Insults – Old, new, borrowed, blue
By John Barber
Copyright 2011 John Barber
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Insults – Old, new, borrowed, blue
In a ground-breaking case in an English court Ms Sarah Chernaik was acquitted of the charge of threatening behaviour after shouting ‘You silly cow' at Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
At various times we have all hurled insults like this at people against whom we bear a grudge. Usually the insult is accompanied by the liberal use of four letter words. Of course a couple of days later, or even minutes afterwards we think of just the right words or phrase we would liked to had used, had they entered our mind at the time.
Well, here they all are. Some of these will make you smile, laugh, perhaps cringe; all of them (well nearly all of them) are repeatable in company. Here you will find words of wisdom spoken or written by some of the best literary geniuses to have employed the English language. Of course, there are also examples of people who would have done better keeping their thoughts to themselves, not being blessed with perfect delivery.
One of the most prolific contributors is Anon. Some of the anonymous contributions are phrases that have been bandied about for hundreds of years; others I have found in newspapers, letters pages and long since dead magazines.
There is a strong contribution from the world of sport. Not surprisingly sportsmen are always in the news and often eager to give vent to their frustration with competitors, officials and the game itself. Thanks to the popularity of newspapers, TV and radio their words have been recorded for posterity.
Where possible and especially for non-UK readers I have given a brief background but not so for some poor souls who find themselves quoted here but I forgot to take note of who, why or what they were doing at the time to gain my attention. To them I apologise.
To the reader, I hope you enjoy this collection as much as I did in putting it together. It is intended more as a dip in where you like rather than to be read cover to cover, so all the quotes are listed alphabetically by author.
Gladly we desire to make other men perfect but we will not amend our own faults.
Thomas a Kempis, German Asetical writer
The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.
Dean Acheson, US politician
The EU pontificates on the width of theatre seats while Mozambique drowns.
Susan Adams
The man you love to hate.
Advert for Erich von Stroheim
He can summon up all the expressions there are except the tragic ones; the lack of which in a tragic actor must be a shortcoming.
James Agate, UK Drama critic and novelist
The luckiest man was Adam. He had no mother-in-law.
Sholom Aleichim
Everybody's negotiable.
Muhammed Ali
A committee is a group of men who individually do nothing but as a group decide nothing can be done.
Fred Allen, US Humourist
I have just returned from Boston. It is the only thing to do if you find yourself up there.
Fred Allen
California is a great place — if you happen to be an orange.
Fred Allen
To make someone regal who is only 5' 4" is difficult.
Hardy Amies, tailor to Queen Elizabeth II
His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night; and then as it's
mausoleum.
Kingsley Amis, UK novellist
'
But the emperor has nothing on at all' cried the little child.
Hans Christian Anderson
I don't want you here - now sod off.
Anne, the Princess Royal
There are many insults that become well-known but have never been attributed to anyone. Here are some of those and some that I have found in newspapers and magazines, equally anonymously.
Tremble and repent, unholy monstrous woman. You defile the country and young women. I curse you in God's name and may you go childless all the rest of your days.
Letter to Agony column.
Zeal is only fit for wise men but is found mostly in fools.
Anon
Great! Now do it with the ball.
An anonymous Arsenal fan that always stood behind me and had little respect for the talents of flying winger Alan Skirton, aka the Boy from Bath.
Previously reckoned to be what Tottenham Hotspur are to tennis.
Food review, them being a Premier League Football Club.
Heseltine knows as much about defence as Parkinson does about contraception
Banner. Michael Heseltine was newly appointed Minister of Defence whilst the outgoing Minister Cecil Parkinson, was forced to resign after it was discovered that his mistress had given birth to an illegitimate child at a time when Margaret Thatcher was extolling the virtues of Victorian family values.
Play louder. I can still hear Miss Houten-Schriek.
Musical Director, berating the unfortunately named soprano.
No-one can deny that Wagner is a finer musician that Schiller and a greater poet than Beethoven.
A committee is a group of the unwilling, chosen from the unfit to do the unnecessary.
Waldo is one of those people who would be greatly enormously improved by death.
Expletive deleted.
Attributed to the edited Watergate tapes.
Q. Are Tories born wicked , or do they grow wicked afterwards?
A. They are born wicked, and grow worse.
So much chewing gum for the eyes.
Too small to live in and too large to hang on a watch chain.
He is loyal to his own career but only incidentally to anything or anyone else.
Two ladies with no character in particular.
The following were a result of a survey conducted amongst the teenage listeners to BBC Radio One to find the nation’s most boring town. Grantham, home of ex-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher now has that accolade
The only thing that ever came out of Grantham was the A1.
It must have been a boring place if all Newton had to do all day was to wait for an apple to fall on his head.
