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"My first job was as a petrol pump attendant"Michelle McGrane in conversation with Albert Jack, author of Shaggy Dogs and Black Sheep: The Origins of Even More Phrases We Use Every Day
Where is the “last chance saloon”? Who was “Gordon Bennett”? Why isn’t “red tape” black? Why do we “have a hunch”, “get the cold shoulder” or “laugh like a drain”? Why do we say “skinflint”, “dressed up to the nines” and “out of the blue” – and, of course, “shaggy dog stories” and “black sheep”? The English language is crammed with colourful phrases and sayings that we use without thinking every day. It’s only when we’re asked who “smart Alec” or “Holy Moly” were, where “feeling in the pink” or “once in a blue moon” come from, or even what “letting the cat out of the bag” really means that we realise there’s far more to English than we might have thought.
Albert Jack is a writer and researcher whose passion for solving the mysteries of the English language has taken him through dusty libraries across the world in search of the facts behind the phrases that we all take for granted. Normally, however, he lives in Guildford, where he divides his time between fast living and slow horses, neat vodka and untidy pubs.
Albert, tell me something of your family origins and what you were like as a child. I was born in Guildford, although I did most of my growing up in a nearby town called Woking. In the 1970s it felt as though state schools for kids like us were mere holding pens for us to grow up in before being farmed out to the factories and building sites. None of us was given any creative encouragement at all. It was only after I had left school that I realised education, in any form, was a privilege and should not be wasted. Mine was, and my first job was as a petrol pump attendant. Up until then I had only ever been interested in sport, music and books. Now I took an interest in myself and what I was going to do with the rest of my life, and resolved to keep on trying to improve myself and my opportunities every day, however they manifested themselves – even if that meant starting by becoming the chief petrol pump attendant. When did your passion for words and the bizarre stories behind them develop? I have always had a passion for the English language and English history. Looking back, English and History were the only lessons I had any interest in at all. But let’s face it, Algebra, Latin, Religious Education? I had no stomach for them then and have only a passing interest now. None of us grew up to be rocket scientists, so why insist we understood cosines at fourteen years old? But historical stories (non-fiction) always fascinated me and my book collection has consistently been based around that. How did you earn a living before you began writing full-time? By 1999 I owned a design and refurbishment company, which I sold off for just about enough money to take a year out and try to become a professional writer. I had been contributing articles and features for small magazines based around my business for about seven years and had contemplated taking creative writing lessons, as so many people do, so it had been on my mind for a while. I just thought “it is now or never”, but was still very cautious as I realised that only a very tiny percentage of writers make any sort of living out of it, and it is also hard work. But I was then quite lucky. The first thing I was asked to write was a website for a famous English rock band, which made me some sort of authority on them and led to an offer to write their biography three years later. The second thing I was asked to write was a technical website for a company owned by some friends of mine. The next few years coincided with their meteoric rise to becoming the largest company in their industry in Europe. I wrote every word associated with them, from press releases, adverts and internal newsletters to directors’ speeches. My workload got larger but I worked on a contract basis, so whilst invoicing large amounts for “writing” I was also able to take as much time out as I needed to write my first three books. The three directors and I were great friends and I’d promised them I would always be available to work for them when they needed me. But after Penguin Books came up with a major offer and a two-book deal for me to sign, I found myself with a dilemma. That was until one day when the MD called me and asked what I was going to do. He reminded me of my promise to him years earlier when they were small and I was unknown. He then said, “But I’m going to make it easy for you. You are my friend; do you think I’m going to stand in your way given the opportunities you now have?” I told him my promise held good and I would still make myself available, but he replied, “Forget about it. You are fired and I mean it; you don’t work here anymore. Now will you come over for dinner with my family as usual on Sunday?” Those directors have been credited for their support in the acknowledgements of all of my books, even the one I have