The delightful, rude world of put-downs

Of the many things I admire, near the top would be the art of the witty insult or the elegant put-down.

- Karan Thapar

Of the many things I admire, near the top would be the art of the witty insult or the elegant put-down. It takes restraint, imagination and a certain clever bent of mind. We're not all capable of it but those who are I would call special. After all, repartee is not easy. To do it stylishly requires effort and skill.

So, as the year ends and we prepare for the next, let me share a few gems. Now some of the best put-downs are attributed to Churchill vis-à-vis Lady Astor and George Bernard Shaw. But they're too well-known to bear repetition. Let me, instead, choose others as searing but less familiar.

First, the put-the-famous-in-their-place comment. Noel Coward once met Edna Ferber at the Algonquin Hotel in New York. "Miss Ferber, you look almost like a man." She promptly shot back: "And so do you, Mr Coward." Whilst Howard Hughes thus described Clark Gable: "His ears make him look like a taxi cab with both doors open." And David Susskind had this to say of Elizabeth Taylor's Cleopatra: "Overweight, overbosomed, overpaid and under-talented, she set the acting profession back a decade."