Five years ago today, when the Hooting Yard website was in its infancy, I posted this quotation from The Daily Telegraph Book Of Obituaries. It still makes me laugh.
Sir Atholl Oakley (1900-1987) was a champion wrestler, an impresario of giants, organiser of “rugged holiday cruises” and an authority on Lorna Doone. His wrestling career began after he was beaten up by a gang of thugs. He built up his physique by drinking eleven pints of milk every day, a regimen designed by the giant wrestler Hackenschmitt, who later told Oakley that the quantity of milk prescribed was “a misprint”.
I take it a ‘champion wrestler’ is a champion among wrestlers rather than one whose preferred opponents are champions; yet it seems possible that the ‘giant wrestler’ Hackenschmitt was a ‘differently-small’ individual who chose to wrestle, rather than a pugilistic normalton with a penchant for being pulverised by towering ogres and the like.
As for the milk … was that a giant misprint? Maybe it should have been eleven gallons, or eleven Rehoboams … could make all the difference. In view of Oakley’s literary specialism, I’d recommend eleven pints of A Neon Drool.
R : You didn’t mention the “rugged holiday cruises”, which sound intriguing to me.
I don’t suppose you could have overlooked an exiguous subtitle on the volume in question … something along the lines of ‘Includes Various Bewildering Spooves’?