h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Who wanted to decapitate George Bernard Shaw, and why?


No googling or wikipedia of any kind permitted.

There are klaxons - so be bold, preferably interesting but never obvious.

Good luck.

I believe I know this one.

It refers to a visitor he had..............................

That is all I will say for now!!!!!



GT

I challenge you to who shall have the shortest QI ever in that case.

Speak!

OK!

You did ask!!!

I believe that at one time he had a visitor; Nancy Astor I believe.

She commented that although he had a garden full of flowers, there were none in the house. "Do you not like flowers, Mr Shaw?" she asked.

"Of course I do!" he answered. "I also like children. But I do not chop their heads off, and decorate my house with them!!"

That the one??



GT

No it is not but have 6 freshly minted Quite Interesting points for the story.

Ah well. Back to the drawing board!!!

(Ta for the points)


GT

Well earnt. In my researches, I amusingly had failed to uncover the friendship with Lady Astor, so you were spared any klaxons, and the quote (I have the dimmest memory of having heard it somewhere before) had the distinct merits of being witty and amusing and artfully deployed.


Still it doesn't answer my riddle, which still sits, Sphinx-like awaiting your fellow travellers more hapless than thee.

I got it from a book of insults and put-downs that sits on a shelf at chez GT.

There are a few more quotes attributed to Shaw in it!


GT

Who? dunno

Why? to examine & compare his brain (after he was dead)

Is this the original Mr Shaw we are considering, or a statue?


Geggs

George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1925; famed as the author of Pygmalion (1912) this was turned into an award-winning musical My fair Lady in 1956.


And someone wanted to cut of his head. Who?


And not for post-mortem brain examination - though a good guess.

It was vitally important for all concerned that he was alive at the time.

Another inspired guess, but no the real man, head, neck shoulders, and the rest of 'im.

Anything to do with his works?

A further clarifying detail I omitted to include last night but just turned up.

I can date the ... expressed desire to cleave the playwright in two, to St Patrick's Day 1929.

Somewhat.

He refused to pay for his beer, so the bartender threatened him?

At the risk of a klaxon, I would say it was something that Oscar Wilde would say, to paraphrase Salome in the Bible "Bring me the head of G. B. Shaw!"

If not that, then it may have something to do with the 'Scriblerous'(sp?) Club.....



(hides)

GT

Nope, this would be the very definition of sober.

Nope, not cribbing lines from the bible.

Shaw straddles the 19th an 20th centuries (he lived to be nearly 100)

The Scriblerus Club was not contemporary, having shut it's doors in 1745.

*thinks*
He refused to *have a beer, and so the bartender threatened him?


... It has absolutely nothing to do with a bartender anyway, has it?