Jones, Dowie, Davies have applied

none of them g@y snoods either

Certainly not! Cycle shorts and thermal T-shirts are also banned. My regime will make Nelson's navy look like a sailing holiday. Vote Longtime. You know it makes sense.

Nelson's navy?

I am reminded of Georgy Melly's explanation for the title of the first volume of his autobiography, Rum, Bum and Concertina, being that it was half of a popular Royal Navy saying that while ashore, life comprised of Wine, Women and Song, but once at sea, it lapsed into the other three pastimes. Churchill took a gloomier view of the picture, and spoke of "rum, sodomy and the lash".

There's no doubt which of those lifestyles Sven represented – the proposed longtimefox regime sounds a great deal more Churchillian.

"rum, sodomy and the lash"

I didn't know Churchill was into The Pogues?

Dowie?!?!?!?!

No-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-oo!

Churchill is supposed to have said "Don't talk to me about naval tradition. It's nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash," while First Lord of the Admiralty (1911-15) – although the evidence for it is decidedly iffy.

Whoever *did* first say it, the phrase has been found in documents dated 1950 – long before the Pogues' 1985 album Rum Sodomy & the Lash and Anthony Blackmore's 2006 novel Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash - A Devon Lad's Life in Nelson's Navy.

The 1950 attribution has it that the full phrase was "rum, sodomy, prayers and the lash". I think the prayers might be needed if longtime's jankers-style regime comes to pass.

Sorry, forgot the winking smiley.
I never thought for a moment that Shane came up with the saying.

I saw George Melly live, being interviewed, not long before he died, when he told an ancecdote about being interviewed for the Navy. When asked by "some Admiral" as he put it, why he wanted to join the Navy and not either of the other services, his reply was allegedly " well, the uniform is so fetching".

He was supposed to be singing at this gig too, but keeled over after half a number and had to be taken to hospital (possibly something to do with the three double whiskeys he'd had in the interval reacting with his medication). By the time they released him next morning, he'd apparently got the phone number of the pretty young nurse who was looking after him!

A real one off.

I realised that you were being ironic, Vulpes.

I saw 'Good Time George' with the Feetwarmers on several occasions in the late 70s and early 80s, and as a student journalist I reviewed Rum, Bum and Concertina when it was published in 1977. Britain hasn't produced a huge number of world-class jazz/blues artists, but I think he was one of those few.

I have a fair amount of his material on CD, but I don't think the recorded work does justice to his debauched stage persona.

I met him in person once back in the 70s. I was working in a design studio who were producing one of his album covers. I knew who he was, but didn't fully appreciate his true stature back then.

I think the thing that blew me away most when reading his memoirs was how he started collecting the works of then not especially highly rated artists such as Magritte, Picasso, Miro and Freud while still in his early 20s. As someone who, when I read this, had only a couple of years earlier scraped through Art A-level with a thesis on Picasso and a habit of nicking ideas from the surrealists, I was hugely impressed that this man had bought them in original, not bedroom wall poster form.