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Apr 25Liked by Terry Freedman, M. E. Rothwell

British humor disguised as life advice....

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Or the other way round? 😁

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Apr 25Liked by Terry Freedman, M. E. Rothwell

Definitely, yes, one must always try to keep ahead with these conversational gymnastics !

And if you accidentally get involved in one of those silly situations where you have to say something about yourself that nobody could possibly expect or guess, tell them that you own an elephant’s eyelash. For uniqueness, this is hard to beat. Not if I’m present though, because I do own one, and just might have it with me.

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Yes, that is pretty 'outre'. Chortle

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Apr 25Liked by M. E. Rothwell, Terry Freedman

I remember these books really well. In the late 70s I worked in a bookshop and these were pretty constant sellers.

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Apr 25·edited Apr 25Author

Amazing. Did you read them, June?

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Apr 25Liked by M. E. Rothwell

I think I might have read Lifemanship. I remember them being in the fiction/humour section.

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Apr 25Liked by Terry Freedman, M. E. Rothwell

Ach! I need these books!

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Lol

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Apr 25Liked by Terry Freedman, M. E. Rothwell

Based on the title, I anticipated reading another article about Hemingway. Silly me.

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Sorry!

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Apr 25Liked by M. E. Rothwell, Terry Freedman

No, thank you!

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May 12Liked by Terry Freedman

What a treat to see this book dug up and featured in your current rotation! I only just read it - in the form of a ratty copy that was in the Little Free Library down the road. I suspect the person who donated the Spike Milligan paperbacks was the one behind it all.

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Did u enjoy it, Carol?

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May 11Liked by Terry Freedman

Fricking fabulous Terry. I was going to ask, “Where can I get this book?” , but you’ve already oneupped me and provided the answer.

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LOL. Thanks, Jeanne. It's still hgilarious, even after half a century!

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“It was at around that time that I began to realise the real insight of Stephen Potter: that if you present someone with a seeming fact, they would rather go along with it than call you out, just in case it happens to be true!”🤣A case of blind leading the blind! So true. In modern times, it’d even be called farting your way through. Until someone wise like Mr. Freedman sees through, and lo and behold, writes about it!😉I don’t understand why folks can’t spend time on the side of authenticity than dilly dallying in pretense and games to appear smart. No substitute for hard work in life! I tell Sahil that everyday. Hopefully he is listening.

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Authenticity: in the film School for Scoundrels, which was based on the One Upmanship books, right near the end Ian Carmichael confesses to Janette Scott that he played tricks to get her (almost) into bed. Alistair Sim, playing Stephen Poitter, says to the camera "Oh no, please, not sincerity, anythiing but that." Then he thiinks for a moment and says, "This could be the beginnings of a new ploy..." .🤣

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Thanks Terry. Humor is a tremendous defense in any argument. Of course. it will enrage the lead-footed opponent : )

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Cheers Richard. Yes, I agree! LOL

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Oh I am so going to use this relaxed line, Terry! I think we need a listicle of advice 😉

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It's brilliant, isn't it, Kathleen! Yes, perhaps I'll compile something -- could be a laugh!

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Thanks for kind comments in intro, Mikey 🙂

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First I discover Terry writing about Paul Jennings, then it leads me here to Stephen Potter... my mum introduced me to Potter when BBC2 had a Oneupmanship series in the 70's with Richard Briers. And my own sorry interest in British film led me to Alastair Sim , who was possibly more Potter than Potter. And the college is of course in Yeovil. Where else? Besides the four books mentioned above, there is also Woomanship, which applies the process to love and is not quite on a par with the others being later in Potter's life, when he was struggling with health and finances. Much of the written material originated when Potter was a BBC producer in the 40's, and started on radio. One of his collaborators was Joyce Grenfell. He edited Lilliput for a while, as well, which is worth seeking out as there was some splendid funny writing under his editorship. But enough of this...

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I saw your comment pop up while I was looking in the one upmanship book for something! I remember that tv series, but the film was much better imho. "More Potter than Potter": 😂 I agree about woomanship. I never finished it because it seemed a bit laboured. The section on woomanship in the original book was much better I thought. I didn't know he'd edited Lilliput. Paul here (think) mentioned that Jennings wrote for that mag. I wonder if they overlapped for a short while.

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They must have done as Potter was there early fifties - there's a very good Patrick Campbell piece called 'Dwarves Gazette' about working at Lilliput. I got home and checked and 'Woomanship' is actually called 'Anti-Woo' which shows how memorable it is... if I remember rightly, having read it years back, Alan Jenkins in his biography of Potter mentions that 'Anti-Woo' was written solely because the offer was there and Potter needed the advance to mend the leaking roof on his cottage, having a new wife and no job at the time. It does read like that, especially in light of Potter spending years trying to escape the concept of Lifemanship. It got him in the end. I remember the TV series fondly, but the film is pretty much unbeatable. My main memory of the TV show is that it had Instant Sunshine as the musical interlude, with Miles Kington on bass. I had no idea for years after that he was also a very funny writer. In my defence I was only about ten at the time.

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I didn't know that Potter had tried to escape from lifemanship. A pity, because even today I find relevant observations in them constantly. I didn’t know Kington played bass!

When you get your substack up and running, will you be writing about Potter?

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As I recall from Jenkins' book (and I'm delving back at least 25 years here), Potter found that all people wanted from him was Lifemanship work, and he felt that he'd mined it as far as he could, and had thwarted academic writing ambitions (he did write some serious work on literature, I think) that his success put paid to. So he became stuck in the trap of only being offered work he felt he couldn't do very well anymore.

Ah oui, Kington, c'est un premier double-bassist par excellence... or something like that...

I have a lot of stuff already written I'd like to put up, but I'll certainly write about Potter. Jennings, and also Campbell, Arthur Marshall and Beachcomber at some point. By my reckoning, I should actually be 104, not 59...

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