Moo

In partial return for such cultural legacies as Shakespeare's plays, the British Common Law and fish & chips, the U.S. has transmitted to Britain in recent years a passion for the 100%-American chocolate milk shake and double frosted. Last October, alarmed at this drift toward such dairy delights, Satirist Maurice Lane Norcott attempted to warn readers of the London Daily Mail against the perils involved. Plumbing the darkest depths of his imagination, he envisioned a Hollywood soft drink fountain in the heart of London and called it "Mother Moo-moo's Milk Bar."

"Here," wrote Norcott, "huddled together at a counter under unearthly neon lights, livid-hued customers sip their grisly 'shakes' or study a menu card which offers a wide selection of chemical concoctions made from substances utterly foreign to the milk-giving cow. For as little (or as much) as one shilling ninepence, the determined pleasure seeker may numb his insides with a 'frosted chocolate snowball' (frozen soya bean flour with mock cocoa gravy), a 'Hollywood Delight' (cold soya stew with ice vegetable jam), a 'Moo-moo Special' (mixed leftovers studded with damaged grapes) or a dollop of 'Stratosphere Kisses' (soya bean sludge and near nougat). A specialty of the maison is the 'Merrie England' full cream hot milk shake (boiled soya stock with vanilla-flavored export-reject whitewash)."

Last week in the dark oak solemnity of a King's Bench courtroom, Mother Moo-moo's menu became the principal evidence in a libel action brought against Norcott and the Daily Mail by the proprietors of the real-life Moo Cow Milk Bars of London. Moo Cow Director Frederick Abdela, who told the court that he himself was often known as Mr. Moo, declined to see anything humorous about Norcott's article. It was, said Abdela, "a cynical and horrible criticism of a business which could only be taken to be my own."

That, the heavy-jowled judge instructed the jury, depended on whether a reasonable person would be likely to confuse the extravagantly described Moo-moo of Norcott's imagining with any real place. "Language," said he, "can be so gross as to carry its own refutation."

Finding for Satirist Norcott, the jury decided that Mother Moo-moo's was not a Moo Cow.

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