Guardian Saturday Puzzle 28,303 / Paul

66 comments on “Guardian Saturday Puzzle 28,303 / Paul”

1. A lovely themed puzzle, which I reckon must have been fair to everyone because I managed to get all the thematic elements from a base of very poor knowledge of the subject. For example, I knew the speech I HAVE A DREAM but not the song. Likewise, I had to work out NINA PRETTY BALLERINA, also not knowing the song.  I knew two of them, albeit not remembering they were by ABBA.

   ON STRIKE was my pick of some super clues.

   Thanks to Paul and Eileen.

2. Thanks Eileen. The wee central clue was a GIMME and revealed the theme – though my knowledge of the numbers was on a par with yours.  GREER strangely took the longest time.

    

3. I’ve never had the chance to say “that was an easy crossword by Paul” before! I started off with the obvious I DO (x5), and with only a slight mistep when my next was HONEY (x2) – I confused it with Sugar Sugar, the song by The Archies – it was just a matter of “spot the Abba songs”. The (other) two I didn’t know were the same as yours, Eileen.

   I enjoyed the crossword so much, I went online and bought a CD!

4. The PRETTY BYRDs may have flown, but it’s nice to see AB(negated)BA(ht) still LAYing all their love on us.

   But how could Paul, of all people, have compiled the whole puzzle without ‘feeling like a number one’??

   And as for ABNEGATED – surely he must have thought about trying to get Agnetha, at least partially, into A BED?

   ‘Cast aside by heartless Agnetha – bed in a mess!’

   But I don’t wanna talk if it makes you feel bad.  Nothing more to say, no more ace to play… oh all right, I’ll shut up now.  I apologise, Eileen.  And Paul, thank you for the music.

   P.S.  NEEDLESS to say, this puzzle wasn’t my Waterloo.

   P.P.S.  My ‘misled’ rhymed with IZAL (Medicate)d.

   P.P.P.S.  Did we all spot the nina?

5. Agree with sh@3 that this was on the easy side for Paul, but in my case the only Abba song I could recall the name of was the famous one not included (despite its last syllable!).

6. I couldn’t recall the name of a single Abba song despite my daughter’s having gone through a lengthy Abba phase in her preteen years. Like sheffield hatter, I found my way in through I DO, checking to see if I Do X5 was really a song. It was mostly on the easier side for Paul, with my only holdup at ON STRIKE (in stride? in attire? Didn’t know the cricket term, so took the most likely guess.) I agree with the emerging consensus that it was a lot of fun, so thanks to Paul and Eileen. (Count me among those who read ‘misled’ as ‘mizzled’ well into my teen years.)

7. Bit the same as commenters so far, knew a few of them [Mrs ginf, partial to the occasional bit of fluff, liked Mama Mia], and nutted out the others without too much pain. Like Eileen, I thought eye-drops were medicine..surprised (yet not really!) to find them in The Bard. References like that in 13ac always make me feel a twinge of something on behalf of those magnificent animals..tho wouldn’t go so far as calling the pc police. Hey ho, all good, quite fun, thanks Paul and Eileen.

8. Very enjoyable puzzle. I got the theme by guessing ‘pretty ballerina’ and was helped by google to find the ABBA song, and then got HASTA MANANA and the other ABBA songs slowly fell, too.

   Liked OVEREATEN.

   New: GIMME = simplest of hits / a thing that is very easy to perform or obtain, especially in a game or sport; NIBLICK = golf club

9. Thanks Eileen. A good workout which took me a couple of sessions. The Abba theme emerged quite early on and was a help but I was still looking somewhere for the source to be spelt out when I had finished. I thought it might be in there as a nina but unless it is the first two of 12 and 24a the only one I can find essexboy@4  is 1d. I well remember ‘mizzle’ being used jocularly as a verb.

10. Not exactly an ABBA fan – though I did like Mamma Mia – but I thought I’d know most of their titles. Evidently not. When I saw all the ‘number’ clues my first thought was that my non-existent knowledge of anaesthetics was going to be tested. Fortunately I saw the song connection early with HONEY. But, (like sheffield hatter @3 – thanks, glad to know I wasn’t alone there) I associated it with the Archies, and it was a while before I realised this was an ABBA-fest. I didn’t know the Nina Pretty Ballerina song at all, and nor did I know of HASTA MAÑANA, which was my LOI, mainly because I’d spelled BAHT as Bhat and didn’t pick that up until right at the end. As everyone says, a jolly bit of fun – rather like Mamma Mia. Thanks Eileen, thanks, Paul.

