So, farewell to the late Hugh Hefner, a man who made a fortune from women dressed as rabbits with cotton tails, bow ties and generous cleavage. It certainly is a funny old world.
Like most teenagers in the early 1960s, I was introduced to the delights of Playboy when well-thumbed copies of the magazine were passed around our classroom. There were the usual jokes about the "thought-provoking articles", but of course the first thing we turned to was the centrefold, which in all its voluptuousness was heaven for us spotty adolescents.
Readers' letters also featured topics you would definitely never find in Dear Abby.
Some years later, in the mid-1970s when Playboy was unavailable in Thailand, a friend returning to Bangkok from England was stopped at Don Mueang customs. Going through his hand luggage, an official triumphantly pulled out a copy of Playboy, coming out with a loud "oh ho!". The official frowned at first and my friend thought he was in trouble.
But the official called over a couple of his mates and they leafed through the magazine, sparking more expressions of "oh ho!". They seemed to have lost interest in the passenger, so he picked up his luggage and left them drooling over Miss September.
To think, if it were not for Hefner we would never have experienced that splendid scene in Bridget Jones's Diary< when the unfortunate Bridget showed up dressed as a Playboy Bunny, floppy ears and everything, at what she mistakenly thought was a fancy dress party only to discover that it was no longer fancy dress but a staid hi-so affair.
Fantasy failure
Playboy was actually quite a sophisticated magazine compared to other seedier offerings at that time.
A friend who worked on a London newspaper also did a bit of part-time work on a naughty publication. His job was to write fanciful captions for the dozens of photographs of models in a state of undress that adorned the magazine, preferably with liberal lashings of double entendre.
He did his best but soon wearied of writing about the likes of "Saucy Sue from Solihull" or "Busty Brenda from Billingsgate". In the end he was sacked, his boss explaining that his captions were not imaginative enough.
Terms of endearment
Last week PostScript suggested "disingenuous" was a leading candidate for Word of the Year, but it is already being challenged by the splendid "dotard", unearthed by those wonderful wordsmiths in Pyongyang.
Meaning "a person who is feeble-minded through old age", the word is sure to have hit a raw nerve of the gentleman it was aimed at.
If you think "dotard" has a Shakespearean feel to it, you would be right, and the Bard would be most impressed with the Pyongyang poets.
I am waiting in eager anticipation to see what inspired rhetoric they will come up with next to irritate the aforesaid gentleman.
The formidable trio of "wrinkly", "crinkly" and "crumbly" might do the trick. Then there's "pipsqueak". Or maybe they will go for more traditional insults like "old codger" or, even better, "old goat". That would go down well at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Never lost for words
Someone who should know a lot about the English language is American writer Ammon Shea, who a decade ago read the entire 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary from cover to cover in just under a year. For the curious, that's 59 million words or 21,730 pages. And there's not even a plot.
In 2008 Shea published Reading the Oxford English Dictionary, highlighting some of the less familiar words he came across that deserve an airing. Actually he came up with a few words our North Korean friends might find useful in future announcements. First of all there is "bayard", meaning "a person armed with the self-confidence of ignorance". Then there is "mafflard", a description of "a stuttering or blundering fool". And if they are not satisfied with those little gems, they could try "paracme", which is not a skin disease but "the point at which one's prime is past."
The dog tickler
One word from Mr Shea's collection which I can relate to, but struggle to pronounce, is "onomatomania", which apparently means "vexation in having difficulty finding the right word".
And for those who struggle on the social circuit there is "deipnophobia", meaning "a fear of dinner parties". That could be a handy topic the next time you are stuck at such a party and can't think of anything to say.
Dog lovers might be interested in "acnestis", which is "that part of an animal's back that the animal cannot reach to scratch". So next time you are playing with the dog, a tickle on the acnestis would be much appreciated.
Balder and dash
In reference to last week's item on nonsense, one reader said her favourite dismissive word was "balderdash". One of the best examples of its use came from US essayist HL Mencken, who was responsible for the following splendid attack on his favourite target, US president Warren Harding:
"He writes the worst English I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking through endless nights. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash."
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