Monday, August 25, 2008

A Day At The Races

Our bank holiday viewing has included a documentary on the Marx Brothers. A chance for me to bring up my embarrassing morning assembly reading in my late teens.

Us sixth formers took it in turns to read something that meant something to us. One boy read a Bruce Springsteen lyric which only I recognised and which was about as punk as it got at our school. I decided to be a bit subversive.

"The following is a quote from Marx..." I said, pausing. "...Harpo Marx."

Nobody laughed.

Of course they may have laughed if instead of reading out an actual quote from Harpo Marx, I had produced a horn from behind my back and honked my way through the ordeal. The headmaster would have grappled with me for the horn and teachers would have thrown off their leather elbowed tweed jackets and wrestled me to the ground.

Instead, I read out the quote to a cavernous silence.

Harpo. Not even Groucho.

7 comments:

  1. Bravo Geoff!

    You were too good for 'em!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous8:34 PM

    School assembly readings repeat themselves: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Murph - Their Friends Reunited profiles would say otherwise. But I do have an inner peace.

    Billy - The goody two shoes quoted Shakespeare. "Will Power" my arse.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I bet they're still thinking about it Geoff.
    You were either ahead of or behind your times.

    ReplyDelete
  5. The perils of casting pearls before swine.

    *wipes tear from eye

    ReplyDelete
  6. It just wasn't *your* type of audience, Geoff.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Kaz - I was so far ahead I knew Dire Straits would be big one day.

    Donnnnn - It was probably the way I told it.

    Istvanski - I should have done a Monty Python sketch. Everybody would have joined in. "He's a lumberjack and he's ok..." Blah blah blah.

    ReplyDelete