     

11. The numbers had me puzzled for a while, and I knew that cracking that would open up the crossie. I DO was my FOI, on the definition alone – but it was HONEY that got me the break. I stared at it – ONE is the number, what do the H and Y have to do with doubling? And then the tune arrived, I DO confirmed it, and I was away. Having the theme then helped with others. I looked hard for where Waterloo (it is Paul) would fit – but not there. Didn’t know the ABBA ballerina song, though.

    Thank you for the [music] crossword, Paul, and also Eileen.

12. I didn’t mind the theme being a bit light-weight as I needed something a bit bright and breezy to lift my mood last weekend. The “uniting words” x 5 I DO at 19a were my favourites. Thanks to Abba and Paul for the puzzle – and of course to the indefatigible Eileen for the usual pleasurable and helpful blog (needed help to parse 19a IMPRISON). Thanks also to other contributors to the blog. [essexboy@4, you gave me plenty to smile about when I read your post. Was Biggles A@9 on target when he spotted the nina AB BA? from the first two letters each of 12a/24a?]

    [Eileen – as I said – a pleasure to read your blog – I really enjoyed the W. Shakespeare reference for 21a EYE-DROP;  I don’t recall ever being “misled” by mizzled, but when I looked back to my print-off of the solve, I have annotated 15d BEDRAGGLED with “Lovely word!”; coincidentally, re 22/20d, I also once did a major deconstruction of MLK’s I HAVE A DREAM speech with a group of students – using it to reinforce the value of effective repetition – especially in oratory – and in this case – perhaps in song-writing and singing!]

     

13. A cunning puzzle, which took me a while to work out.  The first ‘Number’ I entered was I DO, which was not hard, but I, D (500) and O all signify numbers, so I went down a blind alley trying to multiply or divide something by five.  Eventually PRETTY BALLERINA became clear, but I had to check Wiki for the song, finding one by Left Banke, though ‘not to be confused with NINA …’.  Hence I finally got the Name of the Game, as the link with I DO and I HAVE A DREAM appeared, but having both HONEY and MONEY caused further confusion.

    Comments on definition of GREER?  Surely it refers to Germaine Greer – or is that so obvious it is needless to say?  But she is one of many, no doubt – this puzzle was close to the anniversary of dear old Clive James’s death.

    Paul and Eileen, thanks, and in particular for identifying the poetic use of EYE-DROP.  I too thought of the liquid one buys to ease the eyes. And for explaining GIMME, which was new to me, as was NIBLICK, not being a golfer.

    I liked INEBRIATE, as ‘dilapidated’ is literal too – (s)he is a dilapidated boozer.  Though perhaps ‘is’ may be superfluous?

14. Huge fun. Thanks to Paul. Like Eileen, I resisted the urge to find a list of Abba songs, which would have taken all the fun away. Super blog Eileen, and thanks for the Henry V quote. Enjoying the comments too with ABBA on in the background. Good start to the weekend 🙂

15. * Henry IV!!

16. I enjoy Abba when I hear them, but I’m no expert. I got the speech, which I didn’t recognise as a song, so my way in was working out PRETTY BALLERINA, Googling for the unknown first word and taking things from there. EYEDROP took ages to sort out for such a short anagram. Thanks Eileen for parsing INEBRIATE for me.

17. A lightish puzzle from Paul, I thought.  But enjoyable – and no real moans.

    I didn’t know that GIMME is a golf term.  I assumed it was a reference to ‘hitting on’ someone to lend them money.

    I particularly liked BEDRAGGLED.

    Also very pleased to see Eileen’s spelling of mañana.  Is there a convention for dealing with diacritics in crossword grids?  What if the square in question crosses with another letter?

    Thanks Paul and Eileen.

    PS  GREER may be controversial but intellectual nonetheless.  In her own way.

18. [Biggles@9 – according to Mr Trish, in his youth in rural Essex they used to say ‘It’s mizzling’ for very light rain. Essexboy?]

