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unearths some literary gems.
From Blotto, Twinks and the Intimate Revue, by Simon Brett:
***[Airheaded toff Blotto compliments a woman on her looks]"You're a real bellbuzzer with three veg and gravy."***"The cream of Scotland Yard are all clotted."***"Don't nit-pick noodles!"***He didn't think Araminta fffrench-Wyndeau looked very happy either. She was still as silent as the second and third fs in her surname.[Btw, I note the one-upping theme here, as Brett outdoes the real British lexicon. First "with three veg" (as opposed to the more familiar two), and now a three-f fffrench.]***"Beauty, of course, is in the eye of the cigarette holder." [This is one of many defective witticisms uttered by a character who is supposedly "the wittiest man in London," and whose repertoire consists of broken Wildeisms, epigrams that begin like quips but end like boring, literal observations, and so on.]***"Lawkins!" said Twinks. And she meant it.***"Tickey-Tockey," said Twinks, though without the vim she usually put into a "Tickey-Tockey."***[Bonus: In sending up 1920s aristo types, as you may have gathered, Brett favors silly pseudo-slang that he's apparently coined himself over historically authentic slang. Here's my favorite from this book: giving someone the idiomatic cold shoulder becomes giving them "the ice cream's elbow."]
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