Beachcomber (pen Name) - "By The Way" in Print

"By The Way" in Print

"By the Way" was originally a column in the Globe, consisting of unsigned humorous pieces; P. G. Wodehouse was assistant editor of the column from August 1903 and editor from August 1904 to May 1909, during which time he was assisted by Herbert Westbrook. After the Globe's closure, it was reestablished as a society news column in the Daily Express from 1917 onwards, initially written by social correspondent Major John Arbuthnot who invented the name "Beachcomber".

After Arbuthnot was promoted to deputy editor, it was taken over by Wyndham-Lewis some time in 1919 who reinvented it as an outlet for his wit and humour. It was then passed to Morton during 1924 though it is likely there was a period when they overlapped. Morton wrote the column until 1975; it was revived in January 1996 and continues today, written by William Hartston, though the name "By the Way" has been dropped in favour of simply "Beachcomber". The column is unsigned except by "Beachcomber" and it was not publicly known that Morton or Wyndham-Lewis wrote it until the 1930s. The name is mainly associated with Morton who has been credited as an influence by Spike Milligan amongst others. Morton introduced the recurring characters and continuing stories that were a major feature of the column during his 51-year run.

The format of the column was a random assortment of small paragraphs which were otherwise unconnected. These could be anything, such as:

• court reports, often involving Twelve Red-Bearded Dwarfs before Mr Justice Cocklecarrot.
• angry exchanges of letters between characters such as Florence McGurgle and her dissatisfied boarders.
• interruptions from "Prodnose", representing the public, who would then be roundly cursed by the author and kicked out.
• installments of serials that could stop, restart from earlier, be abandoned altogether or change direction abruptly without warning.
• parodies of poetry or drama, particularly of the extremely "literary" type such as Ibsen.
• unlikely headlines, such as "SIXTY HORSES WEDGED IN A CHIMNEY", for which the copy in its entirety was "The story to fit this fantastical headline has not been thought up yet."
• news reports from around the country.
• or just anything that the author thought funny at the time.

Morton's other interest, France, was occasionally represented by epic tales of his rambling walks through the French countryside. These were not intended as humour.

"By the Way" was popular with the readership, and of course, one of the reasons it lasted so long. Its style and randomness could be off-putting, however, and it is safe to say the humour could be something of an acquired taste. Oddly, one of the column's greatest opponents was the Express newspaper's owner, Lord Beaverbrook, who had to keep being assured the column was indeed funny. A prominent critic was George Orwell, who frequently referred to him in his essays and diaries as "A Catholic Apologist" and accused him of being "silly-clever", in line with his criticisms of G. K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, Ronald Knox and Wyndham-Lewis.

But By the Way was one of the few features kept continuously running in the often seriously reduced Daily Express throughout World War II, when Morton's lampooning of Hitler, including the British invention of bracerot to make the Nazi's trousers fall down at inopportune moments, was regarded as valuable for morale.

The column appeared daily until 1965 when it was changed to weekly. It was cancelled in 1975 and revived as a daily piece in the early 1990s. It continues to the present day in much the same format, but is now entitled "Beachcomber", not "By the Way".