The delightful, rude world of put-downs

So, as the year ends and we prepare for the next, let me share a few gems. Now some of the best put-downs are attributed to Churchill vis-à-vis Lady Astor and George Bernard Shaw. But they’re too well-known to bear repetition. Let me, instead, choose others as searing but less familiar.

First, the put-the-famous-in-their-place comment. Noel Coward once met Edna Ferber at the Algonquin Hotel in New York. “Miss Ferber, you look almost like a man.” She promptly shot back: “And so do you, Mr Coward.” Whilst Howard Hughes thus described Clark Gable: “His ears make him look like a taxi cab with both doors open.” And David Susskind had this to say of Elizabeth Taylor’s Cleopatra: “Overweight, overbosomed, overpaid and under-talented, she set the acting profession back a decade.”

My favourite is the scorching reply when you don’t want to accept an invitation. Invited by David Frost to dinner, Peter Cook responded: “Hang on, I’ll just check my diary… oh dear, I find I’m watching television that night.” And this is what David Niven said when Errol Flynn stood him up yet again: “You can count on Errol Flynn. He’ll always let you down.”

Of course, there’s nothing like being rude with such panache that your target will probably end up smiling. Heinrich Heine, the poet, said: “I bequeath all my property to my wife on condition that she re-marry immediately. Then there will be at least one man to regret my death.” Or Disraeli on his great political rival Gladstone: “The difference between a misfortune and a calamity is this: If Gladstone fell into the Thames, it would be a misfortune. But if someone dragged him out again, that would be a calamity.” Again, my favourite is the most succinct one. “How can they tell?” asked Dorothy Parker on being told US President Calvin Coolidge was dead. In fact, Parker’s wit could be excruciatingly sharp. Of the famous actress Katharine Hepburn, she hissed: “She ran the gamut of human emotions all the way from A to B.”

Put-downs are often not about individuals but general comments about countries or about life itself. Jeremy Clarkson once said: “Life is never so bad that Germany is better.” Isaac Asimov commented on the sort of people who irritate all of us: “People who go around claiming they know everything are very annoying for those of us who do.” WH Auden said of academics: “A professor is one who talks in someone else’s sleep.” Whilst Nancy Astor thus pronounced on marriage: “I married beneath me – all women do.”

Women, for some reason, have often been the subject — not just victims — of put-downs. “Being a woman is a terribly difficult trade since it consists principally of dealings with men,” said Joseph Conrad, who wrote Heart of Darkness. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche claimed, “Woman was God’s second mistake.” The first was Adam. And JB Priestley, I presume a misogynist, maintained that “Marriage is a long, dull meal with pudding as the first course.” I wonder how many of you agree?

Amongst the most piercing are the put-downs authors use for their rivals. William Faulkner, who didn’t like Ernest Hemingway, said this of him: “He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.” In turn, Hemingway riposted: “Does he really think big emotions come from big words?”

I’ll leave you with a put-down we could all profitably use, though remember Churchill said it first of Attlee: “A modest man with much to be modest about.” Incidentally, this sort makes the best friends.

Happy New Year.

Karan Thapar is the author of Devil’s Advocate: The Untold Story.The views expressed are personal

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