The Captain

Captain Edward Burnham was a partner in a stockbroking company where I worked when I was 18. The Captain believed he should have been born a blue-blood. He was a pompous, red faced, chubby individual with white hair, who had an affected way of speaking; almost as if he had a plum in his mouth, very much like Wilfrid Hyde-White in My Fair Lady. If you can imagine an overweight Wilfrid Hyde-White, you’ve got the picture. He would pick up the phone and tell his secretary back at the office, in a slow drawl, things like “Well if anybody wants me I’m at the club”. One day he had a temporary working in place of his usual secretary. The Captain, as we called him, picked up the phone and told the temp the usual, “if anybody wants me I’m at the club”, and then we heard “no club you damned fool, not pub, so please hold my calls? No, my calls, not my b…, oh what’s the point”. He slammed down the phone and stormed out muttering fouls oaths.  It was funny then and it still is today.