‘Someone once asked me why I married the Queen. And I replied “Because she was there”’ – caption to a cartoon of the Duke of Edinburgh.
because the scenery is better An overworked and inevitable argument in promoting the superior imaginative qualities of radio as a medium. It supposedly originated in a letter to Radio Times in the 1920s, quoting a child who had said rather: ‘The pictures are better’. A cliché by the 1970s. ‘Do you ever listen [to the radio]? I do. I like it best. As a child I know says: “I see it much better on radio than on TV”’ – Joyce Grenfell in a letter of 22 September 1962 and included in An Invisible Friendship (1981); ‘“I like the wireless better than the theatre,” one London child wrote in a now legendary letter, “because the scenery is better”’ – Derek Parker, Radio: The Great Years (1977); ‘By way of illustration a young lad was quoted as saying he preferred radio to television – because the scenery is better. A proof of the power of imagination!’ – Prayer Book Society Newsletter (August 1995).
Becket See DO A THOMAS.
bed See AND SO TO; HE CAN LEAVE.
bedpost See BETWEEN YOU AND ME.
(to have) been and gone and done it Emphatic form of expression suggesting that one has finally done something and from which there may be no escape – for example, getting married. P. G. Wodehouse describes it as ‘language of the man of the street’ in his Tales of St Austin’s (1903). Even earlier, W. S. Gilbert has: ‘The padre said, “Whatever have you been and gone and done?”’ in The Bab Ballads, ‘Gentle Alice Brown’ (1869).
(to have) been there To have shared in or to have knowledge of some experience – often of an emotional nature. Of American origin. ‘Some reasons why I left off drinking whiskey, by one who has been there’ – headline in the Saturday Evening Post (1877). Whether the title of the film Being There (US 1980) is related is not clear. ‘The agony and ecstasy of La bohème are the agony and ecstasy of adolescence…one reason why we weep harder at La bohème than at any other opera is that we were all there once’ – Germaine Greer, quoted in Glyndebourne Festival Opera programme (2003). As for, been there, done that…: ‘Michael Caine was once asked if he had a motto: “Yeah – Been There, Done That. It’ll certainly be on my tombstone. It’ll just say, ‘Been There, Done That’”’ – quoted in Elaine Gallagher et al, Candidly Caine (1990). This is what might be called a T-shirt motto and is certainly not original to Caine. Ian Dury used the phrase ‘been there’ in the song ‘Laughter’ (The Ian Dury Songbook, 1979) to indicate that a seduction has been accomplished, but the motto is not solely concerned with sex. It can cover all human activity. About 1989 there were T-shirts for jaded travellers with the words: ‘Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.’
(I have) been to the mountain top As in Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s speech at Memphis (3 April 1968), the night before he was assassinated: ‘I’ve been to the mountain top…I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the promised land.’ The original promised land (not called as such in the Bible but referring to Canaan, western Palestine, and by association, Heaven) was promised to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. In Numbers 14:39–40: ‘Moses told these sayings unto all the children of Israel…And they rose up early in the morning and gat them up into the top of the mountain, saying, Lo, we be here, and will go up unto the place which the Lord hath promised.’
beer See I’M ONLY HERE.
beer and sandwiches at No. 10 An encapsulation of the informal (and often eleventh-hour) style of negotiation held at senior level (and quite often at the Prime Minister’s residence, No. 10, Downing Street) between British trade unionists and politicians to avert threatened strikes and stoppages. These only really took place under the Labour administrations of Harold Wilson (1964–70, 1974–6). Nothing like it was known under Margaret Thatcher, who seldom, if ever, conversed with union leaders, let alone offered them any form of hospitality. Some called it a pragmatic approach; others viewed it less favourably. Phillip Whitehead (a one-time Labour MP) was quoted in The Independent (25 April 1988) as having said of Wilson that he ‘bought the hours with beer and sandwiches at No. 10 and the years with Royal Commissions’. Compare ‘coffee and Danish at the White House’ – an expression from the Carter administration for the breakfasts of coffee and Danish pastries offered by the President to Congressional leaders and others to win them over.
(life isn’t all) beer and skittles An apparently late-appearing proverb (1855), urging that life is not just about simple pleasures or unalloyed enjoyment – specifically the drinks and games you would find in a pub, the British yeoman’s idea of heaven on earth. From Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1857): ‘Life isn’t all beer and skittles, – but beer and skittles, or something better of the same sort, must form a good part of every Englishman’s education.’
(the) beer that made Milwaukee famous The Schlitz Brewing Company had its roots in an operation begun in Milwaukee in 1849. By 1871, the year of the great Chicago fire, it was a thriving concern. The fire left Chicago thirsty; the city was desperately short of drinking water, and its breweries had virtually been destroyed. So Joseph Schlitz floated a shipload of beer down Lake Michigan to refresh his parched neighbours. They liked and remembered Milwaukee beer long after the crisis passed. It is not known who coined the phrase, but this is the incident that inspired it. The slogan was incorporated and registered in 1895, and was in use until production ceased in the 1980s.
(the) bee’s knees ‘The very best around; absolutely top hole’. There has always been a fascination with bees’ knees. In the 18th century there was the expression ‘as big as a bee’s knee’ and, in the 19th, ‘as weak as a bee’s knee’. But the bee whose knees became celebrated in US slang by 1923 was probably only there because of the rhyme. At about the same time, we find the kipper’s knickers, the cat’s whiskers (perhaps because of the importance of these in tuning wireless crystal sets in the 1920s), the cat’s pyjamas (still new enough to be daring), ‘the cat’s miaow/eyebrows/ankles/tonsils/adenoids/ galoshes/cufflinks/roller skates’. Not to mention ‘the snake’s hips’, ‘the clam’s garter’, ‘the eel’s ankle’, ‘the elephant’s instep’, ‘the tiger’s spots’, ‘the flea’s eyebrows’, ‘the canary’s tusks’, ‘the leopard’s stripes’, ‘the sardine’s whiskers’, ‘the pig’s wings’ – ‘and just about any combination of animal, fish, or fowl with a part of the body or clothing that was inappropriate for it’ – Flexner (1976).
before See HERE AND NOW.
before one can say ‘Jack Robinson’ (or as quick as…) This expression, meaning ‘immediately; straight away’, appears to have been alluded to by Richard Brinsley Sheridan in the House of Commons (some time after 1780) to avoid using a fellow member’s name (as was, and is partly still, the custom there). Having made a derogatory reference to the Secretary to the Treasury, John Robinson, and been asked by members shouting ‘Name, name’ to disclose the person he was referring to, Sheridan said, ‘You know I cannot name him, but I could – as soon as I can say Jack Robinson’ – quoted in Hesketh Pearson, Lives of the Wits (1962). Clearly, Sheridan was alluding to an already established expression. Neil Ewart in Everyday Phrases (1983) cites the theory that it ‘refers to an erratic [18th-century] gentleman of that name who rushed around to visit his neighbours, rang the front-door bell, and then changed his mind and dashed off before the servant had time to announce his name’. Eric Partridge in his Name Into Word (1949) suggests that it was a made-up name using very common first and last elements. Fanny Burney has ‘I’ll do
