A man was arrested yesterday for behaving like a complete cad, a court was told this morning.
A jury at the Old Bailey heard how Mr. Cecil Wilmington-Pubeck, of Spivington Mansions, London W2, approached a young lady on Friday evening and proceeded to act in a wholly un-gentlemanly fashion.
BOUNDER
Mr. Wilmington-Pubeck’s mobile telephone began to ring as he was talking to the young lady in question, Miss. Audrey Cartwright-Bullock, at around half-past eight. Upon answering, Mr. Wilmington-Pubeck announced to the caller that, no, he was not inside a drinking establishment seeking the company of ladies; he was in fact looking for a particular strain of tweed for his friend Maurice, at Jock McSporan’s Tartan Emporium, Lower Regent Street, and the noise she could hear was coming from the latter’s portable gramophone. Miss. Cartwright-Bullock’s suspicions were further aroused when Mr. Wilmington-Pubeck terminated the call by addressing the caller as ‘Uncle Bernard’.
“I was sure he was talking to another female”, she stated to the court. “I remember thinking, ‘this gentleman may wish to toy with my heart before casting me aside’. I knew I had to be careful”.
JACAKANAPES
Mr. Wilmington-Pubeck, it is alleged, next attempted to solicit currency from Miss. Cartwright-Bullock. “He told me he hadn’t a tosser to his kick, and needed a bit of shrapnel to purchase his elderly aunt a new pussycat, as hers had lately been blown away”. Miss. Cartwright-Bullock handed over ten pound notes to Mr. Wilmington-Pubeck, who then mysteriously disappeared in a cloud of monocles. The court was told how she later found him propped up by one of the dicing tables, spraying champagne at a portrait of Neville Chamberlain, and smoking a large cigar in an “extremely reckless manner”, at one point setting light to Lady Gwendolyn Charmley’s newest crinoline ball gown.
PC Arthur Rump was not surprised. “This is not surprising,” he said. “A ne’er do well such as the gentleman in question does not care whose costume he chars with his thoughtless capering”.
MOUSTACHE
But Miss. Cartwright-Bullock’s ordeal did not end there.
At around half-past eleven, she noticed Mr. Wilmington-Pubeck in the company of a young female of obvious ill repute. Upon confronting the scoundrel, Miss. Cartwright-Bullock was at once force-fed a large meal of dishonesty. “He told me that the young woman was his sister, Myrtle, and he had not seen her for seven months as he had been serving in the Punjab. But the manner in which his moustache bristled led me to conclude that this lady was no relative”.
Mr. Wilmington-Pubeck next aimed his drunken whiskers at unfortunate debutant, Miss. Eliza Volkswagen-Chuffadder. “I sincerely believed he was going to try to marry me,” said a distraught Miss. Volkswagen-Chuffadder from the witness box. “Then I would have had to act the dutiful wife whilst my errant husband cavorted about London like a fly-by-night, gambling and canoodling with the hoi-polloi, and shaming myself and our young infant son, Freddy, with his cavalier manners, inappropriate anecdotes, and humiliating misquotations of Byron”.
But Mr. Wilmington-Pubeck merely staggered forward, sang three verses of ‘Whoops, there go my Braces’, and fell headfirst into a potted Aspidistra.
SPATS
In passing sentence, the judge, Mr. Justice Goolie, remarked that never in his long career on the Bar had he encountered such brazen knavery. He was swift to impose the maximum penalty of five shillings. In addition, Her Majesty’s Government also confiscated the offender’s spats and topper. Commenting on the decision, PC Rump said he believed the severity of the sentence was fully justified.
“Young gentlemen today must be made aware of the consequences of their actions. Many a poor female has had her hopes and dreams dashed by these woeful miscreants and their rakish behaviour. This ruling gives out a very clear message to any future jack-a-cock-a-hoops: we intend to be tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”.
