don’t call us, we’ll call you What theatre directors reputedly say to auditionees, the implication being that ‘we’ will never actually get round to calling ‘you’. Now more widely applied to anyone unwelcome who is seeking a favour. OED2 finds no example before 1969. However, a Punch cartoon on 11 October 1961 showed the European Council of Ministers saying to a British diplomat: ‘Thank you. Don’t call us: we’ll call you’; and in the film The Barefoot Contessa (US 1954), a show business character says: ‘Don’t call me, I’ll call you.’ In Some Like It Hot (US 1959), there is a ‘Don’t call us, we’ll call you.’ Also used in a situation like this is the phrase: we’ll let you know – as during an audition in the BBC radio show Round the Horne (6 June 1966).
don’t come the raw prawn (with me)! ‘Don’t try to put one over on me, delude or deceive me’ – the archetypal Australianism, dating from around the time of the Second World War. A raw prawn is presumably held to be less palatable than a cooked one, but lurking in the background is the abusive Australian use of ‘you prawn!’ to signify that someone is, like a prawn, sexless.
don’t cry for me, Argentina Title phrase of a song from the Tim Rice/Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Evita (1976). There is an unexplained conjunction between this line and the inscription (in Spanish) which appears on Eva Perón’s bronze tomb in Recoleta cemetery, Buenos Aires, and begins with words to the effect, ‘Do not cry for me when I am far away.’ But Eva’s body was not returned to Argentina until 1976, and the inscription (of which there is more than one) in Recoleta cemetery bears the date ‘1982’. Could it have been inspired by the song rather than the other way round? Hence, however, Don’t Cry for Me, Sergeant Major, title of a book (1983) by Robert McGowan and Jeremy Hands, giving an ‘other ranks’ view of the Falklands conflict between Britain and Argentina.
don’t do anything I wouldn’t do See BE GOOD; IF YOU CAN’T BE.
don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes A suggestion that you should not use up your ammunition (metaphorically speaking) before it can be effective. Or, wait until you are right up close to a problem before you begin to deal with it. In origin, a historical quotation. At the Battle of Bunker Hill (17 June 1775) in the American War of Independence, the instruction given by either US General Israel Pitman or, more likely, Colonel William Prescott was: ‘Men, you are all marksmen – don’t one of you fire until you see the whites of their eyes.’ However, Frederick the Great had earlier said something very similar at Prague on 6 May 1757.
don’t force it, Phoebe! A catchphrase from the British comedian Charlie Chester (1914–97) in his BBC radio show Stand Easy (1946–50). From that show also came the name Whippit Kwick, a cat burglar in a ‘radio strip cartoon’. Leslie Bridgmont, the producer, recalled in Leslie Bridgmont Presents (1949) how the name swept the country. Wherever he went on bus, Tube or train he would hear someone say, ‘Who’s that over there?’, to which the reply would come, ‘Whippit Kwick!’ Chester remembered (1979): ‘Bruce Woodcock, the boxer, used to run around the streets chanting the jungle chants from the same strip cartoon: Down in the jungle, living in a tent, / Better than a pre-fab – no rent! – that sort of thing. Once at Wembley, just before he threw a right to put the other fellow out for the count, some wag in the audience yelled out, “Whippit Kwick!” he did – and it went in.’ Also from Stand Easy came wotcher, Tish! / wotcher, Tosh! – an exchange between two barrow boys, and yet another catchphrase: ‘This was really a joke on my missus. My wife broke her arm and was sitting in the audience. I told Len Marten to keep coming up to me with the line I say, what a smasher! Then, at the end of the programme, the resolving gag was: “Len, what do you mean by all this, ‘I say, what a smasher’ business?” He said, “The blonde in the third row!” And there’s this broken arm sticking out like a beacon. Strangely enough, I went down to Butlin’s not long after and somebody dropped a pile of crockery. Of course the noise resounded all over the place and everybody shouted “I say, what a smasher!”’ Partridge/Catch Phrases finds the phrase earlier in a 1940 ad for Kolynos toothpaste, and Partridge’s Dictionary of Forces’ Slang (1948) has the word ‘smasher’, meaning an attractive girl, as coming from the Scots ‘a wee smasher’. Iona and Peter Opie in The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren (1959) show how the phrase penetrated: ‘Girls, 13, Swansea, 1952’ who recited: ‘I say, what a smasher, / Betty Grable’s getting fatter, / Pick a brick and throw it at her. / If you wish to steal a kiss, / I say, what a smasher.’ Chester also used the phrase I can hear you! which first arose when he noticed somebody talking about him in a rehearsal room.
don’t forget the diver! Of all the many catchphrases sired by the BBC radio show ITMA (1939–49), the one with the most interesting origin was spoken by Horace Percival as the Diver. It was derived from memories that the star of the show, Tommy Handley, had of an actual man who used to dive off the pier at New Brighton, on the River Mersey, in the 1920s/30s. ‘Don’t forget the diver, sir, don’t forget the diver,’ the man would say, collecting money. ‘Every penny makes the water warmer, sir.’ The radio character first appeared in 1940 and no lift went down for the next few years without somebody using the Diver’s main catchphrase or his other one, I’m going down now, sir! – which bomber pilots in the Second World War would also use when about to make a descent. From ITMA’s VE-Day edition (1945): Effects: Knocking – Handley: ‘Who’s that knocking on the tank?’ The Diver: ‘Don’t forget the diver, sir – don’t forget the diver.’ Handley: ‘Lumme, it’s Deepend Dan. Listen, as the war’s over, what are you doing?’ The Diver: ‘I’m going down now, sir.’ Effects: Bubbles. But who was the original diver? James Gashram wrote to The Listener (21 August 1980): ‘My grandfather McMaster, who came from…County Donegal, knew Michael Shaughnessy, the one-legged ex-soldier, in the late 1890s, before he left for the Boer War and the fighting that cost him his leg. About 1910, Shaughnessy…settled in Bebington on the Wirral peninsula… Before the internal combustion engine, [he] used to get a lift every weekday from Bebington to New Brighton in a horse-drawn bread-cart owned by the Bromborough firm of Bernard Hughes. The driver of that cart, apparently, was always envious of the “easy” money Shaughnessy got at New Brighton – sometimes up to two pounds a day in the summer – and would invariably say to him on the return to Bebington, ‘Don’t forget the driver’. Shaughnessy rarely did forget. It was many years later, some time in the early 1930s, that, remembering the phrase so well, he adapted it to his own purposes by changing it to “Don’t forget the diver”, and shouted it to the people arriving from Liverpool.’
don’t forget the fruit gums, mum! A slogan for Rowntree’s Fruit Gums (1958–61) in the UK and coined by copywriter Roger Musgrave at the S. T. Garland agency. Market research showed that most fruit gums were bought by women but eaten by children. Later on, the line fell foul of advertising watchdogs keen to save parents from nagging. Accordingly, ‘Mum’ became ‘chum’.
don’t get mad, get even One of several axioms said to come from the Boston-Irish political jungle or, more precisely, from Joseph P. Kennedy (1888–1969), father of President Kennedy. Don’t Get Mad Get Even is the title of a book (1983) – ‘a manual for retaliation’ – by Alan Abel.
don’t get me mad, see! Phrase frequently used by those impersonating the actor James Cagney (1899–1986) in gangster mode, but it is not possible to say which of his films he says it in. Sometimes remembered as, ‘Jest don’t make me mad, see?’
don’t get your knickers in a twist! ‘Don’t make a drama out of a crisis; don’t get worked up or confused about something; don’t get excited or you’ll make the problem worse.’ As ‘knickers’ (for
