A rum way to catch a sailor

QUESTION The catchphrases ‘Shut that door!’ and, ‘I’m free!’ were made famous by Larry Grayson and John Inman respectively, but who first popularised the catchphrase ‘Hello, sailor!’?

The precise origin is uncertain. Its connotation is usually sexual, originally a call from dockside prostitutes, later a supposed greeting between homosexual sailors.

It was popularised by Peter Sellers on The Goon Show in the Fifties. There are numerous examples: in The Great Bank Of england Robbery (1958), in which Bloodnok, eccles and Seagoon rendezvous in a Tardis-like police box, eccles arrives and is greeted with ‘hello, sailor’, delivered by Sellers/Bloodnok in falsetto.

In Tales Of Men’s Shirts (1959), Sellers’s character Bannister greets Seagoon with ‘hello, sailor!’ and Seagoon replies: ‘What’s this, then?’ Bannister: ‘What? My name is Bannister.’ Seagoon: ‘Didn’t I see you on the stairs?’

In his book Goon For Lunch, harry Secombe recalls Sellers’s fondness for the phrase, how he would lie beneath the piano crowing ‘hello, sailor’ to the studio audience.

By the Seventies, the supposed sexual ambiguity of the phrase was more common, epitomised in a famous Captain Morgan rum ad of 1975: ‘You don’t say “hello sailor” to a Captain Morgan drinker!’

Dea Francis, Chard, Somerset.

QUESTION Is there a reason why the bicycle crank always has the drive gear on the right?

QUITE simple, really: the sprocket(s) on the rear wheel is/are screwed onto the hub using the normal right hand thread.

Pedalling with the chain on the right will tighten the attachment whereas a left-hand chain would tend to unscrew the rear sprocket. The front chain on a tandem (which links the two sets of pedals) can be on the left, but the rear chain is still on the right.

John Francey, Belfast.

QUESTION Was the Ethiopian famine highlighted by Live Aid deliberately perpetrated by the Ethiopian government?

The ethiopian government might not have actually caused the famine that lasted from 1983 to 1985, but its actions certainly exacerbated the crisis.

Internal strife in the two decades before the famine had already led to 150,000 deaths. Agriculture made up 60 per cent of the ethiopian economy, and a famine in the Wollo region in 1973 had killed 40,000.

emperor haile Selassie was overthrown Hello, boys! The Goons and (inset) the Captain Morgan rum advert from 1975 in 1974 and replaced by a military regime consisting of junior officers and soldiers.

Meanwhile, the Wollo famine had resulted in the creation of a new Marxist movement, the Derg, led from 1977 by Mengistu haile Mariam. In 1977, the Derg seized power in the country and he became president. his regime was opposed by the ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party, resulting in politically-motivated bloodshed. estimates of deaths in this period, known as The Red Terror, are as high as 500,000.

Regional governors were charged with extracting food from the rural population to feed the urban masses, a policy which led to food shortages in the countryside. Despite the drought in their region, the Wollo people were required until 1984 to contribute a ‘famine relief tax’, payable largely in food.

When the national famine started in 1983, it was unpredicted. Rainfall from the late Seventies until 1982 had been normal or near normal, and the 1982 harvest was one of the largest on record, with the exception of the central Tigray province.

estimates of those at risk of famine rose from 2.8 million in 1982 to 3.9 million in 1983, but were still below the 4.5 million level of 1981, when there was no famine.

The mid-eighties saw record low rainfalls in Gojjam, hararghe, Tigray and Wollo provinces, and this was the natural cause of the famine. In the south, the government was facing a fresh insurgency from the Oromo Liberation Front.

Mengistu announced that over 40 per cent of the country’s GDP would be allocated to military spending. health spending was halved to 3 per cent. The combined effect of that and the ‘famine relief tax’ meant there was little money available for spending on famine relief.

From 1981 to 1985, the price of grain quadrupled, putting it beyond the reach of a large proportion of the population, while the government reserved most of it for the army and urban populations. There was a heavy reliance on foreign food aid to fill the gap, and this triggered Live Aid.

estimates of deaths from famine were quoted by the un as high as a million, but noted famine expert Alex de Waal gives a lower figure of 400,000 to 500,000.

In 1991, facing defeat by the ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, Mengistu fled to Zimbabwe with 50 family and Derg followers. In his absence he was charged with genocide for the deaths of 2,000 political opponents, but has never been held to account for his mismanagement during the famine.

he is under sentence of death in absentia and still lives in exile in Zimbabwe.

Bob Dillon, Edinburgh.

QUESTION Back in the Sixties, I saw a black-and-white TV play about a frustrated amateur football referee who was officiating a Cup Final when, with the scores level, he headed in a corner and scored. How did it end?

FURTHER to the earlier answer, at the time of the 1972 TV play Another Sunday And Sweet FA, I worked in the Granada TV dubbing theatre.

This was one of several brilliant films by Jack Rosenthal: another that sticks out in my mind was the 1976 play Ready When You Are, Mr McGill.

The storyline concerns film extra Joe McGill, played by Joe Black, who has but a single line to say, which he incessantly practises from the moment he gets up on the day of filming.

I can still recall his attempts to deliver ‘I’ve never seen that young lady in my life before, and I’ve lived here 50 years’ with different intonations and expressions.

It’s not made any easier by the increasingly frustrated and stressed director (played by Jack Shepherd), who is confronted with all kinds of distractions from the cast and film crew.

Rumour has it that Rosenthal based some of the characters, their lines and situations on Granada crew and personnel, and anyone who worked there can identify them. Although this version and the later TV remake are available on DVD, how I wish they could be repeated.

Alan Ashton, St Austell, Cornwall.

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