tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6126042.post-1110360049448402442005-03-21T09:18:00.000Z2005-03-21T23:46:26.273Z OK, here we go. Last week we promised you E-EDITOR’s poetic riposte to that stylishly slanderous piece of doggerel “You cannot hope to bribe or twist, thank God, the British journalist...” The verse was written in 1930 for Punch, the satirical magazine that was part of the backbone of British culture and traditionally littered the waiting rooms of the nation’s dentists. Punch attracted many of the best writers and cartoonists in Britain throughout its extraordinarily long life, from 1841 to 2002. But Humbert Wolfe, poet, civil servant and author of this one memorable anti-journo squib, was by no means the greatest of them. Though he published 40 books of prose and verse and was once the bookies’ favourite to become Poet Laureate, history has not been kind to the man his biographer called “Harlequin in Whitehall”. In practice, these four lines constitute his entire claim to immortality. You cannot hope to bribe or twist, Thank God, the British journalist. But seeing what the man will do unbribed There’s no occasion to. To which E-EDITOR indignantly, and not a moment too soon, responds: A greater calumny, I think Words never yet expressed in ink. And when I find the bum who wrote ’em, I’ll have them tattooed on his scrotum.ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00882602151850785568noreply@blogger.com