Competition

*Subject* The Great Fire of London
*Instrument* The Singing Postman ...

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I think it's more fun to allow the reader to guess at the headline with the two clues of subject and instrument (though the first one would have defeated me, I admit).

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"Hev yew gotta loight, bor?"

find out more here:

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/...

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Sorry Ivor, I misunderstood - thought you didn't know who the SP was. As far as I know he hasn't. I didn't read the rules properly and I let myself down, let the whole message board down, etc.

Only seven messages in and already Oi've broken the rules.

No references to Janice Nicholls, please.

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Subject: Notts Forest manager kept in dark
Instrument: Kenneth Horne
Headline: Not a word to B.C.

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I stand corrected (if somewhat dazed). How about another to take the taste away?

Subject: Menace distressed to find father supporting his arch nemesis
Instrument: Spike Milligan
Headline ...

If anyone gets restless I've got a Round Britain Quiz-type question.

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No ... "He's fallen in with Walter."

Sorry.

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The "softie" Walter is Dennis the Menace's enemy in the Beano, an illustrated publication for the diversion, if not the edification, of young people.

Were Dennis's father to be more sympathetic to his son's nemesis, the aforementioned Walter, than to his own offspring, he might be said, to use an idiomatic phrase, to have "fallen in" with him. This may derive from the idea of marching alongside.

"He's fallen in the water" is a catchphrase which Milligan contemptuously created for his radiophonic entertainment The Goon Show, and I considered it amusing, led by the first example given of the subject/instrument/headline sequence in this thread, to have a headline which bore only an approximate phonetic similarity to the Goon catchphrase.

I am prepared to concede that my assumption may have been incorrect on this occasion.