The Best After Dinner Stories (Illustrated Hardcover)

Description

Ever since Chaucer’s day, when the host of the Tabard Inn in Southwark rose to welcome the Canterbury Pilgrims with a joke, the After Dinner Speech, designed, if possible, to reduce the assembled company to helpless merriment, has presented the ultimate challenge. The best speakers are natural story-tellers—Gerard Hoffnung, reading a selection of letters from continental hoteliers: ‘There is a French widow in every bedroom affording delightful prospects’; John Mortimer telling the woeful tale of a man’s numerous unsuccessful attempts to murder his wife: ‘At no time did Mrs Scott feel that the magic had gone out of their marriage’—and in this collection of post-prandial treasures you will find the very best of them, from Groucho Marx on how to resist a femme fatale, to Ralph Steadman surreally addressing the Lewis Carroll Centenary Dinner. ‘Goodness’, said a friend on greeting Mae West, ‘where did you get those beautiful pearls?’ ‘Goodness’, replied Mae, ‘had nothing to do with it.’