Wednesday, June the 28th, 2006

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The Adventures of the Men With Whisks

On Sunday this page was graced with an illustration from The Adventures Of The Men With Whisks (see below). Quite a few readers had their memories stirred by the picture of a stray peasant being bashed on the head with whisks, taken from The Men With Whisks Set Upon The Peasantry In A Whirling Tangle Of Violence (1952), once one of the most popular of this seemingly forgotten series of children's books.

Ruth Pastry, for example, wrote in to say: “Thank you so much for reviving my memories of The Adventures Of The Men With Whisks. When I was a tiny tot I had an almost complete set of these wonderful books, and seldom did I fall asleep at night without having one read to me by my mother or my father or, if they were indisposed, by the family factotum, Igor. My favourite volume was The Men With Whisks Are Attacked By A Giant Invisible Squirrel With Blood-Soaked Fangs, and I particularly treasured the scene where they cower in a spinney, trying desperately to scrape from their whisks the rust with which their utensils have become unaccountably caked.”

Dr Pastry goes on at length about the psychological impact of The Men With Whisks upon her infantile brain, but the rest of her letter is riddled with incomprehensible jargon, misplaced punctuation marks, and some sort of grotesque spillage, so I shall not reproduce it here.

There were over thirty books in the series, all but the last two written and illustrated by Pabstus Tack. The manuscript of what would have been his final adventure, The Men With Whisks Visit A Toothpaste Factory, perished with him in the Munich Air Disaster of 1958. Although his satchel was recovered from the wreckage, its contents had been destroyed. For many years a rumour circulated that the lost story had been memorised by the Manchester United manager Matt Busby, who survived the crash. Busby became adept at deflecting questions related to The Men With Whisks, much as, in later years, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, always refused to confirm or deny that he had been abducted by aliens, no matter how hard he was pressed by zonk-eyed conspiracy theorists.

It is certainly not the case that the last two books, The Men With Whisks Tuck Into A Slap-Up Dinner Of Cocktail Sausages And Potato Pie, and The Men With Whisks Beat Benfica 4-1 In The European Cup Final, were written by Busby himself under the pseudonym Geraldine Scroonhoonpooge. Forensic examination of the manuscripts put paid to this absurd theory, as did an affidavit signed by Ms Scroonhoonpooge herself attesting that she had been visited during her sleep by the spirit of Pabstus Tack, who dictated the stories to her in an ethereal monotone. These last two volumes are, of course, unillustrated.

Every single one of The Adventures Of The Men With Whisks is now out of print, yet there are many, like Dr Ruth Pastry, who remember them with fondness. Surely the time is ripe for a revival? In our post-literate age, maybe it will take the imprimatur of a Hollywood adaptation to spark the interest of a new generation. So, if you have any battered old copies of the books in your attic, dig them out, photocopy them, and send the copies to Kevin Costner.