If you are of a certain age then you might remember Frank Muir, he of a variety of Radio 4 quiz games and also Call My Bluff on BBC 2 with his fellow comedy writer Denis Norden.
I bought a second hand copy of the Oxford book of Humorous Prose recently and found that it had been compiled by said Frank Muir. It is exceedingly comprehensive moving from Jonathan Swift, Smollett, Jerome and Thurber through to Kingsley Amis, the Mitford girls and PG Wodehouse. This is all very laudable but actually the best parts of the book are the introductions to each piece of prose written by Muir himself. I found myself more interested in these than the extracts. They were cogent, intelligent and well researched. It’s a great book to dip into. I learnt a lot.
Do you remember Frank Muir singing Everyone’s a Fruit and Nut Case to music from the Nutcracker Suite? It was a Cadbury advert for chocolate bars shown on ITV……just before I stopped watching that channel. Can’t cope with adverts!