written since they “fired” me. Of course Red Herrings became one of the most successful books in Britain and they still delight in telling the story of how they sacked Albert Jack, which makes us laugh, but we are all still the best of friends. In fact, I’m spending Christmas with the MD. What provided the initial inspiration for Red Herrings and White Elephants? It was after the music biography came out. It sold very well in the music sections of the bookshops, but those are always three floors up and at the back of the store. I used to envy all the gift book/fun trivia types that were piled up at the front of the shops by the tills. That’s when I had my John Lennon moment – you know, the time he first saw Elvis on stage and said, “Now that looks like a good job, I want one like that.” So I thought about a music trivia book or a sports volume but just couldn’t make them work at all. Then, within a month or two, a friend of mine walked into a pub feeling a little worse for wear. He’d been painting the town red the night before and I suggested he needed a hair of the dog. The barman, who is not English but speaks the language very well, looked at us blankly before saying, “Dogs aren’t allowed in this pub.” We sat down and started wondering why we say things like that, where the words we use mean absolutely nothing in the context of a conversation we are having, but we all instinctively know what it means if we have grown up using the language. Within minutes I had said, “That’s it. That’s the subject for my next book”, and Red Herrings was born that night. You received thousands of emails after the publication of your first book. Did the enormous public response surprise you? Yes it did, very much so. I have enjoyed books to the extent of looking up the writers to find out more about them – we’ve all done that – but I’d never taken the time to contact any of them and tell them how much I enjoyed their work, so I was very surprised that so many other people do just that. And, of course, if as a writer you are prepared to sit in a quiet room for months on end to create a piece of work, then why shouldn’t you enjoy it when people take the time to appreciate that effort? I have since written to authors whose books I have enjoyed and told them so, but no one has ever replied. That doesn’t mean the letters and emails they get from readers like me didn’t make their day, make it feel worthwhile being a writer. If they have any soul, it would have made their day like it does mine. You wrote Shaggy Dogs and Black Sheep in Botswana. What prompted the move away from home to write the book? Simple – my illustrator, Ama Page, moved to Botswana, so, free from the handcuffs of a proper job I moved down there to work with her for a few months. That didn’t work out as well as I’d hoped, but the work we did together is good, so it was worthwhile. Once there I discovered Africa. I spent time in Zambia, Botswana and South Africa, particularly Cape Town that I love. Love to the extent of going back in January to work on my next book. I plan to be there for five months before returning to England as the spring turns into summer (in England that is.) Tell me a couple of your favourite phrases in Shaggy Dogs, and their origins. To be “dressed up to the nines” means to be wearing our finest suit or evening gown. Some suggestions for this phrase led us to tailoring and the belief that it takes nine yards of material to make the perfect three-piece suit. But that seemed a little bit weak to me, so I looked further and found most sources insist it began as “dressed up to the eyes”, and that has corrupted over the years. But I wasn’t having that either, so I decided to work backwards and look for all the possible uses for the word nine and found a little gem. The finest gold with the highest purity (bullion) is also known as 24 carat gold. But in fact the gold industry only ever lists the precious metal as having 99,99 percent purity, as they do in the silver industry, with the finest metals being known as “the nines”. It is my belief that “being dressed up in your nines” means to be wearing your finest jewellery. There is further evidence to support this theory in the archive of an old military museum. During the 1800s Queen Victoria’s favourite regiment was The Wiltshire Regiment (Duke of Edinburgh’s) 99th Foot. They were stationed at Aldershot and were always chosen to guard The Royal Pavilion, consequently becoming known as “The Queen’s Pets”. Their officer’s dress code included an unusual amount of gold lace on their uniforms and they were regarded as being dressed up in their nines for Royal Duty. When we “turn a blind eye” it suggests we know what is going on and what is about to happen, but fail to take any action to alter the situation. It is a phrase emanating from one of the most historic events in British naval history. During the Battle of Copenhagen, in 1801, the commander of the British Fleet, Admiral Sir Hyde Parker, watched as English legend Horatio Nelson launched an attack on the Danish Navy in the bay. At one