{"id":7242,"date":"2018-05-14T06:06:33","date_gmt":"2018-05-14T06:06:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=7242"},"modified":"2018-05-14T07:20:33","modified_gmt":"2018-05-14T07:20:33","slug":"mrs-slocombes-cat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2018\/05\/14\/mrs-slocombes-cat\/","title":{"rendered":"Mrs Slocombe's cat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was going to write today about the dangers of trying to be funny in elevators at American conferences \u2013 but <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetimes.co.uk\/edition\/comment\/first-floor-folks-get-out-here-for-fragile-egos-entitlement-and-victimhood-63vdmdfp3\">Rod Liddle<\/a> beat me to it in the Sunday Times.<\/p>\n<p>This spares me writing about the hapless hero of the hour, Ned Lebow, and the pantomime villain, Simona Sharoni. \u00a0If I had decided to write about this, I'd probably not have resisted mentioning Mrs Slocombe's cat \u2013 if only to pile in a cultural reference of my own to the glorious <em>Are you being Served<\/em>. \u00a0This was broadcast at a time when we preferred humour to be funny. \u00a0And Grace Bros was a place where it was always safe to say <em>Ladies' Lingerie<\/em> in a lift.<\/p>\n<p>So, if you want to rejoice in Mrs Slocombe's cat, just go to YouTube \u2013 and for an explanation, go <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/culture\/tvandradioblog\/2009\/jul\/02\/mollie-sugden-tribute-slocombe\">here<\/a>, where the Guardian will explain why it's funny.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, I see that Professor Lebow has been fighting back over the weekend against humourlessness, and is still refusing to apologise. \u00a0Good for him. \u00a0The lesson I draw from all this nonsense is that there comes a point when professors should stop going to conferences. \u00a0Think of all the frustration we'll cause to those waiting to be offended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was going to write today about the dangers of trying to be funny in elevators at American conferences \u2013 but Rod Liddle beat me to it in the Sunday Times. This spares me writing about the hapless hero of...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7242\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}