19. Eileen, FYI since I know you like to fix things quickly, typo in 17a: First word (“change”) missing fr/clue.

20. Thanks OddOtter @19 – fixed now.

    trishincharente @18 – as I said above, I first met ‘mizzle’ in Jane Austen.

    sjshart @13  Re 26acL perhaps I was being  too cryptic: of course it’s Germaine (I gave the link to her Wiki entry) – it just struck me that the clue could seem patronising to the intellectual Australians who meet here. 😉

21. Fun 🙂 Sussed the number/song thing early (fr/”I DO” I think), but didn’t actually know most of them, and didn’t get the ABBA connection until doing post-solve confirmation of the songs… big grin at that point!

    Not much a golf fan, but particularly liked NIBLICK, partly for the fine clue, partly the memories of first learning the term as a kid, reading collections of an old, silly US comic strip called B.C., which occasionally featured golf humor, including delightfully absord words like mashie and niblick.

    [My version of the mizzled/misled sort of thing had to do with hearing others talk from time to time of this famed thinker, Sah-crah-teez… then completely separately reading about this other guy, whose name I’d sound out in my head as So-kraits; took me ages to connect the two as Socrates 😮 ]

    Thx to blogger, setter, and commenters for all the fun!

22. A super puzzle. Many thanks. I too misspelt BAHT initially. Knowing a lot about ABBA not always an aid. They wrote all their own songs with just a few exceptions. So COVERS (covering other people’s songs) was a lovely misdirection (for me)!

23. [Aah, thanks Eileen. I read your Jane Austen comment but didn’t really get it. Apparently, again according to Mr Trish, they used to say banjing too!]

24. Thanks both.
    In 13a, the “A” has gone awol from the clue, Eileen

25. Back now, Shirl – thanks.

26. Yep, Anna @17, no demur from this Oz boy at the definition of our prickly but beloved Germs.

27. Ta for the collective compliment Eileen 🙂 , but no I’m quite happy extolling her…ground-breaking texts ‘n’all..

28. Biggles A @9, JinA @12 – having finished the puzzle I did my usual search for ninas, and had almost given up… then I saw 1d, and thought I could hear Paul having a good laugh at me  😉

    Then I wondered if ABBA was hidden in the solutions, but like Biggles only found it/them in AB(NEGATED) BA(HT).

    And finally I went on a hunt for Agnetha, Björn, Benny and Anni-Frid/Frida.  No luck – but did wonder if Paul had missed a salacious trick at 12a!

    trishincharente @18/23 – I often say mizzling for drizzling, but I haven’t come across banjing before.  I see Wiktionary (sorry, Anna!) has a few secondary meanings for mizzle, including abscond/scram/flee, and backs it up with this:

    1850, Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

    “Now you may mizzle, Jemmy (as we say at Court), and if Mr. Copperfield will take the chair I’ll operate on him.”

29. I got the theme from I HAVE A DREAM. Not at the time. I pencilled it in, then working with the crossers, the Abba song came into my head. It took me a lot of repeating I DO to count how many of them there were.

30. In spite of a love of palindromes, I was never an ABBA fan, so I did look up a list of songs, which I regretted, both because it made the puzzle too easy (I never thought I’d say that) and because I ended up with unwanted earworms. Niblick takes me back to the delights of reading P.g. Wodehouse. It was one of those words which I didn’t really know (cow-creamer was another) but added resonance to the story,

31. [I’ve heard mizzle used as a conflation of mist and drizzle; probably used it myself, for that matter. It’s the sort of weather you get when walking in the Lake District or the Pennines at about 2000′ and you find yourself walking in low cloud, after half an hour of which you are likely to be soaking wet through. But although the mist may lead to being misled, this has nothing to do with the pronunciation!]

32. Anna @17
    I too noted the tilde in Eileen’s spelling of the song title. Because there is no crossing N one can enter the name correctly, of course, in a printed grid, although not in the online one.
    I solve more themed puzzles with instructions than daily cryptics, and it’s usual to see a final instruction like ‘Ignore one accent’, so that when you fill in, say, CAFFÈ, it probably crosses a word with an E in that place, and you can (obediently rather than correctly) ignore that accent.
    Wouldn’t it be nice one day to have a word like MAÑANA crossing another word with the same diacritic!

33. Well, I did have to look up a list of Abba songs, but otherwise enjoyed it, except for the Ñ of course.

    Alan B@32: the diacritic on the Ñ is called a virguilla in Spanish and is not an accent. Ñ is a different letter from N in the Spanish alphabet. Not that I expect anything to change of course. The New York Times crossword does it all the time and they even have a special page about it.

