The wittiest man in England

His name is Steve Lovering and he is an Eminent Bathonian (meaning he lives on charm and pale moonlight in Bath, near London).You might find him on Facebook but he’s far too modest to put his profile on Debrett’s or Burke’s Peerage.
He has been amusing me for years without resorting to long-winded jokes, puns, attitude, four letter words or any of the rusty tools of today’s unfunny comics. (See my blog “Say something witty” Dec. 10th, 2010 posting.)
He does it with erudition. He is extremely well read and superbly educated (just ask him).
Although he has written comedy professionally, his main career has been in advertising. He is sort of an English Don Draper, from Mad Men. In other words, pretty cool.
He is also very well traveled and comes to visit me in Vegas, which he calls Gomorrah. I did stump him once by saying that I knew what they did in Sodom but what were they guilty of in Gomorrah? He dodged this with some quote from Phillip Larkin rather than hear my theory that Sodom and Gomorrah were brother and sister, but that’s another parable.
Here’s how quick he is. There’s a spa here in the new Cosmopolitan called The Violet Hour. Ring a bell? Probably not, but Steve instantly knew it was from T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”. “At the violet hour, when the eyes and back turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits..” Notice he didn’t stoop to saying it’s a spa known as The Waist Land.
He knows Orwell as well as I do, probably better since he once lived in the same flat as Saint George. Here’s some of his quickwittedness in action:
The most dreadful scene in 1984 is the torture chamber where people’s worst fears are used to break them. When the guards start to attach a cage with rats on his face, Winston screams, “Do it to Julia”, the ultimate betrayal of his love. He is broken forever. As Steve says:
Winston worked hard for the State,
Met Julia and goes on a date,
His thought crimes come out,
He sees rats; turns devout,
Now he thinks that Big Brother is great.
Steve has enjoyed a Dorian Grey deal and seems never to look older. I suppose when he does reach old age he will have to leave his mews house in Bath and be taken to a home for the terminally handsome.