"Wooster", those who know me have sometimes said, "may be a pretty total loss during the daytime hours, but plunge the world in darkness, switch on the soft lights, uncork the champagne and shove a dinner into him, and you'd be surprised."The hilarious fictional world of P. G. "Plum" Wodehouse is a gourmand's paradise. From Bertie Wooster demolishingSylphides a` la Cre`me d'E¿crevisses, to Lord Emsworth tucking into a well-jammed roly-poly pudding, to a schoolboy toasting a muffin at the study fire, "browsing and sluicing" is not simply eating and drinking but a daily celebration of being alive. How many other writers actually make their readers feel hungry? Plum can ... and does, while alerting them to the perils of over-consumption, dieting and food fads.
So grab yourself a half bot of something half decent and settle back with this, the first of Paul Kent's occasional amuse-bouches on Wodehousean themes. Bon appe¿tit!

Paul Kent is the Vice-Chairman of the P G Wodehouse Society (UK), and has been a fan of the great man for longer than he cares to remember. Between 2019 and 2022, he published a trilogy of books that offers a comprehensive tour of Wodehouse's creative imagination - 'This is jolly old Fame', 'Mid-Season Form' and 'The Happiness of the World' - which seeks to prove that Plum was not just a great comic writer, but a great writer, period. Books 4 and 5 of the trilogy - respectively 'Plum's Literary Heroes' and 'Plum at the Theatre' - are currently in preparation; and the first ten occasional essays entitled What Ho! are available now: they are Wodehouse on Food, Sport, Love, Money, Class, Cats, Dogs, Hollywood, Fashion, Childhood, and Faith.