty.” (Roman satirist Juvenal, 60 – 140 AD)

“Benjamin Franklin may have discovered electricity – but it was the man who invented the electric meter who made the money.” (Jay Leno)

*QUOTES FROM the famous: “The aristocracy can be summed as: rectitude, platitude, and high-hatitude.” (Margot Asquith, 1864-1945)

“ Babylon is a whore among cities. She will open her gates to any invader, and then demand payment in gold for her services.” (Alexander the Great, born 356 BC who died in Babylon on 10 June 323 BC)

“A fan club is a group of people who constantly tell an actor that he is not alone in the way he feels about himself.” (Jack Carson)

“Social tact is making your guests feel at home even though you wish they were.” (Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900)

“If I really valued the honourable gentleman's opinion I might get very angry.” (Winston Spencer Churchill, 1874-1965)

“Do not trust to the cheering, my friend, for those very persons would shout as much if you and I were being taken out to be hanged.” (Oliver Cromwell, 1599-1658)

“People will believe anything if you whisper it to them in confidence.” (Richard Harris, 1932-2004)

“I often think, ‘I wish I had done that!' and then I sober up and find out that I already have.” (Richard Harris)

“The dove of peace is not much more than a small sparrow these days.” (Gore Vidal)

“Friendship is a holy passion; so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring in its nature that it will last through a whole lifetime – if not asked to lend money.” (Mark Twain/Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910)

“Strip away the phony tinsel of Hollywood and you will find the real tinsel underneath.” (Oscar Levant, 1906-1972)

“Don't you just love the way modern generals work? They say, ‘Okay, men. We attack at dawn!' Then, at dawn, they walk into their Command Post and get served breakfast as they watch the action taking place 20 miles away on TV monitors. Cameras at the battle scene transmit pictures back to them in real time. Before Christ, generals like Alexander the Great charged into battle at the head of their troops. These days, generals direct battles as they sip coffee and eat cinnamon toast. Directing a movie is much harder work than doing that. If I wanted a career in the military, I wouldn't settle for anything less than the rank of general.” (Woody Allen)

”I figure, what are we doing in this life except just filling in time until our graves are dug, right? So I try to write the best poetry and songs that I can whilst I'm still breathing and above ground.” (Jim Morrison, 1943-1971)

*DAVID LLOYD George (1863-1945), British Prime Minister from 1916 to 1922, had a sharp wit that was more than a match for any heckler. In one of his early political campaigns, someone threw a brick through a window and it fell on the platform at his feet. Picking it up, George shouted, “Behold! The only argument of our opponents!”

Once when he was talking on Home Rule, he stated, “I want Home Rule for England , for Scotland , for Wales , and for Ireland …”

At this point someone shouted, “And Home Rule for Hell!”

George shot back, “That's right! Every man for his own country!”

At another rally, a heckler shouted, “You're nothing! Your dad used to peddle vegetables with a donkey and cart!”

“Yes,” replied Lloyd George. “My father was a very poor man. The cart has long since disappeared, but I see that the donkey is still with us.”

*ANCIENT CHINESE proverb: “If your enemy wrongs you, buy each of his children a drum.”

*A MAN HEARD frightened screams coming from a nearby house. He ran in to investigate and found a frantic mother whose small child had swallowed a 50 pence coin. Seizing the child by the heels, he held him up and gave him a few shakes. The coin dropped to the floor. The grateful mother was lost in admiration.

“You certainly knew how to get it out of him”, she gushed, “Are you a doctor?”

“No, madam,” the man replied. “I'm from the Inland Revenue.”

*TWO OPPOSING political candidates were in a heated debate on issues before a large crowd. “There are hundreds of ways of making money,” argued one, “but only one way is honest.”

“And what's that?” the other man responded.

“Ah ha!” shouted the first speaker. “I knew that you wouldn't know!”

*BACK IN the 1950's the ‘Oxbridge Clan' (graduates of and students at Oxford and Cambridge Universities ) tended to dominate some areas of British sport. These elite types adopted a rather snobbish attitude and kept themselves apart from the rest of the British track & field athletics team, whom they regarded as uneducated peasants that no gentleman would wish to be associated with. The infamous British class system was very much in evidence in those days. When either Chris Chataway or Chris Brasher were racing for Britain , the Oxbridge Clan would gather at trackside and shout, “RELAX, Chris!” in upper-class drawls. This amused the field event boys, who were mainly all working class Joes. They also resented the superior attitude adopted by many of the Clan, and plotted their revenge.

One morning Cambridge graduate Chris Brasher (1956 Olympic steeplechase champion) was sitting alone in the British teams' hotel lobby in Paris reading a newspaper. Shot putter John Savidge sneaked up to him as Brasher read, holding the paper open in front of his face. Savidge, famous for his pranks, then put a lighted match to the bottom of the paper. Whoosh! The newsprint literally exploded into flames right in Brasher's face. When he sprang up and thrashed about in alarm, trying to put out the fire, Savidge and his friends all shouted together in imitation upper-crust accents, “RELAX, Chris!”

davidcox@loxinfo.co.th

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