24
" I went to the doctor," said the woman next to Ethel. "I said to him, 'I've got an itchy twat.'"
[...]
She went on: "The doctor says to me, he goes, 'You shouldn't say that, it's a rude word.'"
[...]
"I says to him, 'What should I say, then, doctor?' He says to me, 'Say you've got an itchy finger.'"
[...]
"He says to me, 'Do your finger itch you all the time, Mrs. Perkins, or just now and again?'"
Mildred paused, and the women were silent, waiting for the punch line.
"I says, 'No, doctor, only when I piss through it. "
― Ken Follett , Fall of Giants (The Century Trilogy, #1)
40
" It was stupid, but people needed someone to hate, and the newspapers were always ready to supply that need. Maud knew the proprietor of the Mail, Lord Northcliffe. Like all great press men, he really believed the drivel he published. His talent was to express his readers’ most stupid and ignorant prejudices as if they made sense, so that the shameful seemed respectable. That was why they bought the paper. She also knew that Lloyd George had recently snubbed Northcliffe personally. The self-important press lord had proposed himself as a member of the British delegation at the upcoming peace conference, and had been offended when the Prime Minister turned him down. Maud was worried. In politics, despicable people sometimes had to be pandered to, but Lloyd George seemed to have forgotten that. She wondered anxiously how much effect the Mail’s malevolent propaganda would have on the election. A few days later she found out. She went to an election meeting in a municipal hall in the East End of "
― Ken Follett , Fall of Giants (The Century Trilogy, #1)