34. Like Eileen, I got HONEY once THUG was solved. That was when my troubles started. I thought 17 could have been MONEY, and they both had the number one in them – a dead-end. Then I thought the ‘two’ in 10A could have been a ‘B’. That gave HONEY B(EE), which as well as a stinger could have been a number (just like ether). Well, perhaps a bit unlikely, but you never know with Paul. However, the tea tray eventually came crashing down with a few more crossers.

    I enjoyed the solve and thought the palindromic hint was clever, clever as well to fit in so many references. The NINA was pretty easy to find.

    Thanks Paul and Eileen.

35. pic @33
    Thank you. I’m aware that it is not an accent – I called it a tilde (and a diacritic), not knowing the Spanish word for it.

36. For sjshart @13

    Sure it refers to G Greer, but if she is an intellectual then what word shall we use for people like Clive James

    who understand the issues and the books they engage with and discuss them with intelligence?

37. Alan B@35: although English borrowed the word tilde, it’s actually a mistranslation. In Spanish the tilde refers only to the stress accent mark over vowels.

38. Alan B @ 32    poc @ 33

    Thank you for your comments.  I did not know about the name virgulilla.  Different letters, yes indeed.  I have huge problems trying to get my Finnish students to accept that ä and ö are not the same as ‘a and o with some fancy dots on, which can be inserted or omitted as one feels’.

39. [Anna @38: at the risk of casting doubts on the integrity of the Grade B I achieved in O Level German back in 1979, I playfully suggested to our German teacher at the beginning of the aural exam (basically a passage of German dictation) that she tap her head whenever there was an ö (that’s an ‘o’ with an umlaut if it doesn’t display correctly – which, for the benefit of non-German speakers, basically makes an ‘o’ sound rather more like an ‘uh’).  You can imagine our amazement when, with a perfectly straight face, she gently patted the top of her head on three or four occasions during the passage!  😀  ]

40. PostMark @ 39

    (Trying to sound very grave …..)  This is most serious.  Your teacher was Very Very Naughty.

    Actually, Mark, I’ve heard of far worst.  I had a colleague once, who, in the German dictation, used to emphasise the r’s.  So it’d be:  der gute Tag  but  ein guteRRRRRRR  Tag.

    The ä’s and ö’s in my post were actually referring to Finnish.  But the ö is more or less the same as a German ö.  The Finnish ä represents the sound of a in southern English apple.  I often think it a pity that it was the Swedes who brought writing to Finland, so they got ö.  If it had been the Danes or Norwegians, they would have got ø, which I think is a most pleasing letter.  I love writing systems.

41. poc @37, Anna @38
    Thank you both for your further contributions. I live and learn!

42. Eileen @ 15a
    The friend who used deliberately to mispronounce BEDRAGGLED in the same way as your younger self also pronounced “misled” as though it had Izal in the middle. With the same pronunciation I thought I remembered it as a separate word meaning grumbled. While Googling to find out if anyone else used it I discovered (sheffieldhatter@31) that Farrow andd Ball sell paint in a colour they say they call Mizzle after a West Country evening skies with a mixture of mist and drizzle.

43. I’m a little puzzled at all the “mizzle” references, when “misled” so obviously has a long “i” (as in Izal, indeed)! “Mis-led” would be a more helpful spelling, but English has never used a great deal of logic in its spelling, even after the half-hearted American changes.

44. I did think it was a bit unfair of Paul to include NINA PRETTY BALLERINA and HASTA MANANA, as those were non-hits–the were not even released as singles anywhere other than Australia.  I suppose if he hadn’t included a couple obscurities, the puzzle would have been too easy. I played those two after I completed the puzzle, and I’m certain that was the first time I’d heard them.

    For me, “speech” and the enumeration were enough to get I HAVE A DREAM right away, which was my way into the theme. Like most gay men over the age of 30, I have a fair working knowledge of ABBA, so other than the two mentioned, the rest went in very easily. [Gay culture is peculiar, but ABBA is unambiguously part of it.  I only include the “over 30” there because I’m not sure the youngsters have been around long enough to have been introduced to all the Things Gay People Are Required to Like.]

45. mrpenney @44 – many thanks for that. I’d been puzzled as to why so many, like me, had not heard of those two numbers.

46. I didn’t get the meaning of “number” or of the multiples or any connection to Abba until I joined John Halpern/Paul’s zoom session last week, where he revealed all of those.

