Toilet Humour
As a Trot-watcher of some years experience there was little in the early chapters of Robert Service’s recent biography of Leon Trotsky that was wholly new to me. Not until the beginning of chapter 16 anyway.
What I hadn’t appreciated was just how comically named the man who expelled the Russian revolutionary from France in 1916 was.
Charles Adolphe Faux-Pas Bidet, apparently.
How cruel and unusual of his parents.
Comments
| 15 November 2009, 1:38 pm |
“Faux Pas-Bidet”? You’re shitting me, Marcus!
Mind you, when it comes to names, there is a certain “romantic” way Bronstein became Trotsky – he took the name of a Siberian jailor. Tony Cliff (SWP) and Ted Grant (Militant) always sounded like names one would expect of a 1960s Liverpudlian BritPop group.
| 15 November 2009, 1:44 pm |
On learning that a Mr Trotter of his acquaintance has been blessed with the forenames Lemuel Gengulphus, Bertie Wooster exclaims:
“Golly, Jeeves, there’s some raw work pulled at the font from time to time, isn’t there?”
As Wodehouse wrote those lines, was there flickering somewhere at the back of his mind the awareness that his own christian names were Pelham Grenville?
| 15 November 2009, 1:57 pm |
“Faux Pas-Bidet”? You’re shitting me, Marcus!
Not at all. What’s even weirder is that Trotsky got his own back on Monsiuer Faux-Pas Bidet just two years later when the former had been appointed People’s Commissar for Military Affairs and the latter was engaged in some sort of unspecified espionage inside Soviet Russia.
It eventually resulted in the unfortunately-named fellow being brought before Trotsky who proceeded (presumably fully enjoying the irony) to inform the Frenchman that his sort wasn’t welcome in the Soviet Union.
| 15 November 2009, 2:13 pm |
I was appalled that The Grauniad chose Tariq Ali to write a review of Service’s book. Like asking Hitler to write a review of The Diary of Anne Frank.
| 15 November 2009, 2:45 pm |
I bought Bertrand M. Patenaude’s accountof Trotsky. This work admittedly focuses on Trotsky’s years in Mexico but does in flashback record earlier events. Sadly, Charles Adolphe Faux-Pas Bidet is not mentioned. For such an omission, I expect Patenaude should be feeling quite flushed.
| 15 November 2009, 3:38 pm |
From my experiences growing up in Essex in the 1970’s, where many an aspirational family suddenly found the long-awaited new bathroom included the unfamiliar bidet, the association of “bidet” with “faux-pas” brings to mind , at best, the washing of socks and, at worst,….. a shudder!
| 15 November 2009, 3:44 pm |
If he worse that a bidet can be used for (and I admit my guilt) involves only urine, then that is comparatively mild, compared to what they were designed for.
| 15 November 2009, 4:19 pm |
…. compared to what they were designed for… Exactly! As I said to Mrs B’stard, we only use our once a year for de-frosting the turkey – total waste of money.
| 15 November 2009, 4:39 pm |
Not sure I will be eating turkey at the Bastards.
| 15 November 2009, 6:28 pm |
Joe Camel:
There’s nothing wrong with the Christian name ‘Pelham’.
| 15 November 2009, 6:35 pm |
I was appalled that The Grauniad chose Tariq Ali to write a review of Service’s book. Like asking Hitler to write a review of The Diary of Anne Frank.
Yes, exactly the same.
| 16 November 2009, 9:09 am |
From the Headline I though that you tell me something about crazy or funny things about toiles :)
But the Name Charles Adolphe Faux-Pas Bidet is very strange.
However the Person really existed, awesome.
OMG.
Gave his parents his strange name or has he self chosen?
If he’s self chosen it really sounds sickly.
Jon
When I saw the headline, I thought this was gonna be about the “it’s not the flu, it’s the vaccine” stickers that David Icke’s disciples have been leaving in pub toilets.