Nigel Rees

This is a really cute, and rather funny little book. Apart from its size, it's a terrific coffee-table book, with little snippets to read aloud and discuss - with enough background on each to lend atmosphere and context for each pithy epitaph. Makes me think I should start now planning my own.... hmmm.....

Nigel Rees is an expert on popular language and phraseology, with his own BBC Radio 4 programme Quote... Unquote. He has also appeared on Channel 4 TV's Countdown. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Almost every family has sayings that are a kind of private language and which, in many cases, continue in use across the generations. These family sayings are often impenetrable to outsiders, but there is also a rich vein of domestic catch phrase that is show more common to many families, and it is this that Nigel Rees celebrates in As We Say In Our House. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, but especially on family sayings that have been contributed to his BBC Radio programme Quote...Unquote, Nigel Rees provides a shamelessly nostalgic and warmly humorous record of an area of language that would otherwise go largely unrecorded. The popular expressions explored here also include personal mottoes, peculiar proverbs and nonsensical riddles. show less

I love books about slang and quips and pithy sayings. My mother used a lot of colloquialisms and when she died my sister and I tried to remember and collect the things she used to say. Reading books like this brings her voice vividly to life as so many of the lines are familiar.

Good concept; poor execution. Some of the print sat on dark backgrounds and was very difficult to read.

Preface claims that all content has been verified, but many of them turned out to be rumored or only reported in print. Much material 'borrowed' from previous books of this type.