A: And so we proceed cautiously to our critically panned Odd One Out round. A bevy of beauties from which to choose one beast. Who are the Chippendales and who is the Derek Jameson? Paul, your chance to show off your powers of pot luck - Yehudi Menuin; Topol; new Lord Archer, making a surprise appearance; and Sherlock Holmes.
PICTURED:
Top: (L) Yehudi Menuin; (R) Topol
Bottom:
(L) Lord Archer; (R) Sherlock Holmes
P:
Topol is known for his "Fiddler On The Roof", that was his famous
role, "Fiddler On The Roof". Yehudi
Menuin, his violin work has dried up and he is now doing a lot of guttering...
and he has been charging exorbitant prices, so he's a fiddler on the roof...
I: So OFROOF are looking into him are they?
P: Sherlock Holmes played the fiddle. Yes
Jeffrey Archer is the only one who doesn't play the violin.
A: It is Lord Archer as all the others are fiddlers, whereas Archer has
merely fiddled his expenses - allegedly.
In fact, some years ago he had to return money to the UN Association - a
charitable body - after it was reported in the Press that no fewer than 69 of
his expense claims had proved to be false.
Despite this, he has continued to raise money for charity, although he
claimed that his Simple Truth concert for the Kurds had raised over 57 million
pounds, whereas the Simple Truth was that it only raised four million pounds.
Easily confused. In his
speech to the Kurds earlier this year, he tried to win them over by urging them
to chant 'Bijou Kurdistan' which he thought meant 'Long Live Kurdistan'.
This in fact would have been 'Bijit Kurdistan' - 'bijou' meaning
'bastard'. Strangely, none of them
joined in. They probably realised
he was a bit of a 'long live'.
Trevor, four more visions of loveliness for you - the Princess of Wales; Geoff
Capes; Alison Halford; and the well-known charity worker, Lord Archer.
PICTURED:
Top: (L) the Princess of Wales; (R) Geoff Capes
Bottom:
(L) Alison Halford; (R) Lord Archer
T:
Geoff Capes used to be a policeman, Alison Halford used to be a policeman...
P: Used to be a policeman?
T: I suspect that somewhere in the past maybe Princess Di had.
The only person who has had nothing at all to do with the police is Lord
Archer.
P: She dressed up as a policewoman once, didn't she?
T: Lord Archer is much too fragrant to do anything like that.
I: Well I think - I mean, I don't want to scrounge for a point here - but...
P: There's no need to scrounge, they're being given to you just for sitting
there!
I: All of them have been policemen. Jeffrey
Archer signed up in the police force, a little known fact, and spent a very
short period of his early career there.
A: Yes. It is Princess Diana
this time as she is the only one never to have been in the police force.
This is despite getting dressed up as a policewoman in 1986 in order to
go to a rave-up party with Fergie. I
suppose it's the sort of thing you have to get out of your system before you
become Queen.
No doubt it will be interpreted by Andrew Morton as a sign of suicidal
depression. Going out with Fergie.
Alison Halford, Britain's top policewoman, is claiming to have been denied
promotion because she's a man, whereas obviously it's got nothing to do with it,
it's because she's a freemason. Lord
Jeffrey Archer...
I: You just said 'because she's a man'!
A: Yes I know. I also said
because she's a freemason. Missed
out the 'not' in both sentences - extraordinary isn't it?
Lord Jeffrey Archer joined the Metropolitan Police force in 1960, when he was
20. Strange then, that according to
his biographer Jonathan Mantle, Archer denied to the Times Diary in the
mid-1980s that he had once been a policeman.
Well, his word's good enough for us.
John, a change of mood for you - Jeffrey Archer, well-known UN charity worker
and non-policeman; Douglas Bader; Idi Amin; and Muttley.
PICTURED:
Top:
(L) Jeffrey Archer; (R) Douglas Bader
Bottom:
(L) Idi Amin; (R) Muttley
J:
Idi Amin wrote 'The Brothers Karamazov', Muttley wrote 'Oliver Twist', Douglas
Bader wrote 'A Tale Of Two Cities', and the other one can't write.
No, the real reason is they've all got medals, except somebody whose name
escapes me, who just meddles.
A: Yes. It's Lord Archer
again, as all the others were decorated with military honours.
Oddly enough, Archer is an associate member of the DCM League, which you
can only join if you or a close relative have won the Distinguished Conduct
Medal. When asked by a League
spokesman if his father William Archer had won the medal, Archer replied:
"I rarely talk about my father and his DCM".
No doubt because his father didn't win the Distinguished Conduct Medal at
all, it was in fact a completely different William Archer.
Perhaps his father was too busy being the British Consul in Singapore, as it
stated in an interview Jeffrey gave to Guardian journalist Terry Colman in 1973.
Unfortunately, Singapore has never had a Consul.
The Simple Truth is that his father was a local journalist in
Weston-super-Mare. Still - consul,
journalist; Singapore, Weston-super-Mare - it's so easy to see how the mistake
was made.
In case anyone is interested, cartoon dog Muttley was frequently decorated by
his owner Dick Dastardly, or Lord Dastardly as he probably now is.
Most dicks seem to become Lord.
Finally in this round Ian, can you bear the suspense - Colin Cowdrey; John
Mortimer; Michael Palin; and her Majesty the Queen.
Sorry, Lord Archer, the famous charity worker, non-policeman and war
hero's son.
PICTURED:
Top: (L) Colin Cowdrey; (R) John Mortimer
Bottom: (L) Michael Palin; (R) Lord Archer
I:
That's Colin Cowdrey, because he has a cake on his head.
P: Are you identifying people who have already been identified?
A: You won't be getting any points for it, that's for sure.
I: All - well, three of these people were undergraduates at Brasenose College,
Oxford. The chap on the right hand
of the picture often says he was at Brasenose College, Oxford - in fact, he was
at an institute of education, getting a one year degree in education and running
very fast. And he was very old and
he hadn't even got a first degree - which is quite interesting to do a second
degree when you haven't got a first degree - and eventually he got into
Brasenose as a friend of someone's. So...
J: The caretaker.
I: The caretaker. I should go in
for 'Mastermind' on the life of Jeffrey Archer.
I'd get more questions right than he would.
A: Yes. The answer is
that all of them graduated from Brasenose College, Oxford, whereas Lord Jeffrey
does not have a degree - in fact, he left Wellington School with three O-levels.
Curiously then, that in the Sunday Times in 1984 he wrote: "Mother was very
proud when I got to Oxford. She was
very upset when I left home after graduating." Oxford
is not the only university he appears to have graduated from.
Apparently, he also has a qualification from Berkeley University in
California, but mysteriously, when we rang them up, they had no record of him
whatsoever. Lord Whopper of
Fibbing.
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