point Parker felt that the fleet was taking unnecessary risks and bearing unacceptable losses, so he ordered Nelson, by way of hoisting flags, to disengage with the enemy. But when his officers pointed out the order, Nelson famously raised a telescope to his blind eye and replied, “Order, what order? I see no ships.” Nelson then returned his attention to the battle and soundly defeated the Danes. On his return to London Nelson was made a Viscount and put in overall command of the Channel Fleet, which led to his defining moment at the battle of Trafalgar in 1805. How did you decide which phrases to include in the book and which to exclude? I chose the ones that interested me, could find a little joke about and had origins I could trace to a particular point in history. That is why I don’t have expressions like “tough as old boots” or “two peas in a pod” in the volume, because they are obvious. Instead I went for phrases like “turn a blind eye”, “dressed to kill” or “dressed up to the nines”, which I could trace and are interesting. But I don’t pretend it is a definitive English language volume – there is plenty missing. It’s meant to be fun with a nod towards some of the most interesting aspects of world history. Perhaps that’s why it works so well – it’s not a dictionary by any stretch of the imagination. Historical masterpiece it is not. The books’ places are on the coffee table or in the downstairs toilet. That’s where they live. What are you currently reading? I have been criticised in the past for my shallow reading habits, so recently I decided to buy Salman Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown, mainly because I have never read a Booker Prize winner before and feel it is about time I did. I am going to start on it just as soon as I have finished FHM, Premier League Monthly and last month’s edition of Readers’ Wives. Was it a time-consuming process verifying the origins of phrases? Did you use a system? It was time-consuming, yes, but very rewarding. I didn’t have a system of research, but just followed leads and the information I managed to find out along the way. As I’ve already explained in the case of “dressed up to the nines”, for example, I simply researched the word nines and all its possible uses when none of the established explanations of the expression’s origin seemed plausible to me. What situation does the phrase “apply Morton’s fork” describe and where does it originate? “To apply Morton’s fork” is an old English phrase that had been used for centuries to describe a situation where a person has no choice whatsoever about a circumstance. Very few people know the expression these days, as the American equivalent “Catch 22” has largely replaced it, but it is about time it made a comeback and we started to use one of our own again on this side of the pond. During the late 15th century (long before Joseph Heller wrote Catch 22!) John Morton (1420–1500) was the Archbishop of Canterbury and a minister in Henry VII’s government. His job was to raise money for the King, in the name of “loans”, from the English nobility. He used what he called his “fork” as a method of finding out if a person had spare money to lend the King, and it went something like this: He claimed that if a person looked obviously rich then they would have enough money to loan to the King. If, on the other hand, they appeared outwardly poor, he reasoned that they were not spending their wealth on themselves and were probably hiding something from him. Such folk must have money stashed away and therefore (you guessed it) would have enough hidden wealth to give money to King Henry. God save those who didn’t pay up. Which single word or phrase of exotic origin do you think most interesting? Assassins are people who are prepared to kill someone for a fee, although sometimes they will eliminate a powerful or important figure, usually political, for free. The original assassins were a group of Muslim fanatics who came together in Persia around 1090. Their leader was one Hasan-e Sabbah, who died in 1124. Their main targets were the ruling Seljuk authorities who controlled vast areas between Persia and Iraq and later extended their empire into Syria by the 12th century. For generations they had been directing murderous and violent attacks against their ruling administrations, usually after fuelling themselves with hashish and any other freely available drug. This is how they became known, and feared, as “The Hashashshin”, which translates as “hashish eater”. Where does the expression “bell the cat” come from? To “bell the cat” is a wonderful expression used to describe any dangerous task carried out at great personal risk. The origin of this phrase and why we use it can be found in an ancient fable, told by Langland in Piers Plowman, published in 1377. The tale is of a family of mice who were constantly being terrorised by the fat, grumpy cat of the neighbourhood. One day the mouse household held a family meeting to discuss how they could best deal with the surprise attacks, and the youngest mouse came up