Astute reader Roland Clare reminds me that the soft drink sloshed all over the canteen table by the narrator of Impugned By A Peasant was the subject of an Andy Warhol painting.
Three Cans Of Squelcho! (1966) recently fetched untold billions of dollars at auction. The buyer remained anonymous, though the word on the street* suggests the picture now hangs in the foetid lair of the Grunty Man, up in the hills. The Grunty Man has been a keen art collector for some centuries. If you look very, very carefully, you can spot him at the back of the auction scene in North By Northwest, where Roger O Thornhill (Cary Grant) confronts Philip Vandamm (James Mason) and causes a kerfuffle.
* NOTE : Blister Lane, apparently.
I heard a rumour that The Grunty Man was looking for funding to turn his shack into an arts praxis. Surely it’s time for a benefactor to step forward and make this important collection available to the nation?
The first emblem is a duck, the second a swan… but what of the third? Ornithology was never my strong point. That’s why I began reading Hooting Yard – in the hope that some of Frank’s wisdom might rub-off on me, but alas I’m just as ignorant as I was in 2004.
Mr Shuddery : My matchless expertise in identifying birds by their silhouettes suggests it is a little meadow-bird, such as a robin. It is not a cassowary, by the way.
There’s me thinking it was one of Mr. Warhol’s wigs…
http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/popart/images/AndyWarhol-Self-Portrait-1986.jpg
OSM : Now that is a cassowary.