Absent-minded Student

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 730, 10 July 1953, Page 10

Absent-minded Student

OTSFORD BURDON, having returned to the 3YC stage to give us a second item, must now receive the bouquet that was overlooked when he gave his first humorous talk, "Athletics: a Speculation," as well as one for "My Adventure," more recently heard over the same station. Humour which does not make you split your sides laughing may be none the less memorable for all that, and Mr. Burdon’s is certainly not of the hearty kind. For one thing there were no puns in his stories: the fun sprang rather from a point of view. "My Adventure" was a variation on the theme of the absent-minded Professor. This time it was the student who —

neglected to read the newspapers and found himself in Germany on the eve of the 1914-18 war, whence he had gone in a largely forlorn effort to concentrate on Aristotle, Hobbes and Maine. The academic turn of phrase ind the classical allusion certainly have an odd ring when set alongside, say, Mr. Burdon’s fervent desire not to turn a wayside station into a second Thermopylae, while all that he had garnered from Hobbes, namely, that man’s life is ‘nasty, brutish and short," underlined the ab-

surd.

Westcliff