with the idea of tying a bell around the cat’s neck so that all the mice would be able to hear him coming. This idea delighted all the others and they danced around in celebration until the wisest old mouse said, “That’s all very well, but who will actually bell the cat?” There is a delightful example of this phrasing in action in the Scottish history records. There was a time during the late 1480s when the nobility were deeply suspicious of King James III’s apparent homosexual relationship with his new favourite architect, a man called Cochran. Members of Court met in secret and discussed ways of eliminating Cochran, who had been affecting their own relationships with the King. As the meeting came to a close the unanimous decision was that he should be killed, whereupon Lord Gray asked, “Well, who will bell the cat then?” Archibald Douglas, the feisty Earl of Angus, immediately replied, “I will bell this cat.” Douglas immediately went out and seized the unfortunate Cochran and hanged him under the bridge at Lauder. It was an act that earned him the nickname “Bell-the-cat Douglas”. There have been times throughout history when the phrase was more in use than at other times. In 1880 James Payne wrote, “Mrs and Miss Jennynge must bell the cat.” “What have I to do with cats?” inquired Mrs Jennynge wildly. “I hate cats.” “My dear madam, it is a well-known proverb,” explained Mrs Armytage. “What I mean is, that it is you who should ask Mr Josceline to say grace this evening.” A few years later, in 1890, Walter Scott wrote in the Journal, “A fine manly fellow, who has belled the cat with fortune.” Ama Page has added something extra to your book with her humorous illustrations. Did you collaborate closely with Ama, or was she given carte blanche to come up with suitable drawings? They are great aren’t they? Ama is a friend of mine from my hometown in England, but she moved back to Botswana between illustrating Red Herrings and the follow up, Shaggy Dogs and Black Sheep. Hence, as I’ve mentioned, the reason I found myself in Africa. She had carte blanche; her illustrations are mostly her ideas, although she obviously asked me if I had anything in mind before she went about it. There is one illustration in Shaggy Dogs which is actually of her and me. It’s a private joke. See if you can work out which one it is. You mention being lucky enough to have had access to the libraries of the Houses of Commons and of Lords for your research. Is access to the libraries very restricted? Absolutely restricted – for MPs and Lords only. These are areas the public has no access to at all, but I was lucky. A close friend of mine is a diplomat and has an “access all areas” pass, enabling him to show foreign dignitaries and officials the workings of the British Parliament. He was kind enough to take me in with him on numerous occasions, so after security clearance he and I were able to browse around. Also, the former Labour Minister for Sport, Tony Banks, now Lord Stratford, is a personal friend of mine and he hosted the launch of Red Herrings and White Elephants at the House of Commons, which was an experience, I can tell you. I’ve been a very lucky boy, haven’t I? What happens on an average day when you’re writing a book? Do you sit down to write at a certain time every day? Do you find it necessary to set yourself deadlines? This is a question everyone wants to know the answer to, me included when I speak to or read about other writers. The simple answer is that there is no right or wrong way to go about it, as long as you have a routine and are disciplined. For example, some writers work by the hour, between set hours every day or night. Perhaps 9 am–12, then 2–5 pm, or whatever suits them. I write by the word. I usually start in the morning, but as soon as I’ve achieved my target number of words for the day I stop, regardless of whether it takes me two hours when it flows or fifteen hours on a hard day. I’ll look at the month ahead and decide how far I want to be by the end of that month, then set myself a target of, say, 1 000 or 1 500 words per day and I’ll stick to that seven days a week for the full month. Nothing comes before that, although there are obviously times when plenty can come after it, such as the days I am all done in just a few hours. Normal life can go on, but sometimes afternoon or evening dates will be cancelled at a moment’s notice if I realise I’m going to need to work through to reach target. And that can annoy those close to you, but most people understand, especially as the books have been quite successful and my friends and family enjoy that. Before the best-sellers, if I cancelled something at short notice to carry on writing, some people would say, “Hark at him, who does he think he is – Charles Dickens?” But that doesn’t happen anymore. What was the greatest difficulty you faced writing the book? The same difficulty writing any book, which is the continuous nature of it. If you’re working at a rate of 500 words a day, then two months in, a full sixty days later, when you’re already exhausted