Four episodes from the twenty-first series of the BBC Radio Four comedy panel show My Word, originally broadcast in autumn 1970, featuring Frank Muir, Denis Norden, Dilys Powell and Anne Scott-James with host Jack Longland.
0:00 - Dickens Centenary Special (date unknown)
Definitions: Palafitte, Spey Wife, Besetment, Standpatter
Quotations: "He had but one eye, and the popular prejudice runs in favour of two...", "You don't object to an aged parent, I hope?", "I am well aware that I am the umblest person going. My mother is likewise a very umble person. We live in a numble abode...", "Sairey, sech is life. Vich likeways is the hend of all things!"
Dickens: Year Of Birth, Mystery-Writing Collaborator, Autobiographical Novel, First Successful Publication
Doggerel: "The father was plump while his offspring was bony...", "Two men at the book's end, one living, one dead; so who stayed alive then, and who lost his head?", "He has a faithful feathered friend, which you may think absurd...", "One honest and one bent; Jack Dawkins is the name of one, the other is Nell Trent..."
Phrases: "Smike, Newman Noggs, Crummles...", "The best things, carried to excess, are wrong..."
25:38 - Series 21 Episode 1, 8th October 1970
Definitions: Anopheles, Medicaster, Baccalaureate, Tucum
Origins: Sent Up The River, Jerkwater Town, Serbonian Bog, Barmy On The Crumpet
Who, Why & What: Aunt Jobiska, Who Called His Mother Ma'am, As White & Hairless As An Egg, Hadn't Any Feet
Doggerel: "An American wrote it, and the title is...", "The father was alright, but sonny finished in the drink...", "Man does just the same today without a change of shape...", "An eagle came down every day and lunched upon his liver..."
Phrases: "The lady is a tramp...", "Women and elephants never forget..."
51:14 - Series 21 Episode 2, 15th October 1970
Definitions: Suasion, Sexillion, Polity, Canoodle
Characters: Edward Bear, Mrs Hudson, Colin Shepherd, Bathsheba Everdene
Origins: Klaxon, Corset, Plagiarism, Sputnik
Quotations: "He went back through the wet, wild woods waving his wild tail and walking by his wild lone, but he never told anybody...", "But first with beef and captain's biscuits and pickled pork they loaded she... now when they got as far as the Equator, they'd nothing left but one split pea...", "The maiden, she lived with no other thought than to love and be loved by me...", "On a desert island she would have spent most of her time looking for a man's footprint..."
Phrases: "Truth is stranger than fiction...", "And so to bed..."
1:16:30 - Series 21 Episode 4, 29th October 1970
Definitions: Glabrous, Natation, Delphinoids, Toon
Town Associations: Raglan, Angostura, Mechlin, Berlin
Origins: Pit One's Wits, Pamphlet, Martinet, Lychgate
Detectives: Roderick Alleyn, Nero Wolfe, Lord Peter Wimsey, Mr Fortune
Phrases: "Oh mistress mine, where are you roaming?", "He travels the fastest who travels alone..."