Review:
Some may search quotation compilations for wisdom or inspiration, but most crack these reference tomes looking for a laugh. Ned Sherrin has therefore done the world a favor by culling the witticisms and snide remarks from the vast quotation libraries, creating a volume completely dedicated to the funny remark. It's superbly browsable, but as the nearly 5,000 quotations are grouped by more than 100 themes, it's also a reference with practical applications. For a quip on consumerism, George Orwell comes through with, "Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket." Dean Martin opines about liquor: "You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on." Ronald Knox defines a baby as "a loud noise on one end and no sense of responsibility on the other," and for politics, Art Buchwald says of Richard Nixon, "I worship the quicksand he walks in." It's an irresistible dictionary. --Stephanie Gold
About the Author:
Ned Sherrin is presenter of BBC Radio 4's Loose Ends. Producer and director of the ground-breaking 1960s satire TV show That Was the Week that Was, and producer of a number of films, including The Virgin Soldiers (1968) and Up Pompeii (1971), he has also written extensively for stage and screen. He has directed many theatre productions such as Side by Side by Sondheim (London 1976 and New York 1977) and Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell (1989). He has compiled a number of anthologies, including Cutting Edge (Dent, 1984), Theatrical Anecdotes (Virgin, 1991), Ned Sherrin in his Anecdotage (Virgin, 1993), and the Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations (OUP, 1995, 2/e 2001). He has also written a novel, Scratch an Actor (Sinclair Stevenson, 1995).
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