and have run out of ideas at least sixty times along the way, you’re still only halfway through, with all that to go through again. Then two weeks after that you still have a long, long way to go and it only starts getting easier coming down to the last 10 000 words, but by then you’re running out of good ideas and struggling not to repeat yourself and checking back almost every half an hour to make sure you haven’t done just that. Don’t forget, by then it’s easy to have forgotten a small joke or strong style of humour that you used thirteen weeks ago, but which might come out in the book the page after the last time you used it by the time the editors have finished with it. That’s no good at all and that’s the craft of writing. Those are the reasons it can sometimes take all day to write what can be read in fifteen minutes. That’s being an author. Nothing starts at the beginning and ends at “The End” when you’re on this side of the keyboard. On a personal level I find I sweat a lot, probably due to anxiety and stress, and that means changing shirts fifteen times a day. I’ve never admitted that before, but I recently read the same thing used to happen to Jack Kerouac, which means I’m in good company. I’m often asked how I deal with the pressure, but I don’t feel any at all. Pressure is being a single mother with two kids, a pushchair, bags full of shopping and finding out the lift is broken and your front door is now fifteen minutes away, up the stairs. What writers, singers, musicians and artists do is just the entertainment. When teachers, nurses, firemen, bus drivers and others with important jobs do when they get home after a hard day is put on a CD, turn on the TV or open a book and say, “Right, now entertain me, I’ve had a hard day.” I can imagine a world without books and for me especially it would be awful. But can you imagine a world without policemen or dentists? Those are the proper jobs. What have you enjoyed most about researching and writing Shaggy Dogs and Black Sheep? Finding out the historical origins of the expressions we all use on a daily basis. It’s as much fun when I find out for myself as it is for the readers when they do. I also say to myself, “Ahhh, that’s where it comes from – brilliant.” Tell me about your favourite library. They’re all the same really, apart from the Houses of Commons and Lords that have so much history attached to them. Thumbing through the same books as Disraeli or Wellington did, or sitting in the same leather armchairs as Churchill or Palmerston is something special. But more often than not I find myself in the same old dirty libraries with dusty librarians, although to be fair, in some cases it’s the other way round. Name a few of your favourite books and why they are important to you. My favourite book of all time is Animal Farm by George Orwell. Anyone who can make human relationships, personal ambition and politics (especially socialism) so easy to understand is a genius. Unfortunately, Orwell is better known for 1984, which is a difficult book to understand so usually people don’t look over its shoulder at his other books. But go and read Down and Out in Paris and London, or Animal Farm, and they can become a handbook for life. In Animal Farm you’ll learn why some people do the things they do to you. As a writer, you’ve had to speak at launches and various events. Are you comfortable with public speaking? Not really, no. It’s the same as going on television, especially live, and I cannot pretend not to be nervous, but you just have to “conquer the fear”. As one of my oldest friends, dating back to our schooldays, recently said of me and public appearances, “He doesn’t want to do it and he never has. But he always does, by working right through the fear.” I thought that was pretty accurate. It privately annoys me when I’m called a natural, because I’m not – far from it. But I do prepare thoroughly, and repeatedly rehearse important speeches by reading them out loud in my living room literally dozens of times, sometimes every half an hour for up to a week before I am due to deliver it, including leaving gaps for laughs if I think I have written something funny … which doesn’t always work. The point is that by the time I am speaking I should be able to look and sound like I am not simply reading my notes like I did when I used to read the football report out to the whole school when I was a kid. You see, I’ve always done it but still don’t like it. I can’t be a natural. It’s all about preparation and the first line sets the tone. I recently gave a speech to the Institute of Public Relations at London’s County Hall and I was very nervous, but I opened with the line, “Now, the last time I spoke personally to a group of people as large as this was when I read a eulogy for a dear old friend of mine at his funeral, so I hope you are all in a better mood than that lot were.” There was a short pause when people looked at me in horror; some even had their hands over their mouths in shock, but when it sank in they all fell about laughing, for ages. It