Sandi Toksvig - Chain of Curiosity

Review by Ro Bennett on show 25th November 2010
Chain of Curiosity by Sandi Toksvig
This is a such an enjoyable book! Right from the start I was chuckling and besides the humour it is packed with unusual and interesting facts.
The book is compiled from the collection of columns, originally written for the Sunday Telegraph as diary entries, starting in June 2005 and the last one dated June 2009.

Sandi Toksvig is Danish born and not only a writer but also a comedienne and actress. She was at Girton College in Cambridge at the same time as Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie were at University in Cambridge. She has a first class honours degree in anthropology and archaeology and she performed the first all woman show at the Footlights. I’ve watched her on QI a couple of times and she has appeared on various other TV shows but she’s also been a radio presenter in programmes such as Call My Bluff.
Here are some snippets to whet your appetite. This is from the chapter ‘A Storm in a coffee cup’
'They say it’s going to be bitter this winter so I’ve been checking the forecast in my coffee. Ever since 1987 when Michael Fish told me I could sleep safe from stormy conditions and a tree promptly fell through my house, I have taken barometric matters into my own hands. Each morning I pour out a fresh cup of Java and settle down to check its steaming surface. The small bubbles that drift across the top are very clear - float towards the rim of the cup and it’s wellingtons and pacamacs all round. Float to the centre - it’s going to be fine. Float in great lumps - the milk’s gone off and I’ll have to go out whatever the weather. It’s all to do with pressure in the air apparently. Strictly speaking, Mr Fish was right, it wasn’t a hurricane in ’87 but ‘an intense North Atlantic depression’. I suffer with black days myself, but never so intensely that I plunge a quarter of the country into darkness'.
This is an extract from ‘School Reports: could be better’

'In these days of hypersensitivity, reports are written by computer program and with a vagueness of meaning that suggests that staff have half an eye on the law courts....'
Later in the article she writes:
'Sir Isaac Newton, genius in mathematics, optics, physics and astronomy, was described by his masters as ‘idle’ and ‘inattentive’ and Sir Winston Churchill, voted by the public as the greatest Briton of all time, was characterised as being ‘a constant trouble to everybody and is always in some scrape or other. He cannot be trusted to behave himself anywhere. He has no ambition.’ John Lennon was ‘certainly on the road to failure’ and Roald Dahl one of the world’s most popular children’s authors, was famously accused of being ‘incapable of organising his thoughts on paper.’
Finally this snippet is from ‘The long march to Christmas’
'Jingle Bells was written to celebrate American Thanksgiving and Santa Claus was invented by Coca-Cola.
...the real St Nick came from Turkey. It would be about this time in Victorian days that turkeys bound for the holiday table would be on the march from the much invaded Norfolk. Apparently the only way to get these doomed creatures to market in London, was to make them walk. They would set out about now, wearing tiny boots made of leather or sacking to protect their feet. I don’t know why, I’ve never thought of the turkey foot as a delicacy, nor did the prospect of a career as a bird cobbler ever arise at school. Geese however did not have boots. That would have been silly . The farmer just slapped tar on their feet and sent them, presumably goose stepping, on their way'.
Wonderful stuff!

Ro Bennett