Post by tintwistle on Jan 4, 2013 13:56:37 GMT -5
I am in the process of reading Norman Longmate's interesting tome, "How We Lived Then" (subtitled "A History of Everyday Life During the Second World War"). A passage on page 153 caught my eye and made me chuckle to myself with a pleasant memory.
I don't recall which episode of GS it was, but sometime during the Dervla Kirwan years, Phoebe refers to POTATO PETE, and the way she said it was very funny indeed -- to us in the audience and to Gary too.
Frederick Marquis, 1st Baron Woolton, became Minister of Food in April 1940. Longmate's book states that "Lord Woolton's greatest success was in winning the ordinary housewife to his side with a brilliant publicity campaign.... The faces of Dr. Carrot and Potato Pete were soon looking out from the pages of every women's magazine, the one thin and alert, the other plump and reassuring.... Potato Pete became so well known that one Battersea schoolgirl affectionately called a classmate she 'had a crush on' by this name, and according to the Ministry there were few things he could not do, from saving fuel to combining with rhubarb and honey in 'Sweet Potato Pudding'. The Ministry offered a weekly prize to the greengrocer with the best selling potato display and organised 'Potato Pete's Fair' in Oxford Street, where visitors could buy 'Potato Stamps' to exchange for extra potatoes at their greengrocers'. Its efforts succeeded by the end of the war in raising the consumption of potatoes by 60 per cent, the largest increase in any commodity."
I don't recall which episode of GS it was, but sometime during the Dervla Kirwan years, Phoebe refers to POTATO PETE, and the way she said it was very funny indeed -- to us in the audience and to Gary too.
Frederick Marquis, 1st Baron Woolton, became Minister of Food in April 1940. Longmate's book states that "Lord Woolton's greatest success was in winning the ordinary housewife to his side with a brilliant publicity campaign.... The faces of Dr. Carrot and Potato Pete were soon looking out from the pages of every women's magazine, the one thin and alert, the other plump and reassuring.... Potato Pete became so well known that one Battersea schoolgirl affectionately called a classmate she 'had a crush on' by this name, and according to the Ministry there were few things he could not do, from saving fuel to combining with rhubarb and honey in 'Sweet Potato Pudding'. The Ministry offered a weekly prize to the greengrocer with the best selling potato display and organised 'Potato Pete's Fair' in Oxford Street, where visitors could buy 'Potato Stamps' to exchange for extra potatoes at their greengrocers'. Its efforts succeeded by the end of the war in raising the consumption of potatoes by 60 per cent, the largest increase in any commodity."