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Leonard Cohen In Figurative Speech: The List Descriptor

Posted on June 18, 2012 by DrHGuy | Comments Off

The second offering of figurative speech employing Leonard Cohen is the line snarled by Malcolm Tucker, the lethally aggressive Policy Co-ordinator (i.e., enforcer of Number 10′s party line) on The Thick of It, a dark political comedy about the inner workings of the Labour government on BBC 2.

Come on people, let’s get going here! I’ve got a to-do list that’s longer than a fucking Leonard Cohen song.¹

It turns out the Cohen metaphor is relatively mild stuff for Malcolm. Compare it with these epithets launched by that character from a list of Our Ten Favourite Malcolm Tucker Quotes issued by The Guardian in anticipation of the third season of The Thick Of It:

• Responding to knock at his door: “Come the fuck in or fuck the fuck off.”

• Tucker’s Law (out-take from the Spinners & Losers special): “If some cunt can fuck something up, that cunt will pick the worst possible time to fucking fuck it up cause that cunt’s a cunt.”

• Moaning about minister on the phone: “He’s about as much use as a marzipan dildo.”

• To a pair of rival advisors: “Laurel and fucking Hardy! Glad you could join us. Did you manage to get that piano up the stairs OK?”

• Dressing down MP, Geoff Holhurst: “You’re so back-bench, you’ve actually fucking fallen off. You’re out by the fucking bins where I put you.”

• Commenting on Ben Swain’s disastrous Newsnight appearance: “All these hands all over the place! You were like a sweaty octopus trying to unhook a bra.”

• Bollocking a communications department employee: “How much fucking shit is there on the menu and what fucking flavour is it?”

• Advising minister Hugh Abbot to keep up with the zeitgeist: “You’ve got 24 hours to sort out your policy on EastEnders, right? Or you’re for the halal butchers.”

• Note passed to assistant Jamie during meeting with blue-sky thinker Julius Nicholson: “Please could you take this note, ram it up his hairy inbox and pin it to his fucking prostate.”

• Admonishing junior adviser Ollie Reeder to respect government property: “Feet off the furniture you Oxbridge twat, you’re not on a punt now.”

Leonard Cohen – Singer, Songwriter, Poet, Novelist, Icon, and Punchline Figure Of Speech

Posted on June 13, 2012 by DrHGuy | 3 Comments

I’ve previously pointed out that Leonard Cohen is a nickname magnet.¹ It turns out that he is also a metaphor magnet. i.e., he or his songs are frequently employed in ostensibly humorous figures of speech – almost always to connote something negative.

This phenomenon seems especially prevalent in the British media, although this may be an observational error stemming from my inability to comprehend any language other than English. For all I know, the entirety of contemporary popular culture in Norway could be built upon Cohen-dependent analogical constructs hidden from me by my ignorance of the Norwegian language.

In any case, I have collected a number of these figures of speech and, like Mr Cohen himself, “I’m not the sort of chap who would keep this to himself … .²

Today’s offering is a lament by Neil, a character in The Young Ones, a British comedy series described by the IMDb as “the crazy and sometimes surreal comedic adventures of four very different students in Thatcher’s Britain.”

Neil complains,

No one ever listens to me anyway.
I might as well be a Leonard Cohen record.

The video clip below demonstrates this line in situ.