William Douglas Home (1912–1992)

Rewritten in a bitter kind of way 24th Jan, 2012

Fluffy light rubbish. A farce that might have amused the Noel Coward school of social playrights, but then again, since The Reluctant Debutante is pure fluff and no social commentary, might not. It's about an aristocratic family attending the debutante balls in London and trying to get their daughter married 'well' (meaning to someone even richer than they are) and not getting her bedded by a moneyless Lothario. The farce comes from the slight fact that both the wealthy and the randy are called David.

William Douglas-Home was the son of a lord, his eldest brother was Sir Alec Douglas-Home, a Conservative Prime Minister, both of whom went to deb balls, huntin', shootin' and fishin' and so perhaps the shallowness of The Reluctant Debutante is but a true reflection of this wealthy and self-exalted class of society. Funny really, since almost all of them are descended from warmongers, pirates and exploiters who gained their titles and land by sharing their spoils with the Crown. They've all long lost sight of their roots though and swallowed their own PR. Not only their own PR but also a plum resulting in the strange haw haw haw accents and peculiar pronounciations of names that ought to be straightforward - 'Douglas-Home' is pronounced 'Douglas-Hume'.

WDH is as famous for being court-martialled for not obeying orders as he is for having stood -and lost - in three by-elections, on the platform of opposing Winston Churchill's policy of requiring unconditional surrender of the Germans in WWII. What a snotty little shit he must have been and that perhaps is why The Reluctant Debutante is such a small, snotty little effort.
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