Wodehouse cracks me up discussion

It's almost April. I've created this thread as a placeholder for future Cocktail Time discussion.

About a quarter of the way in. Love the way Wodehouse uses Uncle Fred as a feckless catalyst for the mayhem, casually and playfully triggering the events that send everyone else's lives spinning dangerously - knocking off Beefy's top hat, tossing out the suggestion that he write an angry novel as a protest, giving him the idea to let his nephew take credit for the resulting novel.

Uncle Fred's innocent delight at Oily's con game in the cab gave me a chuckle...

I'm lagging behind. Uncle Fred is still setting things into motion for me. It's funny how Wodehouse always casts uncles as trickster characters and aunts as villains.

I notice that fairly early on the book someone raised the subject of Pongo's afternoon at the dog races with his Uncle Fred. This epoch-making event seems to come up in every Pongo/Uncle Fred story, but I don't think the actual event ever features in any of them. Is this right? In this sense it's quite like another equally momentous event involving Bertie Wooster, Tuppy Glossop and the Drones Club swimming pool, which I think is also only ever referred to and not included in a story.

I don't think it's ever revealed what actually happened. It's the same with the prawn story Uncle Galahad keeps threatening to tell.

I'm catching up. The bit with Uncle Fred and Oily in the cab was classic.

I finished yesterday. I'd say Cocktail Time is now one of my top 5 Wodehouse books but I think I say that about all of them once I finish.

Anyone else have the urge to try the Ickenham System on their significant other?

The man's right - the Ickenham System gets results (the Classic Ickehnam, that is - I can't vouch for the Ickenham-lite approach he recommended to Peasemarch).

I'm falling behind because of some traveling I did over the weekend. The scene is currently set for Uncle Fred to throw Oily for a loop with his "Inspector From the Yard" impersonation.

"It was his modest boast that there was nothing in existence, except possibly a circus dwarf, owing to its height, or Gina Lollobrigida, owing to her individual shape, which he could not at any moment and without rehearsal depict with complete success."

Brian wrote: "The man's right - the Ickenham System gets results (the Classic Ickehnam, that is - I can't vouch for the Ickenham-lite approach he recommended to Peasemarch).

I'm falling behind because of some t..."

The impersonations are some of the best parts of the Uncle Fred stories.

I love Pongo's appalled reactions to his uncle's behavior, too. Half the fun of Ickenham's audacities comes from watching Pongo have a conniption as his uncle goes through his motions.

The Mortification of Pongo Twistleton would be a good title for an Uncle Fred story.

Is Howard Saxby in any other stories? He was good for a laugh every time he wandered into things.

You're right he was a great character, but I don't recall seeing him elsewhere. Some nice conversational gambits to try out there...."Do you play the trombone?"

Saxby is, like, so random, dude.

Wodehouse's plots are always brilliant, but I think this is one of his best - it just flows beautifully. It's great fun watching Uncle Fred setting all the plates spinning in the first few chapters, then effortlessly orchestrating the resulting chaos till everyone ends up happier than they were at the book's beginning. Then to have old Saxby wandering randomly in and out of the action...gold.

Brian wrote: "Saxby is, like, so random, dude.

Wodehouse's plots are always brilliant, but I think this is one of his best - it just flows beautifully. It's great fun watching Uncle Fred setting all the plates..."

I agree. This has to be in my Wodehouse top 5, maybe even top 3.

Cocktail Time was the first Wodehouse book I ever read. I probably still have the fragments of the paperback on a shelf somewhere, never to give it up.