Isaac Newton, inventor of gravity also lived in Grantham - though not at the same time as Margaret Thatcher (or Roberts as she was then).
People only pass through Whitstable to get to Herne Bay, where they die.
Feeding a ferret with lockjaw would be more exciting than living in Carmarthen.
German beer may make you drunk faster than British beer but at least you're not sick the day after.
German EEC representative
Hunting is on a par with Hitler murdering the Jews. At least he was mad.
Anti-hunting campaigner
It's Arsenal 0; Newcastle 0. Now back to the studio.
Radio reporter on LBC Sports Saturday. Believed to have been Steve Tongue who left the commentary box completely after reporting three times on what he considered the most boring game ever.
They were so bad that one could be forgiven for thinking that they had entered the examination room by mistake and then been forcibly prevented from leaving until they had written something that they had considered relevant.
Examination Board report
Would you like tongue sir?
I never eat anything from an animal’s mouth.
What about two boiled eggs?
Seaside postcard
An intellectual urinal.
For the benefit of Anglo-Saxon viewers I wonder if the TV sports presenters would consider using subtitles when interviewing Kenny Dalglish
Letter to London Evening Standard. Kenny Dalgleish may have been an excellent player and manager but also had an unintelligible, broad Glaswegian accent.
Like a demented Scandinavian nymphet.
Without being too technical about it, they're crap.
British Rail engineer
An obese man of indefinite age.
Teeth so yellow I can't believe its not butter.
Sent anonymously to me by email
A cross between a boxing kangaroo, a piece of chewing gum and a racing cyclist.
So boring you fall asleep half way through his name.
He always played the game and he always lost.
The only thing he ever fought for was a seat in a good restaurant.
The sun never set on the British Empire because God doesn’t trust the Brits in the dark.
New York protest banner
Q. Why don’t sharks eat lawyers?
A. Professional courtesy.
If the phone doesn't ring, you'll know it’s me.
Women have many faults
Men have only two:
Everything they say
And everything they do.
To offer Geoff Boycott a new contract is akin to awarding Arthur Scargill the Queens Award for Industry.
Letters, Yorkshire Post
Garbage journalism.
Shareholder at Express Newspapers AGM. Upset at the Daily Express description of a new signing as a 'goal ace' after scoring an own goal on his debut.
I do not mind what language an opera is sung in as long as it is a language I don't understand.
Edward Appleton, English physicist
Here we are in this country with sub-zero temperatures and struggling along and in the Caribbean and in glorious sunshine 22 of the world’s best cricketers are playing Test cricket. There is television yet none of us can see it. It’s enough to make an Orthodox Jew join the Nazi party.
Judge Michael Argyle QC who once jailed a football hooligan for life
He argued several calls which were seven inches out and he said 'It is right on the line'. Maybe there's something wrong with his eyes.
Jimmy Arias on John McEnroe
It contains a misleading impression, not a lie. It was being economical with the truth.
Robert Armstrong, Head of British Civil Service
Mr Salteena is an elderly man of 42.
Daisy Ashford, childrens novelist
Women play an important part in cricket. They make the teas.
Brian Aspital, Secretary National Cricket Association
Lloyd George could not see a belt without hitting below it.
Margot Asquith, political hostess
I married beneath me; all woman do.
Nancy Astor, American born British politician
Half an hour? You could shoot Ben Hur in half an hour.
Ron Atkinson, ex-Football manager -now ex-TV commentator
As far as he is concerned, he is God. There's nobody around big enough to tell him what to do.
Margaret (Mrs Ron) Atkinson
A period of silence on your part would be welcome.
Clement Atlee, British Prime Minister
One has no great hopes for Birmingham. I always say there is something direful in the sound.
Jane Austen, English novelist
The sooner every party breaks up the better.
Jane Austen
He had a brain scan and they found nothing there.
Is Your Brain Really Necessary? (BBC TV)
If he were a horse, nobody would buy him; with that eye no one could answer for his temper.
Walter Bagehot, English essayist
A lot of hard-faced men who look as if they had done very well out of the war
Stanley Baldwin, British Prime Minister
I thought that he was a young man of promise; but it appears that he is a young man of promises.
A J Balfour, British Prime Minister
I'm as pure as driven slush.
Talullah Bankhead, actress
I could have tweaked every hair out of her moustache.
Talullah Bankhead
A smile like a sour belch
Nancy Banks Smith, TV critic
He's the kind of a bore who's here today and here tomorrow.
Binnie Barnes
There’s a sucker born every minute.
Phineas T Barnum
Shaw, you ought to be roasted alive though even then you would not be to my taste.
Sir James Barrie, author
Like a pathetic, hapless Ancient British nobody in the face of the Roman Empire.
