MY INTERVIEW WITH BERTIE WOOSTER
Number 8 in my Celebrity Interviews Series
ME: Hello, Mr Wooster
BW: What Ho! Fire away!
ME: Your butler, Jeeves, helped me.
BW: Size 9 brain. Eats a lot of fish. He is a gentleman’s gentleman, not a butler, but if the call comes, he can buttle with the rest of them.
ME: We think you and the media underplay your talents.
BW: Bally rich. Jeeves once called me mentally negligible.
ME: To protect you. How would fearsome Aunt Agatha describe you?
BW: Barely sentient was how she once described me, and I’m not saying that in a broad general sense; she isn’t right.
ME: But she doesn’t like you or Jeeves. Don’t put yourself down. You’re a genius.
BW: At what?
ME: You superbly narrate stories loved by millions. You sum up people brilliantly. What did you call that gorilla of a man, Spode?
BW: The Dictator
ME: And what did Jeeves find out he was?
BW: The fascist leader of the black shorts – they’d run out of black shirts.
ME: And how did you sum him up after learning his secret – a secret which once he knew you held transformed him from tearing you limb from limb into a pussy cat?
BW: You can’t be a successful Dictator and design women’s underclothing. One or the other, not both.
ME: Genius! And you’re an escapologist from your many fiancées. How do you do it?
BW: With Jeeves’ help. Most are still great friends – brainy and robust. Honoria G is one of those dynamic girls with the muscles of a welterweight and a laugh like a squadron cavalry charging over a tin bridge.
ME And Pauline S?
BW: Wants you to come and swim a mile before breakfast and routs you out when you’re trying to catch a wink of sleep after lunch for a heavy five sets of tennis.
ME: Your beloved Aunt Dahlia always speaks highly of you. Can she be a bit fearsome too?
BW: It isn’t often that Aunt Dahlia lets her angry passions rise, but when she does, strong men climb trees and pull them up after them.
ME: All your friends and family, including Uncle George, are aware of your talents and constantly seek your help.
BW: Mine and Jeeves help, don’t you know. By the way, it was my Uncle George who discovered that alcohol was a food well in advance of modern medical thought.
ME: What issues do you help friends with?
BW: Shortage of funds; bunfights; romances; minding newts; beating the bookies; careers advice; and pinching policemen’s helmets.
ME: You’re well educated. Did you meet our ex and next prime minister when you were at Eton and Oxford?
BW: Is that the cove with bleached hair – the tubby chap who looks like he had been poured into his clothes and forgotten to say “when”?
ME: Yes
BW: No, he was at Balliol, and I was at Magdalen. Last I saw, he looked haggard and careworn like a Borgia who had suddenly remembered that he had forgotten to shove the cyanide in the consommé and the dinner gong due any moment.
ME: Oh!
___________
Leave a Reply