May ninth, 1662...

Ole Charles the Sequel had just plopped back on his throne with a sigh and a glass of bad port...

and Oliver had gone to his just desserts...

A man named Peeps and a man who we will just call Geppetto met on a noisy street near Covent Garden...

And what happened next sent fear down the spines of thousands of esthetes and elitist yobs for the next needle hundred and noo years afterward...

A small boy with a mildly yet healthily grubby face tugged on Mr. Piip's tallis.

Gently kicking the child to a distance where his bifocals could bifocus, Mr. Pyyps peered at the peerless child and onchoired, "Wotta ya want, ya little brat?"

"Ah'm a gud boy, I yam. Alls Oi wonts ter know is whats the name of that there stringed big-nosed poppet there, right there..."

Mr. Pppps peered cross-sightedly at the small Italian stage and trifocused upon the graven and lewdly prancing item in question. He did not know. A man such as Mr. Pllps must know something like that. He gestured to the child to bide a wee and strode away quickly to avoid the resulting stream. "Why can't the English teach their children how to speak?," he thought, a bit early.
He approached the broad backside of the marionette stage and approached the narrow back of the head of the marionettiteerist.

"I say, you there, fellow, what is the name of the creature with the long nose and the irritating manner?"

"Oo wants ter know," the man said in an Italian accent.

"Mr. Pssps, Esquire."

"Ach," said the man with a Sicilian accent. "I've bought some of your postcards in Paris. Good work. The puppet in question is called Pollitlitiitiitiititiiotriao, or, in the Roman dialect, Phil."

"Ah. Thank you. Here is a lead florin for your trouble."

Sound of pattering feet, babbling off into the distance, which sounds something like this: OhhhhhhboyImrichImrichImrichlookmommy!

Upon which instance Mr. Prrps returned to the wretched urchin with the award-winning smile on the front of his insipid puss and told the child that the puppet's name was "Punch", because he couldn't speak Italian with a Yorkshire accent, let alone a Sicilian one.


And that day has gone down in infamy, to be commemborated in stamps, trading cards and bog paper...

This has been your DON'T REMIND ME minute, brought to you by Holeless Hosiery, of Remington Splod, Irvington, Plee Ploy Finf Fonf Foo.

Good bye.