lousy. Let’s make it alliterative. What’s funny and begins with B?” We were reckoning without the man himself. Derek liked Derek. “Well, you think of a name that begins with B and won’t embarrass you,” I said. And Bernie it became. I found out later that his wife liked it.…Only blokes called Bernie grew to loathe it…’ The phrase stayed the same even when Derek was replaced by another technician. At one time, viewers watching the programme at home could ring and instruct the operator to aim the gun. Hence: Left a bit, – stop! Down a bit, – stop! Up a bit, – stop! Fire! This acquired a kind of catchphrase status, not least because of the possible double entendre.
be soon See SHE KNOWS YOU KNOW.
best See AND THE BEST; HAPPIEST DAYS OF; IT’S ALL DONE.
(the) best and the brightest This alliterative combination is almost traditional: ‘Political writers, who will not suffer the best and brightest of characters…to take a single right step for the honour or interest of the nation’ – Letters of Junius (1769); ‘Best and brightest, come away!’ – Shelley, ‘To Jane: The Invitation’ (1822); ‘Brightest and best of the sons of the morning’ – from the hymn by Bishop Heber (1827); ‘The best, the brightest, the cleverest of them all!’ – Anthony Trollope, Dr Thorne, Chap. 25 (1858); ‘So we lose five thousand of the best and brightest [i.e. coins/money] – P. G. Wodehouse, ‘Anselm Gets His Chance’ (1930). In David Halberstam’s book The Best and the Brightest (1972), the phrase applies to those young men from business, industry and the academic world whom John F. Kennedy brought into government in the early 1960s but who were ultimately responsible for the quagmire of American involvement in the Vietnam War.
best beloved Term of endearment (also ‘O My Best Beloved’ and ‘O Best Beloved’) addressed to the reader of Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories (1902). These comic fables explaining the distinguishing characteristics of animals (‘How the Camel Got His Hump’ and so on) were originally told by Kipling to his own children.
(to put one’s) best foot forward Meaning ‘to walk as fast as possible; to make a good impression’, this probably derives from an earlier form: ‘To put one’s best foot/leg foremost’. In Shakespeare’s King John, IV.ii.170 (1595), we find: ‘Nay, but make haste; the better foot before.’ The right foot has from ancient times been regarded as the best foot, right being associated with rationality, the left with emotion. To put your right foot forward is thus to guard against ill-luck.
best friends See EVEN YOUR.
(the) best fucks are always after a good cry A seldom recorded observation. In Peter Hall’s Diaries (1983) – entry for 22 May 1979 – it is quoted as having been said at Glyndebourne after Elizabeth Söderström had burst into tears at being given tough direction and then gone on to give ‘a very good first act’.
be still, my beating heart! A common phrase from 19th-century verse, now only used in parody or as a cynical comment on an account of young love or a romantic incident. ‘My beating heart’, on its own, appears in innumerable verses between 1700 and 1900. ‘Be still, my beating heart, be still!’ is the first line of ‘All One’ by Mary Elizabeth Coleridge (1861–1907). ‘Oh my soul, my beating heart’ is in Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad (1869). Dr James Beattie’s ‘Elegy: Written in the Year 1758’ has: ‘But peace, bold thought! Be still, my bursting heart!’ W. S. Gilbert, in The Sorcerer, Act 1 (1877), has Dr Daly say, ‘Be still, my fluttering heart!’ Since he is a middle-aged clergyman, might the joke not lie in the audience being familiar with it from a heroine of one of the Victorian melodramas? In HMS Pinafore, Act 1 (1878), Gilbert puts: ‘Oh, my heart, my beating heart’. A little later than all this, there was a song entitled ‘Be Still, My Heart! (I Can Tell Who’s Knocking At My Door)’ (1934).
(the) best-kept secret In its original form, about any well-withheld information, this was a cliché by the mid-20th century, but as used by travel-writers to describe a holiday destination, it was included in the ‘travel scribes’ armoury’ compiled from competition entries in The Guardian (10 April 1993). ‘Seeing that in the last month Lasmo’s share price has drifted northwards from 114p to a peak of 169p (now 149.5p) this was hardly the world’s best-kept secret’ – The Observer (1 May 1994); ‘If this punchy little two-hander from Footpaul Productions of South Africa has ambitions to being the best kept secret of this year’s Mayfest, then it won’t work because wordof-mouth will acclaim it for the gem it is’ – The Herald (Glasgow) (11 May 1994); ‘Once known as “Europe’s best kept secret”, the secret leaked out and now much of [the Algarve’s] wonderful Atlantic coast has been obscured by a wall of concrete – The Herald (Glasgow) (28 May 1994).
(to make the) best of both worlds Meaning, ‘to have the benefits of two contrasting or separate ways of life or circumstances.’ The expression appears to have originated in the title of a book by the Congregationalist preacher Thomas Binney (1798–1874), Is It Possible To Make the Best of Both Worlds? A Book for Young Men (1853). Binney answers his own question affirmatively: not only is it possible for a good Christian to lead a happy life on earth, such a life is even the best preparation for life after death. Released from its religious origins, the phrase became increasingly popular from the 1960s onwards (Robert Palmer had a modest hit with the song ‘Best of Both Worlds’ in 1978), and then an explosion of popularity after 1990.
best of order See GIVE ORDER.
(the) best Prime Minister we have (or never had) R. A. (later Lord) Butler (d. 1982) has sometimes been known as ‘the best Prime Minister we never had’ (so have others, like Denis Healey, for example), and it is to Butler that we probably owe both the positive and the negative formats. In December 1955, having (not for the last time) been passed over for the Conservative leadership, he was confronted by a Press Association reporter just as he was about to board an aircraft at London airport. As criticism was growing over the performance of Anthony Eden, the Prime Minister, the reporter asked: ‘Mr Butler, would you say that this [Eden] is the best Prime Minister we have?’ Butler assented to this ‘well-meant but meaningless proposition…indeed it was fathered upon me. I don’t think it did Anthony any good. It did not do me any good either’ – The Art of the Possible (1973).
best-regulated See ACCIDENTS.
(to give something one’s) best shot To try as hard as possible, to do one’s very best. An American idiom known by 1951 when, in the film His Kind of Woman, Robert Mitchum said, during a card game, ‘Take your best shot.’ Presumably the expression derives from the sporting sense of ‘shot’ (as in golf) rather than the gun sense. ‘“We’re not able to adequately counsel the farmer with the present plan,” he said. “With this, we’ll be able to give him our best shot”’ – The Washington Post (13 February 1984); ‘The editor must keep his powder dry. He is there to sell newspapers and his best shot is to find and project material denied to his rivals’ – The Guardian (14 May 1984); the film Hoosiers (US 1986), about a basketball team, was also known as Best Shot; ‘For Clinton and the Democrats, the issue his candidacy continues to pose is electability. His primary claim to the nomination lies not in ideology and political correctness but in being the Democrat who has the best shot at winning in November’ – The Washington Post (31 January 1992); ‘[Imran Khan] had prepared for marriage like a cricket match. He had no guarantees it would work but he would give it his “best shot”’ – The Independent (21 June 1995).
(the) best swordsman in—(or finest swordsman…) Latterly a cliché of swashbuckling epics, this phrase has quite a history. John Aubrey in his Brief
