The genius of Buster Keaton

"What you have to do is create a character. Then the character just does his best, and there's your comedy. No begging."

The Economist's obit of Alfred Kahn

....Breezily, too, he winged his way in government. He was an academic, after all; he had nothing to lose, so he would speak his mind. Asked once by a reporter if he could defend the defence budget, he said “No”. Told off for using the word “depression” in public, he replaced it with “banana”, and announced that the country was heading for its worst banana in 45 years. Told off by the head of United Fruit for using “banana”, he made it “kumquat”. As the oil price continued to soar he called the Arab producers “schnooks”, earning yet another rebuke; but he didn’t care. He could always go back to being dean of Cornell’s College of Arts and Sciences, as he did in 1980, even though “dean is to faculty as a hydrant is to a dog.”

It's the little things

From the Letters page of the Trinity Issue of Oxford Today:

"In your interview with Monty Python actor Terry Jones ("A Python's Progress", OT, 22.2), you referred repeatedly to his involvement with the "Oxford Review". When I was at Oxford, my involvement was with the Oxford Revue. Call me picky, but I think that I was involved with the one better spelt.

Rowan Atkinson.
Queen's 1975.