A Word In Your Shell-Like. Nigel Rees
said Hovis and not just “brown”.’ The slogan was used in its final form from 1956 to 1964. It still reverberates: in May 1981, when a British golfer, Ken Brown, was deserted by his caddie during a championship, the Sunday Mirror headline was, ‘Don’t Say Brown, Say Novice’.
don’t shoot the pianist! Injunction, in the form of an allusion. Oscar Wilde reported having seen the notice ‘Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best’ in a bar or dancing saloon in the Rocky Mountains – ‘Leadville’ from Impressions of America (1882–3). Hence, the title of the film Tirez Sur Le Pianiste (France 1960), translated as ‘Shoot the Pianist/Piano-Player’ and Elton John’s 1972 record album, Don’t Shoot Me, I’m Only the Piano-Player.
don’t some mothers have ’em? Comment about a stupid person. The British comedian Jimmy Clitheroe (1916–73) was a person of restricted growth and with a high-pitched voice who played the part of a naughty schoolboy until the day he died. The BBC radio comedy programme The Clitheroe Kid, which ran from 1957 to 1972, popularized an old Lancashire – and possibly general North Country – saying, ‘Don’t some mothers have ’em?’ In the form ‘Some mothers do ‘ave ’em’, the phrase was used in the very first edition of TV’s Coronation Street (9 December 1960) and later as the title of a series on BBC TV (1974–9) in which Michael Crawford played an accident-prone character, Frank Spencer.
don’t speak to the man at the wheel Injunction to persons travelling by boat or ship not to distract the helmsman. There are numerous references to this phrase in Punch during the 1880s. All is explained by Lewis Carroll in his Preface to The Hunting of the Snark (1876) where, commenting on the line, ‘Then the bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes’, he notes: ‘The helmsman used to stand by with tears in his eyes: he knew it was all wrong, but alas! Rule 42 of the [Naval] Code [containing Admiralty Instructions], “No one shall speak to the Man at the Helm,” had been completed by the Bellman himself with the words, “and the Man at the Helm shall speak to no one.” So remonstrance was impossible, and no steering could be done until the next varnishing day. During these intervals the ship usually sailed backwards.’ So, the phrase was merely the shipboard equivalent of the modern instruction not to speak to the driver [of a bus] when the vehicle is in motion. When Stanley Baldwin stepped down as Prime Minister, flushed with (short-lived) success over his handling of the Abdication crisis, he made this statement to the Cabinet (28 May 1937) and later released it to the press: ‘Once I leave, I leave. I am not going to speak to the man on the bridge, and I am not going to spit on the deck.’ Earlier, at his inauguration as Rector of Edinburgh University in 1925, Baldwin had expressed a view of the limitations on the freedom of a former Prime Minister in similar terms: ‘A sailor does not spit on the deck, thereby strengthening his control and saving unnecessary work for someone else; nor does he speak to the man at the wheel, thereby leaving him to devote his whole time to his task and increasing the probability of the ship arriving at or near her destination.’ When Harold Wilson resigned as Prime Minister, he duly quoted Baldwin’s ‘Once I leave…’ words in his own statement to the Cabinet (16 March 1976) and also later released them to the press.
don’t spit – remember the Johnstown flood This Americanism is an admonition against spitting. The Johnstown flood of 31 May 1889 entered US folklore when a dam burst near Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and 2,200 died. A silent film, The Johnstown Flood, was made in the USA in 1926. Partridge/Catch Phrases finds that notices bearing this joke were exhibited in bars before Prohibition started in 1919. Safire quotes William Allen White’s comment on the defeat of Alfred Landon in the 1936 US presidential election: ‘It was not an election the country has just undergone, but a political Johnstown flood.’
don’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs Meaning, ‘don’t try to tell people things which, given their age and experience, they might be expected to know anyway’. According to Partridge/Slang, variations of this very old expression include advice against instructing grandmothers to ‘grope ducks’, ‘grope a goose’, ‘sup sour milk’, ‘spin’ and ‘roast eggs’. In 1738, Jonathan Swift’s Polite Conversation had ‘Go teach your grannam to suck eggs’. It has been suggested that, in olden days, sucking eggs would be a particularly important thing for a grandmother to be able to do because, without teeth, it would be all she was capable of. Known since the late 17th century.
don’t throw the baby out with the bath water Meaning, ‘don’t get rid of the essential when disposing of the inessential’. There are several similar English expressions, including ‘to throw away the wheat with the chaff’, ‘to throw away the good with the bad’, but this one seems to have caught on following its translation from the German by Thomas Carlyle in 1849. According to Wolfgang Mieder in Western Folklore (October 1991), the first written occurrence appears in the satirical book Narrenbeschwörung (1512). Chap. 81 is entitled ‘Das kindt mit dem bad vß schitten [to throw the baby out with the bath water].’
don’t try this at home Injunction, usually to young television viewers, not to try to replicate stunts and dangerous activities they have just been shown. Accordingly, Don’t Try This At Home became the title of a British TV programme of which The Guardian (25 January 1999) said: ‘[It] takes itself seriously. Large lumps of the programme are devoted to repeating the title in case viewers try to kill themselves.’ At about this time, the catchphrase warning was noticed in a Dutch text (but in English) describing a somewhat dangerous sexual position. Earlier: ‘As one baffled scientist told his peers over the electronic mail, “Remember, kids, don’t try this at home, unless you want your baby brother to have three arms”’ – The Guardian (12 April 1989).
don’t want it good – want it Tuesday Journalistic motto of editors – and quoted by journalists – suggesting that actual delivery of copy is more important than striving after quality. British, mid-20th century. Compare: ‘Don’t get it right, just get it written’ – James Thurber, Fables of Our Time, ‘The Sheep In Wolf’s Clothing’ (1940).
don’t worry, be happy Injunction. Bobby McFerrin’s song with this title became George Bush’s unofficial campaign theme in the presidential election of 1988 and won the Grammy award for the year’s best song. ‘The landlord says the rent is late, he might have to litigate, but don’t worry, be happy,’ sang McFerrin, in a song which became a minor national anthem, reflecting a feeling in the USA at the time. The Times (8 March 1989) noted: ‘The song has spawned a whole “happy” industry and relaunched the Smiley face emblem that emerged in America in the late 1960s and was taken up in Britain by the acid-house scene last year. Bloomingdales, the Manhattan department store, now features a “Don’t worry, be happy shop”.’ In the form, ‘Be happy, don’t worry’, it was earlier a saying of Meher Baba (1894–1969), the so-called Indian God-Man.
don’t you just love being in control? Slogan from TV advertising for British Gas from 1991. Originally, the ‘control’ was seen to come from the fact that a gas appliance responds more quickly to its operator’s demands than does an electrical one, but the saying soon achieved brief catchphrase status in the UK, not least because of its scope for sexual innuendo. From The Independent (19 October 1992): ‘England signally failed to achieve their stated [rugby union] goals. Perhaps disarranged by their new surroundings, England, who just love being in control, were frustrated by the resilience and organisation of the Canadians.’ From The Daily Telegraph (5 April 1993): ‘Most annoying of all is the circle of fire [in a National Theatre production of Macbeth], like a giant gas ring, which whooshes into jets of flame at certain key moments. It is ludicrously obtrusive and sometimes it doesn’t seem to be working properly, adding to the viewer’s sense of fretful alienation. As Alan Howard stands in the middle of it, looking haggard, you suddenly wonder if the whole dire production is actually an advertisement for British Gas. Will he suddenly flick his thumb and say “Don’t you just love being in control?”’
don’t you know there’s a war on? Reproof delivered in response to complaints and