"STANDING on the corner" is my favourite radio turn because it is unrehearged, says Nat Gubbins in the "Sunday Express."
The reactions of citizens to st aight questions are often more startling than anything that could be contrived by the most gifted writer.
I remember hearing Mr. Michael Standing in the street, "Why don't you go to Without a moment's hesitation a cockney voice rapped back to him, "Because I don't like the theatre, see."
Even Mr. Bernard Shaw with all his penetrate ing logic could hardly have put it better than Nor, I think, could any writer have thought of a more astonishing wer to the question "Are you a farmer?" than the one received by Mr. Standing when he was interviewing local ini tants about a ghost in Essex.
Funny writers, if asked to supply the next line to this dialogue, would have jumped at the chance of fitting in a piece of dialect like "Dan-gee, course Oi be yarmer," or "Ar, that Oi be an proud Oi be, too."
Serious writers like the late Thomas Hardy would have filled pages with a cross-section of the darker side of Di t life, and the most restrained, after spending a week eliminating all other possible answers, would probably have written three words "Yes, I am."
After another aveek, taking long walks and stamping about the house, the words "I am" would have been eliminated and only "Yes" would have remained.
The actual answer from a real farmer to the question "Are you a farmer?" w "Oh, de-, finitely.
This is so staggering, so unexpected, so revolutionary, that all its implications cannot for the moment be foreseen.
It means, for one thing, that writers composing pieces about English rural life will have to write them all over again if they have any regard for the truth.
It may also mean (let us pray it does) that the end of funny stories in dialect is in sight.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.