Thursday 8 January 2009

Three terrible titles I've seen this week.

1) Title for a story in the above-mentioned 50's children's storybook: 'The Cow That Went In And Out'. (Narrowly beaten into second place: 'The Dog Who Wore A Hat')


2) Title of a biography of P.L.Travers: 'P.L.Travers - Mary Poppins She Wrote'. Yes. Punning the similar-sounding words 'Mary Poppins' and 'Murder', there. I mean, I appreciate the author has a problem, in that everyone's heard of the book, and no-one's heard of the author, but maybe the best thing would have been to be bare-faced about it, re-order the words of the title, and call it 'P.L.Travers - She Wrote Mary Poppins'. 

3) Idi Amin's title for himself when president of Uganda: 'His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular.' All the fishes of the sea, eh Idi? I'd better take you seriously then. 
 

3 comments:

James Lark said...

Terrible titles you may think they are, but "The Cow That Went In and Out" has really got me interested.

Anonymous said...

all the fishes? nah that's a load of pollocks!

Anonymous said...

The P.L. Travers bio was actually originally entitled, Out of the Sky She Came, which is actually a lot nicer, now that I think about it. However, with the musical and Saving Mr. Banks, it got retitled. And, having read it, I can tell you it's very informative and interesting.