the 2 faces of S.W.M.B.O.

Sure, click.

The left one gets bigger. So does the right one.

----- Original Message -----
From: "S**** H****"
Sent: Sunday, September 13, 2009 4:41 AM
Subject: Re: LTE: Letter to the Editor / The Raynham (MA) Call

SWMBO = She Who Makes Bob ?

SS

Brits know this one more than Yanks. There was a long-running, very popular BBC show about an old, fat, cheap-wine-drunk criminal-defense lawyer, Horace Rumpole. He was mega-henpecked by his plump old wife Hilda. Behind her back he called her "She Who Must Be Obeyed." As a result, most Brits recognize the acronym S.W.M.B.O., code for "The Wife."

That's what the African pagan queen (played by Ursula Andress at her most gorgeous) was called by her subjects in an adventure book every little Brit boy read for most of a century, "She," by the guy who wrote "King Solomon's Mines," H. Ryder Haggard.

You don't mess with She. If you cough during a ceremony, she tosses you down a volcano lava pit. Oh, and she's also 2000 years old -- but still looks like Ursula Andress, 'cause she knows the magic secret of Eternal Youth.

"Rumpole of the Bailey" is a real scream, in the short story collections and the BBC TV show. In the UK, a barrister -- the lawyer in the robe and fancy whig who actually argues cases in court -- can be either a defense lawyer or a prosecutor, most of them take both kinds of cases. (Doing lots of criminal prosecutions is the career track to being appointed a judge.)

But old Horace Rumpole only does defense. He won't take a client who just wants to cop a plea. He hates prosecutors and cops, and thinks all judges are retarded. He knows he'll never become a judge -- which drives Hilda crazy, so she pesters him more than usual.

If you Google "S.W.M.B.O.", you get a lot of funny crap back that gives you a sense of what the term means to married Brit guys.

The Mega-babe Evil Pagan Queen's real name is Ayesha. Andress made the cheap flick "She" right about the time she starred in the first James Bond movie, "Dr. No." Feminine pulchritude don't get much better than Ursula ("she-bear") in them days. She also burned down the screen in Woody Allen's "What's New Pussycat." She doesn't look very much like Hilda Rumpole.

That's why I write about S.W.M.B.O. on Vleeptron.

If you do Netflix or that kind of crap, you might want to rent some "Rumpole" episodes. Leo McKern is just perfect in the role. And it just might be the only TV oasis in the last thirty years, on either side of the pond, where the hero is the defense lawyer, and the nasty, icky, sordid, corrupt crap we all know about cops and prosecutors is actually shown where everybody can see it.

Now you know the Secret Code.

B