An official of Broadcasting House has made a collection of announcers' "howlers"—including mistakes, oddities, and Spoonerisms, says the "Daily Telegraph."
"You have just heard the Bathroom Orchestra from Pump," said one announcer at the end of a concert at the Pumproom, Bath. Another, describing a volcanic eruption, stated: "A large area of lager is rapidly overcoming the village."
During a description of changes in the equipment of London's mobile police the remark occurred: "Arrangements have been made for the London police to change their combinations this winter."
The Offenbach work, "Orpheus in the Under world" was announced as "Orpheus in the Underground," and the former conductor of the B.B.C. Military Band, B. Walton O'Don-nell, was called "Wee Bolton O'Donnell."
Scottish Story A pum wee laddie was determined to get a job, ye ken. What he lacked in siller was made up in confeedence, so that when he was offered a job, provided he could drive a motorman, he wasted no time learning. And so well did he master the art of steering and control that he passed a driving test with flying colours, Then we see him driving the van on his first run to a lonely farmhouse well off the beaten track, some distance along which he found a wheel bumping badly and, indeed, a rear tyre was flat.
There was a jack in the toolbag. He had no idea how to use it, but the Scots are full of resource. Not without difficulty he obtained a large boulder and placed it under the back axle. Then he walked to the farm and borrowed a pick and shovel. Returning, he plied the pick to such-effect that he soon dug a large hole in the road below the flat tyre, deep enough to remove the punctured wheel and replace it with the spare. And fortunate it was that it was only a little-used' track where the puncture occurred.
Having roughly filled in the hole, after pushing the van forward, he drove on, returned the pick mud shovel and, going back to his employer, proudly related his enterprise, to show that a Scots laddie had so far mastered the art of motoring thay he could change a wheel.
His employer was a verre careful man, ye mind, and lost no time in explaining the intricacies of a lifting jack, fearing that a puncture in Princes Street, for example, would be a very expensive business. So now he can change a wheel without a pick and shovel.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.