Red-Hot Stuff—But Where's the Red-Hot Staff?
The quarterly journal of The Wodehouse Society Volume 26 Number 4 Winter 2005 Red-Hot Stuff—But Where’s the Red-Hot Staff? BY MURRAY HEDGCOCK Murray Hedgcock, longtime journalist, author of Wodehouse at the Wicket, and a patron of the P G Wodehouse Society (UK) was, alas, unable to attend the Hollywood convention. Instead he sent Hilary Bruce, Chairman of the UK Society, and Robert Bruce, Chairman’s Consort and Accompanying Person, to deliver his talk for him—and a wonderful job they did, too. o student of the Press could resist that delightful Nquotation in Service with a Smile introducing us to Tilbury House, home of the Mammoth Publishing Company. This is, we learn, that busy hive where hordes of workers toil day and night, churning out reading matter for the masses. For Lord Tilbury’s numerous daily and weekly papers are not, as is sometimes supposed, just Acts of God: they are produced deliberately. The Red-Hot Murray Hedgcock (photo courtesy of Tony Ring) It sums up the essence of the popular Press, whether yesterday’s Yellow Press of New York or today’s Redtops of London. Even the most frivolous and rubbish papers are produced on purpose, to meet a popular demand. But note that valid reference—it takes “hordes of workers” to produce even the rubbish. And this is utterly at variance with the general depiction of publications in Wodehouse. Ever since discovering Milady’s Boudoir, Cosy Moments, Wee Tots, and specific Mammoth periodicals, I have puzzled over the astonishing productivity of their workers. None of these publications seems to have more than half a dozen staff; many have just one, perhaps two.
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