Nigel Rees - A Word In Your Shell-Like

anyone we know?Originally, a straightforward request for information when told, say, that someone you know is getting married and you want to know to whom. Then it became a playful catchphrase: ‘She’s going to have a baby’ – ‘Who’s the father – anyone we know?’ The joke use certainly existed in the 1930s. In the film The Gay Divorcee (US 1934), Ginger Rogers states: ‘A man tore my dress off.’ A woman friend asks: ‘Anyone we know?’ ‘The moment from which many of us date the genre was when the curtain rose on a production by Harry Kupfer in the late 1970s – I think of a work by Richard Strauss – to reveal a set dominated by a huge phallus, occasioning, from one male in the stalls to his gentleman friend, the loud whisper: “Anyone we know, duckie?”’ – The Times (17 May 1986).

any one who…can’t be all badFormat phrase suggesting that something about which doubt has been expressed is really rather good. Perhaps the original is what Leo Rosten said about W. C. Fields (and not, as is sometimes reported, what Fields himself said of another): ‘Any man who hates children and dogs can’t be all bad’ ( or ‘Anybody who hates dogs and babies can’t be all bad’). This was at a Masquers’ Club dinner (16 February 1939). Subsequently: ‘Anyone with a name like Hitler can’t be all that bad’ – Spike Milligan, The Last Goon Show of All (1972); ‘All the same, Garland and Rooney as Babes In Arms …plus long-lost tracks from Band Wagon and Good News and Brigadoon and It’s Always Fair Weather , can’t be all bad’ – Sheridan Morley in Theatreprint , Vol. 5, No. 95 (May 1995).

any port in a stormMeaning, metaphorically, ‘any roof over your head is better than none’ or ‘you can’t be choosy about shelter in adversity’. The phrase makes an early appearance in John Cleland’s Fanny Hill (1749): ‘I feeling pretty sensibly that it [her lover’s member] was going by the right door, and knocking desperately at the wrong one, I told him of it: “Pooh, says he, my dear, any port in a storm”.’

anything can happen and probably willThe standard opening announcement of the BBC radio show Take It From Here (1948–59) was that it was a comedy programme ‘in which anything can happen and probably will.’ The show was based on literate scripts by Frank Muir (1920–98) and Denis Norden (b. 1922) and featured Jimmy Edwards (1920–88), Dick Bentley (1907–95) and June Whitfield (b. 1926) (who succeeded Joy Nichols).

anything for a laughCasual reason given for doing something a little out of the ordinary, since the 1930s. P. G. Wodehouse, Laughing Gas (1936): ‘“Anything for a laugh” is your motto.’ In the 1980s it was combined with the similar phrases good for a laugh(itself used as the title of a book by Bennett Cerf in 1952) and game for anythingto produce the title of the British TV show Game For a Laugh (1981–5). This consisted of various stunts and had elements of Candid Camera as it persuaded members of the public to take part in stunts both in and out of the studio. The title was much repeated by the presenters of the show, as in ‘Let’s see if so-and-so is game for a laugh…’

anything for a quiet lifeThe Jacobean playwright Thomas Heywood used this proverbial phrase in his play Captives , Act 3, Sc. 3 (1624), but Thomas Middleton had actually entitled a play Anything For a Quiet Life (possibly written with John Webster) in about 1620. Swift included the phrase in Polite Conversation (1738) and Dickens incorporated it as a Wellerism in The Pickwick Papers , Chap. 43 (1837): ‘But anythin’ for a quiet life, as the man said wen he took the sitivation at the lighthouse.’

anything goes!Meaning, ‘there are no rules and restrictions here, you can do whatever you like.’ Popularized by the song and musical show with the title written by Cole Porter (1934). Compare the much older this is/it’s Liberty Hall, which was probably coined by Oliver Goldsmith in She Stoops To Conquer , Act 2 (1773): ‘This is Liberty-hall, gentlemen. You may do just as you please.’ W. W. Reade wrote a book with the title Liberty Hall (1860).

anything you say may be taken down and used in evidence against youThe police ‘caution’ to a person who may be charged with a crime has had various forms in the UK. The version you might expect from reading fiction would go something like: ‘You are not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so but, I must warn you, whatever you do say will be taken down and may be given in evidence against you. ’ But this does not conform with modern practice. British police are advised that care should be taken to avoid any suggestion that evidence might only be used against a person, as this could prevent an innocent person making a statement that might help clear him of a charge. Old habits die hard, however. The phrase is etched on the national consciousness, and it must have been said at one time. Charles Dickens in Our Mutual Friend (1864–5) has Mr Inspector (an early example of a police officer in fiction) give ‘the caution’ (which he refers to as such) in these words: ‘It’s my duty to inform you that whatever you say, will be used against you’ (Bk 4, Chap. 12). Earlier, Dickens had Mr Bucket saying in Bleak House , Chap. 49 (1852–3): ‘It’s my duty to inform you that any observation you may make will be liable to be used against you.’ Examples of the ‘against you’ caution also appear in Sherlock Holmes short stories by Conan Doyle (1905 and 1917). In the US, the phrase may still be found. In Will (1980), G. Gordon Liddy describes what he said during a raid on Dr Timothy Leary’s house in connection with drugs charges (in March 1966): ‘I want you to understand that you don’t have to make any statement, and any statement you do make may be used against you in a court of law.’ A decision of the US Supreme Court ( Miranda v. Arizona , 1966) – known as the Miranda Decision – requires law enforcement officials to tell anyone taken into custody that, inter alia , anything the person says can be used against them.

any time, any place, anywhereA line from Martini advertisements in the UK from the early 1970s. Barry Day of the McCann-Erickson advertising agency that coined the phrase agreed (1981) that there is more than a hint of Bogart in the line, but adds: ‘As a Bogart fan of some standing, with my union dues all paid up, I think I would have known if I had lifted from one of his utterances, but I honestly can’t place it.’ Possibly there is a hint of Harry Lime, too. In the film The Third Man (1949), Lime says (in the run-up to the famous cuckoo-clock speech): ‘When you make up your mind, send me a message – I’ll meet you any place, any time…’ Two popular songs of the 1920s were ‘Anytime, Any Day, Anywhere’ and ‘Anytime, Anywhere, Any Place – I Don’t Care’. The exact phrase ‘any time, any place, anywhere’ had occurred, however, before the Martini ads in the song ‘I Love To Cry at Weddings’ from the musical Sweet Charity (1966) and in the film script of Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (US 1958). Precisely as ‘Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere’, it was the title of an R&B hit for Joe Morris in the US (1950) – sung by Little Laurie Tate. Even earlier it was spoken in the film The Strawberry Blonde (US 1941) of which the last lines are: ‘When I want to kiss my wife, I’ll kiss her anytime, anyplace, anywhere. That’s the kind of hairpin I am’ – this was written by the Epstein brothers who co-wrote Casablanca , so perhaps that is the Bogart connection? And then in His Girl Friday (US 1940), Cary Grant says to Rosalind Russell: ‘I’d know you anytime, anyplace, anywhere’ – having just re-met his ex-wife, he is recalling a line he had used to her on the night he proposed. In April 1987, a woman called Marion Joannou was jailed at the Old Bailey for protecting the man who had strangled her husband. She was nicknamed ‘Martini Marion’ because, apparently, she would have sex ‘any time, any place, anywhere’.