[Excellent -- which in turn merits a post of Monty Python's (rather rude) salute to NC, from "The Meaning of Life." The full effect calls for Eric Idle's actual perfomance:]
(Elegant restaurant. A man in a dressing gown, who is not Noel Coward, sits at a piano.)
Not Noel Coward: Good evening ladies and gentlemen. Here's a little
number I tossed off recently in the Caribbean. [Sings]
Isn't it awfully nice to have a penis,
Isn't it frightfully good to have a dong?
It's swell to have a stiffy,
It's divine to own a dick,
From the tiniest little tadger,
To the world's biggest prick.
So three cheers for your Willy or John Thomas,
Hooray for your one-eyed trouser snake,
Your piece of pork, your wife's best friend,
Your Percy or your cock,
You can wrap it up in ribbons,
You can slip it in your sock,
But don't take it out in public,
Or they will stick you in the dock,
And you won't come back.
(Spontaneous applause breaks out all over the restaurant.)
Final word on the stiff upper lip: Despite Brit(on)s' professed reference for the s.u.l., it can be carried to excess. P. G. Wodehouse lived in exile for 30 years or so because -- displaying the s.u.l. -- he foolishly made light of his experiences as a civilian detainee in a Nazi prison camp, e.g., saying of the humdrum countryside, "if this is Upper Silesia one must wonder what Lower Silesia must be like." Wodehouse experienced real privations as a prisoner and showed genuine fortitude; however, when he made a series of jocular radio broadcasts about his internment from wartime Berlin, he essentially became persona non grata in the UK for the rest of his long life.
It must be admitted Wodehouse was amazingly clueless. Eventually released from official detention because of age, he spent much of WWII trapped in Berlin, where he maintained the same rigorous daily writing schedule he always did. On learning that he was being labeled a German collaborator and traitor in the UK, he sought out a German lawyer and asked if he could sue his accusers for slander in the UK. Stunned, the lawyer replied that since the UK and Germany were at war, pursuing such cross-border litigation at the moment would be very difficult and probably impossible.
The stiff upper lip can be a real hazard.
Carl