Oh, screw it. Hugs for all! And balloons!
Status report Page 1,357
Quote: Sammy @ October 24 2009, 8:05 PM BSTHi Ben!!
Oh hi! 
Hi Ben! How do? 
Quote: Scatterbrained Floozy @ October 24 2009, 8:06 PM BSTHi Ben! How do?
Fair to middling today!
You never ask me how I am! 
*flounces off*
Quote: Scatterbrained Floozy @ October 24 2009, 8:07 PM BSTYou never ask me how I am!
Hi Robear! How ya doing today? 
Hello! Not toooo bad. Lots to think about. 
How are you now, Roo?
Full of cakey wonder.
Lucky!
Quote: RubyMae - Glamourous Snowdrop at Large @ October 24 2009, 7:49 PM BSTHe does tend to put out then clear it up before anyone notices.
As usual, I'm taking that as a compliment...
(I had to post in order to un-subscribe to this thread, which somehow I managed to do and was getting scores of emails about.)
Hi Tim.
Where does that I claim my £5 thing come from originally?
Don't worry, I looked it up
Who the heck is Lobby Lud?
That one was rhetorical.
Quote: Scatterbrained Floozy @ October 24 2009, 8:07 PM BSTYou never ask me how I am!
How are you, Robyn? AND what are you up to tonight?
You don't caaaare.
(I am okay, and have finished reading Lit. Theory after having been at work, so am thankfully up to little. I feel quite bad about that though. What are you up to?)
Quote: Steve Sunshine @ October 24 2009, 9:00 PM BSTHi Tim.
Where does that I claim my £5 thing come from originally?
It comes from the practice of a newspaper in the 1920s, which used to send a reporter out into the public...
...and if someone spotted him he would pay them £5.
The idea is also used at the start of Graham Greene's novel Brighton Rock, where newspaper man Fred Hale is sent to Brighton to be "spotted" as 'Kolley Kibber'.
The comic use of the phrase began with The Goons and then Private Eye, to make a joke about any person in disguise, an impostor or look-a-like.
A bit like trying to spot the knitted character from TV Burp?