    “Inebriate” brings to my mind the Emily Dickinson line “Inebriate of air am I/ And debauchee of dew.”

    I didn’t get far with SIRIUS for “sun dog.”  Anybody else try it?

    Eileen, how did Jane Austen teach you the performance of “misled”?  (I  remember someone I knew who read a line in a college English class as, “I fear, sir, you have been myzled (long I),” to her then great embarrassment.)

    Michelle @8 I googled “pretty ballerina” in the hope that it meant something to somebody and got to a group called Left Banke.  Never got anywhere near ABBA.

    Elaine @20 There is no link to Germaine Greer in the blog now.

    The B.C. comic is still going, not old but still silly.

    Anna @40  or anybody else — how is “apple” pronounced in northern England?  I thought that was a word that had the same pronunciation everywhere.

    mrpenney@44 It’s news to me that ABBA is particularly a gay thing.  The only person in my entire long life I ever heard mention them was my straight, married landlord, who was a fan and who told me about them.  I’ve never heard anyone mention them in the forty-some years since.

47. Hi Valentine @46

    If you click on the solution, GREER, the link is there. I’ve long suspected that links like this don’t stand out sufficiently well so I now, as far as possible, include them elsewhere in the blog e.g. 8dn.

    I’ll come back to you within the hour re ‘mizzle’, because I’ve just found a great article and need to establish the link, once I’ve finished eating!

48.  

    Hi again, Valentine.

    I knew I’d first come across mizzle(d) in Jane Austen and suspected that it was in ‘Emma’, one of my A Level books. I googled ‘Mizzle, Jane Austen’ and came upon this article, re portmanteau words, which reveals that Jane Austen actually coined this word, which thrilled me no end.

     

49. [ Valentine: Yes, was a bit amazed to see B.C. is still going, when poking around after my initial post. But perhaps still “old” in the sense of having run nearly 50yrs when original artist Johnny Hart died in 2007 (while working at his drawing table no less); and the collections I had in the 70’s were well worn (even BEDRAGGLED) hand-me-downs most likely from the 60’s. An interesting anecdote fr/Wikipedia: supposedly Hart was approached by Hanna-Barbera re a possible prime time B.C. series, but talks fell through and HB created The Flintstones instead. ]

50. [Valentine @46 – regarding your ‘apple’ query

    I expect Anna may come back and reply, but in the meantime here’s my twopenn’orth (with a little help from my wiki-friends).

    “The pronunciation of the /æ/ vowel in most dialects of Scotland, Northern Ireland, Northern England and Wales has always been closer to [a].”

    Click here for the ‘short a’ vowel in most Northern varieties of British English.

    Click here for the same vowel in Southern varieties.

    Anna’s point, as I understand it, is that it is the Southern English variety which is closest to the ä sound in Finnish.  I have no expertise at all in Finnish, but I can confirm that the same sound is transcribed ä in many Swiss German dialects (not standard German!) – for example, ask someone from the Bernese Oberland to say ‘spät’.

    My sincere apologies to any English, Finnish or Swiss speakers if I have misrepresented them – and if John Wells is around, any help/corrections would be welcome. 😉 ]

51. Valentine @46 – yes, I also very confidently stuck in SIRIUS without a second thought until forced to look at it again when I had conflicts later.

52. mrpenny @44. According to Wikipedia, Nina Pretty Ballerina was only released in Austria, France and (later) in the Philippines and Kenya. I never heard of it in Australia. On Germaine, she certainly counts as an Aussue intellectual, even if some of her views have gone a bit weird lately.

53. [Of course, Australia plays an important role in the ABBA story (see ABBA – The Movie). Molly Meldrum, host of the TV show Countdown, helped propel them from one-hit wonders (Waterloo) to superstars. And I think it quite likely that the Aussie film Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, helped to make them gay icons – possibly alongside Muriel’s Wedding.]

54. [TassieTim:  Nina PB was also on the debut album Ring Ring, released in Aus in 1973, then again in ‘75 when the Abba phenomenon took off down under.]

55. Thanks, Eileen.  The 8d BYRD/composer link works much better for me than the GREER one.  Even after reading your reply @47 I couldn’t see the link when I went back to look at 8d.  GREER didn’t look any bolder than IN A SPOT above it.  Eventually I thought to click on GREER itself and there was the article.  But it was a pleasant side trip to revisit in thought the composer of works I’ve loved singing for years.

