Lydia gets tattooed...

...by Groucho Marx.

I know it is childish but I have an Orwellian fondness for George Formby, and all seaside-postcardly sniggerishness. The absurdity of embarrassment, the comedy of desire, the giggle of taboo: it is like re-entering childhood or, more likely, like never having left it. And the best never do quite leave it.

In any case, all that stuff has to have somewhere to go and a pun or a bathetic rhyme is as good a place as any. As someone once said, a nod is as good as wink to a blind bat. And when it is scored out of operetta but choreographed out of chaos there is something quite glorious about it.

I have read my way through some 2,500 poems, some 2,500 to go. Frivolity at half-time.