Book Review: The Book of Mistaikes by Gyles Brandreth
Oh look, it’ s another humour book I picked up in England as a young man! This one has a title that my computer keeps trying to tell me doesn’t exist.
As you might guess, this is another collection of goofs, flubs, boners, and other mistakes. The primary attraction of this one is that it has a wider variety. It’s arranged in categories from A to Z, encompassing not just newspaper typos and accidental double entendres (though it has plenty of those), but spoonerisms, malaprops and Goldwynisms, as well as funny (but true) stories of etiquette errors and social faux pas.
There are also cartoons illustrating some of the examples, by Graham Thompson. Some of these have naked men or women in underwear, so the easily offended might want to skip this book, especially as there’s some mildly rude language.
Some examples:
“Erected to the memory of JOHN PHILLIPS accidentally shot as a mark of affection by his brother.”
“WANTED URGENTLY: Male or female serving person for top London nightclub. Must fit uniform 40″ bust.”
“Before the girls left the White House, Mrs. Reagan presented each of them with a small engraving of the Execution Mansion to keep as a memento. (Washington Post)”
“The impresario, Lew Grade, once saw a double-act in a show which he thought had great potential. After the performance he went backstage to congratulate the performers and try to sign them up, saying that he would turn them into big stars, and promising to double their money. He enquired who their current agent was. ‘A man named Lew Grade,’ they replied.”
There’s even a bit of scholarship here. While we know malaprops from Mrs. Malaprop from R.B. Sheridan’s play The Rivals, the earliest known theatrical character with the tendency is Dogberry from William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing.
The malaprops section, like some of the others (bad translation of non-English phrases) runs a bit long and you’ll have seen considerable overlap in other humor books. Also, there’s a bit of British provincialism in some of the selections from foreign countries. Some of the humor requires knowledge of British vernacular.
This book is going to be a bit hard to find as it is long out of print, and some booksellers have it under an incorrect title, with “mistakes” spelled correctly. Go figure. But for fans of this type of humor, it may indeed be worth the hunt.
