I’ve embarked on my annual peregrinations in the company of that amiable nitwit Bertie Wooster, and for some reason, the voices of the excellent Fry and Laurie are echoing in my head more clearly than they have in the past. Wodehouse casts the whole oeuvre in Bertie’s wildly flighty voice, and consequently I hear Hugh Laurie’s piping, bug-eyed take on the pride of the Woosters flibbertigibbeting about in my skull.
It’s quite pleasant, really.
I found the television adaptations that the comedians starred in hilarious; I haven’t seen them for years, and of course, there are now DVDs available. Viv tells me she hasn’t ever seen any of the episodes, so I think I might be ordering them soon.
That aside, the incessant prattling inside my head led me to wonder: is it possible that Mr. Laurie executed any audiobooks of Wodehouse’s original confections? Garishly polluted Google results make the answer to this unclear, but the sparse examples of Wodehouse Jeeves and Wooster audiobooks I unearthed did not feature Laurie reading, so I rather doubt that this item was ever produced, what what.
Bit of the stiff, that.
Precious Little is struth!
http://www.g30oc1t1es.com/hlfaqs/forSale.htm (obfuscated to avoid spam filter)
seems to have some leads, but may be out of date.
Did you read the NYer piece on Wodehouse back a year or two ago? Deeeelightful.
I did, and enjoyed it.
I had poked through the geoc1t1es list, but left it unlinked as it offered only negative information, alas.
I do savor the particularly impenetrable bits of Wodehousian slang.