Dave Batty, FOUL journalist
So pleased.....like the town tart that has finally married the Mayor.
Beverley Baxter, journalist
In Islington the SDP is dominated by a small group of people who, prior to 1981 were trendy, middle-class socialists in the Labour party. Those people are now trendy middle-class socialists in the SDP.
Bill Bayliss, Member of the local SDP
It is our supreme objective to have a head looking like a wet football on a neck as thin as a governess' hatpin.
Cecil Beaton, fashion designer
There is no other purgatory but a woman.
Beaumont and Fletcher, dramatists
I can hardly believe that even those who sit in judgment on these matters can believe that an old sardine can floating in a tin tub is art.
Anthony Beaumont Dark MP, commenting on a work of art - 'The sinking of the Belgrano'.
The musical equivalent of St Pancras Station.
Sir Thomas Beecham, conductor
Why do we have to have all these third rate foreign conductors when we have so many second rate of our own?
Sir Thomas Beecham
Stockhausen? I trod in some yesterday.
Sir Thomas Beecham
Drooling, drivelling, doleful, depressing, dropsical drips.
Sir Thomas Beecham
He is an old bore. Even the grave yawns for him.
Herbert Beerbohm-Tree
Sirs, I have tested your machine. It adds a new terror to life and makes death a long felt want.
Herbert Beerbohm-Tree
Of course we all know that Morris was an all round man but the act of walking round him has always tired me
Sir Max Beerbohm - also see Marshall Vivonne
Most women are not so young as they are painted.
Sir Max Beerbohm
Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they're there every night, they see it done every night, they see how it should be done every night but they can't do it themselves.
Brendan Behan, Irish playwright
Bloodthirsty, moth-eaten psychopath
Steve Bell,cartoonist on satirical magazine, Private Eye
A banana republic without the bananas
Steve Bell
The llama is a woolly sort of fleecy goat
With an indolent expression and an undulating throat
Like unsuccessful literary men.
Hillaire Belloc, poet and all round writer
I don't trust a bank that would lend money to such as poor risk as myself.
Robert Charles Benchley, US humourist
Suffering from galloping obsolescence.
Tony Benn, Labour MP
Being a husband is a full time job. That is why so many husbands fail. They can't give their entire attention to it.
Arnold Bennett, novellist
Journalists say a thing that they know isn’t true, in that hope that if they keep on saying it long enough it will be true.
Arnold Bennett
One can only wonder
At so grotesque a blunder.
Edmund Clerihew Bentley, English writer
Come friendly bombs, and fall on Slough
It isn't fit for humans now.
Sir John Betjeman, English poet
I read the newspapers avidly; it is my one form of continuous fiction.
Aunerin Bevan, Labour politician
A desiccated calculating machine.
Aneurin Bevan
Lower than vermin
Aneurin Bevan
As a matter of fact we are both offensive and the only difference is that I am trying to be and you can't help it.
Earl of Birkenhead
You see your directors, sixty, seventy, eighty years old, shuffling into the stand, people who take all day to decide what colour to paint the referee's dressing room. You read that they're ‘important businessmen' and find out that their father has a butchers shop.
Danny Blanchflower, footballer captain of Tottenham Hotspur FC and Northern Ireland
If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead.
Erma Bombeck
From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step.
Napoleon Bonaparte
"Boren's Guidelines" for bureaucrats: (1) When in charge, ponder. (2) When in trouble, delegate.(3) When in doubt, mumble.
James H. Boren, US humourist
They bring him out of the loft, take the dust sheets off, give him a pink gin and sit him there. He can't go out of a thirty mile radius of London because he's usually too pissed to get back.
Ian Botham, cricketer, on the English Cricket team selectors at Lords
Ignorant, biased, bigoted and a bunch of racial idiots.
Ian Botham, see also Viv Richards below
Sacking Viv Richards is like sending Shergar to Argentina for dog meat.
Ian Botham
I wish Adam had died with all his ribs in his body
Dion Boucicault, Irish dramatist
Watford is a byword for urban mediocrity.
Martin Bould, reporter on FOUL
The congenital disease of Watford strikers - an inability to stand up.
Martin Bould
The sort of book that once put down you can't pick up again.
Sir Maurice Bowra, English literary critic
She's a gay man trapped in a woman's body.
Boy George on Madonna
Unless I’m crackers or something, I’ve scored a bloody sight more runs than that bearded old bugger.
Geoff Boycott, Yorkshire and England cricketer on W G Grace
If there is anyone here whom I have not insulted, I beg his pardon.
Johannes Brahms
Eyes like a dead pig.
Marlon Brando
Acting is an empty and useless profession.
Marlon Brando
Truth exists. Only lies are invented.
George Braque, French painter
I keep losing to wallies
Eric Bristow