Writer and Comedian Frank Muir

from Writer's Almanac today:

It’s the birthday of writer and comedian Frank Muir (books by this author), born in Ramsgate, England (1920). He didn’t go to college, but he joined the Royal Air Force and wrote some radio comedy shows to entertain soldiers. He got a job writing for the comic actor Jimmy Edwards. Edwards teamed up with the actor Dick Bentley for the BBC radio show Take It from Here Muir hit it off with Bentley’s writer, a man named Denis Norden, and Muir and Norden went on to write and perform together for more than 50 years. After years of writing for radio and television, they started appearing on the radio literary game show My Word! and its spinoff, My Music.

Frank Muir was 6 feet 6 inches, spoke with a lisp, and always wore a pink bow tie. He published a memoir, A Kentish Lad (1997), as well as humorous books like An Irreverent and Almost Complete Social History of the Bathroom (1984), and a novel, The Walpole Orange (1993).

He said: “Strategy is buying a bottle of fine wine when you take a lady out for dinner. Tactics is getting her to drink it.”

And: “Wit is a weapon. Jokes are a masculine way of inflicting superiority. But humor is the pursuit of a gentle grin, usually in solitude.”