The AFU and Urban Legend Archive Books now thats urban myths Select a topic - - - - - - - - Home Searches AFU FAQ - - - - - - - - AFU Animals Books Celebrities Classic Collegiate Death Disney Drugs Food GIF Language Legal Medical Misc Movies Politics Products Religion Science Sex Songs TV - - - - - - - - Other sites

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: mike_holmans@cix.compulink.co.uk ("Mike Holmans")
Subject: Review: Now! That's What I Call Urban Myths
Date: Wed, 24 Apr 1996 20:26:01 GMT

_Now! That's What I Call Urban Myths_, by Phil Healey and Rick Glanvill, Virgin Books, 1996, ISBN 0-86369-969-3, 256pp (GBP4.99)

'Now! That's What I Call Music' is the title given to CDs issued in UKoGBaNI every few months, containing ragbags of recent hit singles in a Greatest Hits of the Year guise. This collection is the Greatest Hits package, containing the "very best" from the previous Healey & Glanvill (H&G) collections _Urban Myths_, _The Return of Urban Myths_, and _Urban Myths Unplugged_.

H&G's approach is not that of the wise owl - for the benefit of shelf-fillers at station bookshops the book is classified as Humour on the cover - but that of the jackdaw. The tales are roughly grouped into subject matter - chapter titles of 'the long arm of the law', 'surgical spirit', 'man's best friend', 'food and drink' give the idea. Between each group of FOAF tales is a filler listing popular misconceptions.

The title of the series refers to urban myths, not legends, the implication being that they are all untrue, which basically makes it the real equivalent of the Monty Python 'Hackenthorpe Book Of Lies', except that these are lies which a lot of people believe. No evidence is presented for their falsity, it is just implied by their categorisation as myths. Which is something of a pity, as two of the assertions (that Indians shake their heads to indicate 'yes', and that cuddly koalas are vicious) are, in fact, voracious.

Sources for particular stories are not identified, but there are two pages of acknowledgments to contributors. None of those listed are regular contributors to AFU, as far as I can tell. There is no bibliography, so it is not clear whether H&G have consulted much other than word of mouth, except that the Mexican Pet UL is retold, with the holidaymaker returning from a Spanish package tour, followed by a note to the effect that it is the title story of Brunvand's volume. No such similar note is appended to the retelling of the Vanishing Hitch-hiker.

AFUistas will be familiar with the style of storytelling favoured by H&G from the postings of their efforts from the Guardian Weekend magazine. (This collection is not, by the way, a collection of reprints of Guardian columns: the book has been out for a bit now, and the column appearing in the Guardian of 20.4.96 (eagle snatches doggy in bag) is a slightly padded version of one of the stories here.) Designed for a British audience, there are many references to British things which would be totally lost on merkin readers: the phrase "pampered as Mrs Slocombe's pussy", for instance, would only be understood by people who have watched the truly dreadful 'Are You Being Served?', a sitcom set in a department store. There is also a fairly heavy leavening of British slang, mostly from the section of the slang dictionary marked "nobody real says any of these things any more", to render the book more impenetrable to our colonial cousins.

This is especially true of the annotations, which appear sparingly. These notes often include known slight variations, or dreadful puns, but also suggestions that the incident may have happened to some UKoGBaNIan media star of about the 23rd magnitude. The chief target of this is one Chris Evans, who has taken his brand of unbearable enthusiasm and exciting wackiness from breakfast TV to breakfast radio, and is alleged to have been possibly the subject of ULs which are more likely to have involved the late Ewan Kirk.

There are obviously some which are required to be British - the Hartlepool monkey (which I've always thought was voracious, but haven't researched), for instance, and I would hazard, spending hours and hours on a motorway believing it to be the M1 when it's actually the M25 (which orbits London at a radius of about 30 miles from Charing X and is 192 miles long because it was built by architects from Indiana^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^W) - but most do not require a specific location and can be happily transplanted to either side of the Atlantic, and certainly have been. Some do require alteration to work in UKoGBaNI, the most spectacular example of which is "That'd be the butt, Bob". Since in English, guns and cigarettes have butts, but people don't, the blushing bride has to nervously say "Up the bottom" after her husband has previously replied "on the kitchen sink", but the incident has to be taken away from a TV studio as well. 'The Newlywed Game' translated into English as 'Mr & Mrs', but the focus of the show was changed, as the daytime TV audience was supposed to consist largely of pensioners. The couples tended to have been married for about 30 years, so it became a nostalgia-fest remembering the days when they went out on the town and still had change from fourpence-ha'penny. The relevant question would have been hopelessly unbelievable in such a context, and it is vectored here as taking place at the happy couple's wedding reception with the best man in the Derek Batey (presenter of 'Mr&Mrs') role. Other variants include Pedigree Chum instead of peanut butter, and a postage stamp causing surprise at the gynaecological examination.

This is definitely a bog book, ie one intended to be read when straining one's greens whilst riding the porcelain Honda, rather than perused in the study. However, the paper it is printed on is not suitable as bum-fodder.

Mike "naah, straight up, guv - it happened to me best mate" Holmans