The Art of the Political Putdown by Chris Lamb

Author:Chris Lamb [Lamb, Chris and Moredock, Will]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chronicle Books LLC
Published: 2020-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHRIS LAMB

’

Churchill was in the lavatory in the House of Commons and his secretary knocked on the door and said: “Excuse me, Prime Minister, but the Lord Privy Seal wishes to speak to you.” After a pause, Churchill replied, “Tell His Lordship: I’m sealed in one Privy and can only deal with one shit at a time.”

’

When staying at the White House as a guest of President Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill was coming out of his bath when FDR entered the room.

Startled at seeing the naked Churchill, FDR hurriedly reversed his wheelchair, but was stopped when Churchill said, “The prime minister has nothing to hide from the president of the United States.”

’

The Ladies of the Temperance Union went to see Prime Minister Churchill toward the end of World War II. “Mr. Prime Minister,” the leader of the women said disapprovingly, “we have it on reliable authority that if all the alcohol and all the brandy you have drunk during this war would be emptied into this room it would come up to about here.”

She held her hand over her head in the giant room.

Churchill looked at the floor, looked at the ceiling, then paused and said, “My dear lady, so little we have done . . .” He took the woman’s hand and lifted it to where she had held it. He then looked up to the ceiling and said: “So much we have yet to do.”

’

Playwright George Bernard Shaw invited Winston Churchill to the premiere of a new play, enclosing two tickets: “One for yourself and one for a friend—if you have one.”

Churchill wrote back, saying he couldn’t make it, but he would like tickets for the second night—“if there is one.”

’

While listening to a member of the opposition party in the House of Commons, Winston Churchill began shaking his head, and eventually got more attention than the speaker.

Realizing he was being upstaged, the speaker turned toward Churchill and snapped, “I wish to remind the right honorable friend that I am only expressing my own opinion.”

Impishly looking up, Churchill replied, “And I wish to remind the speaker that I am only shaking my own head.”

’

Winston Churchill was approached by an admirer who said, “Doesn’t it thrill you, Mr. Churchill, to know that every time you make a speech the hall is packed to overflowing?”

“It is quite flattering,” Churchill answered. “But whenever I feel this way I remember that if, instead of making a political speech, I was being hanged, the crowd would be twice as big.”

’

American-born Lady Nancy Astor was the first woman to take a seat in the British House of Commons, where she was the object of great antagonism from many members, including Winston Churchill.

Churchill told Astor he found her intrusion into the all-male society as embarrassing as if she had burst into the bathroom.

“Winston,” she said, “you are not handsome enough to have worries of that kind.”

’

When Winston Churchill showed a close friend a group of paintings he had recently completed, the friend asked him why he painted only landscapes and never portraits.

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