'Ardly an Aitch

A clumsy review entitled Between Ourselves, due to open in London's West End next week, ran into censorship trouble with the Lord Chamberlain for lampooning those Laborites (including Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin) who occasionally drop an "h."

The troublesome skit, a song called The Left Honourable, includes the verse:

I've 'ad forty years of the Labour game;

I was one of the I.L.P,

And though I've 'ardly an aitch to my name

I've mastered the A.B.C.

The Lord Chamberlain's office, headed by Old Etonian Lord Clarendon, objected to the last two lines, insisted on an innocuous substitution:

My ideas are exactly the same

As they were in '93.

The press descended on the Lord Chamberlain with whoops of joy. Said the London Daily Mirror's leader-writer: "What is clearly missing at the Lord Chamberlain's office is a share of that sense of humour which is Britain's priceless national possession. . . . Abolish the comedian, the cartoonist (and even the leader-writer) and there would soon be an Act of Parliament to restore them."

Claude Soman, producer of Between Ourselves, thought he understood the Lord Chamberlain's objection. Said Soman: "Apparently they don't mind what we say about the Government so long as we don't infer [sic] the Labor Government are not educated."

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