Reading this very interesting article about WS Gilbert in Issue 33 of The Critic, I came across a list of ‘great British duos’. The writer argues that in all three examples - fish and chips; Morecambe and Wise; and Peter Cook and Dudley Moore - one half of the duo is 'vastly more important than the other'.
I can see that Peter Cook was the genius in Cook and Moore, and the one with the glasses was funnier than the short one in Morecambe and Wise (although I never quite got the point of either of them, to be truthful - or possibly, in some circles, sacrilegious).
The one pair in the list that I am not sure about is fish and chips - which is the most important element in that combination? Which part of the duo is the dominant one? I suppose it's chips, except that chips exist on their own. So is it actually battered fish? Do some people see the fish bit - or should that be 'the bit of fish'? - as the ascendant part of fish and chips, with chips a mere accompaniment?
Actually I think the problem may be that this duo simply doesn't fit the thesis. I suspect for most people the two components of fish and chips stand together in importance. I wonder whether others agree.
I am also going to spend the rest of the day trying to think of other inseparable duos and working out whether any of them have a dominant and a recessive element. Antony and Cleopatra immediately spring to mind.
Burton and Speke. There's no trouble wondering which is dominant.
ReplyDeleteRather more rarified than Simon & Garfunkel, which was the next unequal pair we came up with. As WS Gilbert - (to bring this full circle) - wrote "I have a little list", or at least I am beginning to have one, so may return to this subject ZMKC
DeleteAmerican theatre and musical theatre run to pairs: Kaufman and Hart, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Comden and Green, etc. I have no way of judging which would have been dominant.
ReplyDeleteThe preeminent duo in American public life must have been Lewis and Clark, and there it would be hard to identify one as dominant. Lewis chose Clark to join the expedition: but Clark long outlived Lewis, and had a successful career after the expedition.
Among American food products, pork and beans leads the way. Pork may be dominant for expense and taste, but beans dominate by volume.
With cocktails it is easier, for there the first partner is dominant: whiskey and soda, bourbon and branch water, gin and tonic, rum and Coca-Cola, etc.
Peanut butter & jelly? Which is most important there? ZMKC
DeleteI thought about that, then forgot it. Somehow I never cared for the combination. In my childhood, my breakfast usually consisted of toasted peanut butter sandwiches. Jelly is well enough, but doesn't have the same hold on me. On Americans in general, I can't say.
DeleteSomeone who is originally from the Middle East has been trying to persuade me to try dates dipped in tahini. I won't, even though he says it is a wonderful combination (or maybe because he may be right and I will grow addicted and then enormously fat). When he first mentioned the combination I did wonder if it was the Arab equivalent of peanut butter and jelly. Jelly I assume is jam and, if it is, the combination I would think of would be jam and cream on a scone. Clearly a scone with just cream would be lacking more than a scone with just jam - but apparently instead of an argument about which is more important there has been a continuing debate of late about whether the jam or the cream should be the first of the two to be put on the scone. I can't see how it could possibly make any difference but people are very convinced on each side.
DeleteIn America, jams have more solids than jellies. "Jelly" without qualification is almost always grape jelly, as is the jelly in peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. But I have seen quince jelly, and we have elderberry jelly in the refrigerator.
DeleteWe didn't always put anything on scones in the days when we bought them, which perhaps accounts for our ceasing to buy them.