was easy after that, dead easy. What did your role as the resident language expert on ITV’s This Morning programme involve? I used to go on at the start of their programme for twelve minutes and talk about the English language and explain a few idioms, sometimes accompanied by a TV clip of them in action, so to speak. Then viewers would phone in or email questions about some origins and I would have an hour or so to pick out a few I had already covered in one of the two books and go back on screen for six minutes towards the end of the show and explain them for the viewers, usually by way of a conversation with the presenters. On the screen they used the intro line “Albert Jack Language Expert”, which always made me laugh. I could imagine my old school teachers choking on their morning biscuits shouting at their TVs, “What – him?” But it was a means to an end. I was very nervous, but do you know how much an eighteen minute advert on prime time TV costs to buy? Book sales went through the roof and I was already a best-seller by then anyway. I’m glad I did it, I am glad I got over the fear, and if I can do it anyone can. Albert, you have two children. Is fatherhood fun? Not really, no. My two children haven’t spoken to me or their grandmother and aunt for over two years. They will be fourteen and sixteen now and we all had such a close loving relationship for fourteen years. I saw them twice a week and they have always had rooms in my house, but they were told things by their mother that led them to take the decision to cut us out of their lives completely. They just will not see us or respond to any attempt to contact them, and we can’t even find out what they’ve been told. The courts won’t help, as the children are too old to be forced to have contact and there is nothing we can do, nothing at all. It is heartbreaking and we have all been badly affected by it to the point that I had a breakdown last year caused by this situation, although I am recovered now. My mother still sends birthday and Christmas cards with a cheque for money inside. The cheques are cashed but there is no thank you or any response to her at all. How bad is that! I don’t try anymore because the rejection from my own children is too hard to bear, so I just don’t put myself in that position anymore. Shaggy Dogs and Black Sheep is dedicated to the Fathers 4 Justice movement. Who are Fathers 4 Justice? Fathers 4 Justice is a movement in Britain set up by fathers who have been refused access to their children by the mothers. That didn’t happen to me, as my children made their own decision, which obviously makes it much worse for me to accept. There will be parents reading this, either mothers or fathers, who have coached their young children to disrespect and dislike the other parent, and whilst breaking the heart of a former partner may sound like fun it can only be bad for the children involved. How will they ever be able to create their own personal relationships when they grow up, either loving or professional relationships, if they are manipulated to the point of disrespecting and rejecting one of their own parents, or grandparents? Usually jealousy is the reason, one parent jealous of a close relationship his or her own children have with the other parent. That can never be a good thing and mothers or fathers who think that it is a good thing are effectively abusing their own children. And how do they defend this? By saying, “I have to look out for the best interest of my children”, which, of course, is the opposite of how they are behaving. The shame is, the kids won’t realise that until they grow up and by then it is always too late for them. I am not part of Fathers 4 Justice and have nothing to do with them at all. I just thought a little nod of respect to their anguish wouldn’t do any harm. You also support the MacKinnon Trust. Can you tell me about the work the Trust does? We raise money to help raise public awareness of mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and the care that those who suffer and their families need. One in 100 people suffers from mental illness so the chances are we all know somebody who is affected in some way. That means we should all know more about what they are going through and that’s why I am a founding trustee of the MacKinnon Trust What are you passionate about? What moves you, what inspires you, what brings you joy? Well, my children used to move me, inspire me and bring me great joy and nothing really has replaced that yet. But I’m optimistic. I also have to be realistic, don’t I? I have become a best-selling author, worldwide, and I know there are many people who would want to exchange places with me at the moment, so I have to respect how lucky I have been. But I would swap it all for my children back. None of it is much fun without them. Do you have a life philosophy? Yes, that we have two choices: take it or leave it. Despite all that I’ve just said, I still want to take it. Don’t live a life of what ifs or maybes. *
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