    I looked at your portmanteau reference and had a good time with it — thanks for that.  I read Emma on my own when I was 13 or 14, my first Austen book, but don’t remember mizzle.  Clever of Jane!  So you remember the crossword we had a while back where the theme was portmanteaux?

    Thanks again —

56. What a lovely crossword. Like others my way in was via I HAVE A DREAM and then NINA PRETTY BALLERINA which I built up from the clue and then googled. I did bring up a list of ABBA songs, never having been a particular fan.

    [On the ö ä etc in German, they are contractions of the dipthongs oe and ae. In older texts like the early modern one I am currently working on (from ca. 1525), they are written with a superscript e. In that text, u is often written with a superscript o, for instance in zu, but that is not carried into modern German.
    And on the pronunciation of “apple”, I still remember being with a friend whose children had South African accents when one was learning to read. “A is for ipple,” she read solemnly.]

57. And could someone explain the NINA?

58. OddOtter, you are in excellent company (Bill and Ted) regarding the pronunciation of So-Kraits.

59. Beobachterin @57/56

    Re NINA – I’m afraid I was responsible for sowing confusion – apologies!  There is no nina, in the sense of a word hidden in the grid.  But of course there is a NINA!  My guess would be that it was the Crosswordland use of the term ‘nina’ that attracted Paul to the idea of including NINA PRETTY BALLERINA in the puzzle, despite its being one of Abba’s more obscure numbers.

    [On German umlauts and superscript e’s, I remember being rather daunted when the first text that was put in front of me as an undergraduate was Luther’s Von der Freyheyt eyniß Christen menschen – lots of funny spellings along with the aforementioned superscripts!

    And after a superscript, a postscript on ‘apple’.  If you go back 100 years and listen to clips of ‘old-fashioned RP’, you’ll find the /æ/ sound was pronounced much closer to an ‘e’.  Curiously, it was this sound that found its way into German textbooks teaching English, with the result that when Germans use English-derived words such as Handy, Fan, and Feedback, it generally sounds more like hendy, fen, and feedbeck.  I remember once struggling to keep a straight face while a German choir sang, with great gusto, ‘Bring BECK, bring BECK, oh bring beck my bonnie to me…’ 😉 ]

60. I did not enjoy this although I did finish it!  I know almost nothing about ABBA and could care even less.  I am not a fan of themes really and when they are as puerile as this I have little interest.  Still kudos to Paul for producing a puzzle which according to this blog all bar me enjoyed, and thanks to Eileen for helping all who cared through the answers and parsings!  Rant over!!

61. ON STRIKE I’m not particularly happy with. I understand being ‘in’ of course, and a batsman on strike is often described as ‘facing’ an oncoming delivery, but ‘facing out’ is not a cricket term to my knowledge. I suppose more conceptually every ‘in’ batsman ‘faces’ the prospect of being dismissed (‘out’) but it doesn’t sit easily with me. Any thoughts?

62. Jarvinho @61
    ‘In’ and ‘facing’ are the cricket terms, both of them together referring to the batsman who is on strike, whereas ‘out’ is not a cricket term here, referring instead to being not at work, a strike having been called. Eileen has indicated this double definition in her blog.

63. Alan B – thanks makes sense

64. I cracked the theme from I DO x5, too. Also hadn’t heard of the two rare (?album only?) songs. Had heard of a NIBLICK, because my dad had one. Got ON STRIKE from realizing ‘out’ might be a def, but only then found out what it means in cricket (although I surmised it from the clue before checking).

    Robi@34 What palindromic hint? There was such a hint in Paul’s email to his list, but not in the online crossword. Was there a mention of palindromes in the paper?

65. A couple of the ‘numbers’ looked like song titles, so Googled them and found they were both by ABBA, so I just needed to get a list of titles to resolve the rest – some of which I’d heard of, but not known to be theirs.

66. I’ve just watched a documentary on Charlie Chaplin and before he got big he worked for Fred Karno and his main act was called The Inebriate where he would play the part of a drunken Englishman ruining all of the acts performing at a Music Hall. Re pronunciations, I have fond memories of teaching English in Moravia to adult students and laughing my head off hearing them all speaking English in the same Merseyside accent as me. Loved all of the ABBA songs and knew all but the Nina one. Thanks Paul and Eileen.

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