Perhaps our bigger problem is that all laughter dries in the throat.

That these are all mirthless, absurd nincompoops. That the people calling themselves the alt-right are twerps. That Putin is so clearly overcompensating. The pity is that people can’t see that Nigel Farage is a spivvy egg-burp despot manqué.

Our problem isn’t just post-truth, it’s post-irony. As well as a moral failure, the ascendency of cruel rightwing demagogues is a sense of humour failure. One of the many tragedies of our times is that we have taken so many perfect perishers so seriously instead of laughing them off the stage. What the Voice of the People is saying is: ‘Look at that frightful ass Spode swanking about in footer bags! Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?’”Īnd isn’t it beautiful to see fascists being treated with exactly the contempt they deserve? This isn’t the time or the place to go into the tragedy of Wodehouse’s war record, but let’s at least grant that he showed a good way forward against home-grown fascists and Hitler alike: you send them up as the rotters they are. You hear them shouting ‘Heil, Spode!’ and you imagine it is the Voice of the People. “The trouble with you, Spode, is that just because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you’re someone. Such menacing is brought to an end thanks to a typically clever intervention from Jeeves and in one of the most satisfying speeches in the western canon, when Bertie declares: Apart from what Jeeves would have called the symbolism of the action, he had a grip like the bite of a horse.” “Here he laid a hand on my shoulder, and I can’t remember when I have experienced anything more unpleasant. Spode, who is clearly based on Oswald Mosley, is the leader of a militaristic fascist group called the Blackshorts (shorts because all the shirt colours had already been taken) and is inordinately fond of throwing his considerable weight around: Spode is a man whom Wooster describes as appearing “as if Nature had intended to make a gorilla, and had changed its mind at the last moment”. The crucial scene comes just over halfway through, after Bertie and his friend Gussie Fink-Nottle have endured 100 or so pages of intolerable bullying from the would-be fascist dictator Roderick Spode. Because this is the book in which Bertie Wooster teaches us one of the best and most effective ways of beating fascists: you stand up to them and you point out exactly how ridiculous they are. Or at least more vital than it has done since round about 1945. But here in 2016, it seems more vital than ever. The book would be worth treasuring for such writing alone.

The code of the woosters