In a manner of speaking

A new Oxford Dictionary of ...uphemisms is about to hit the shops. John Walsh takes a small libation with well-informed sources

I was having a couple of sharpeners at the Groucho, just standing on my tod and on the pull at the bar, checking out the talking cardigans and the nymphs of darkness, when who should come in but Tony Mann. "Fancy a noggin, old boy?" I said. "Or are you on the wagon?" We decided to paint the town red, but first we chewed the fat for a while. Tony's wife is in pod and has a watermelon on the vine, so it's not exactly rocket science to work out that he likes to slip away from the family hearth and shoot the breeze with his BFs.

"How's business?" I cried. "Glad you asked," he said. "I have a temporary liquidity problem. Been on my uppers ever since I was deep-sixed by the bank for speculating with their assets. Tried to tell them it was just an equity equivalent contingent participation, but TJ wouldn't listen and fired me. Practically called me a tea leaf. Said I was lucky not to end up with Her Majesty. Already installed some oikish little cookie-pusher in my office. That TJ - a complete See You Next Thursday in my view..."

Just then I spotted Bruno Puttanesco heading our way. Bruno is an ad-man who plays from the pavilion end, nothing wrong with that, many of my media pals are players of the pink oboe, but Bruno is fabulously indiscreet. Give him 90 seconds and he'll tell you who's been dancing the blanket hornpipe in the Cabinet, the BBC, the National Theatre, the College of Cardinals, the Oval Office and the offices of The Lady. But he can be a little grating on the nerves, so we high-tailed it.

"Your friend," said Tony. "Is he...?"

"You guessed right," I told him. "He does indeed yodel from the highest tower."

Out in Soho, the streets were full of negatively privileged chaps lying in doorways, begging. I thought at first they were people with a relaxed approach to sobriety or had recently been sprung from a correctional facility, but they seemed to be the real McCoy. Tony and I gave them 50p and moved on down Dean Street.

"You're walking funny," he said. "What's wrong? Pain in the old love grenades?"

"No," I said coldly. "My Chalfonts are playing up something rotten."

"Eewww," said Tony. So we tried another club, copped a snort at Binkie's, floored a slug at Torquil's, were offered some China white at the Ten Club, and ended up parking a tiger at Ruddy Joe's. "I feel as queer as Dick's hatband," moaned Tony, but a reviving Slow Comfortable Screw soon had him back on his feet.

That's when we met Mandy Jane, the most attractive of the club's many poules de luxe. She has a reputation as a bit of a Banbury Cross equestrian - some go so far as to call her a slut-puppy and a Little Miss Roundheels - but that didn't bother Tony. You could tell he was dying to sow a few wild oats in Mandy Jane's direction. "She's gorgeous," he hissed. "How I'd love to part her from her foundation garment, and dip the schnitzel for a considerasble length of time". Sounding a note of caution, I counselled that, should he be planning a bit of how's-yer-father with the young lady, I trust he had had the foresight to bring something for the weekend.

"Curses," he said. "I've no Reggie and Ronnies about my person. Could you oblige me with a one-piece overcoat?" But it was no use. My friend's sexual ambitions were doomed to end in a date with Fisty Palmer. And the way Mandy Jane was looking at him suggested that she thought that their union would be a fate worse than death.

He went through a choice selection of expletives deleted, until the management objected and we ran the risk of helping the police with their enquiries. "I have Sweet Fanny Adams left in my wallet," said Tony. "And I am a stranger to 20-20 vision. Frankly, I feel ready to exchange this life for a better one and join the choir invisible. I'm fit for nothing more strenuous than an eventide home for the intellectually challenged. Frankly, I feel so bad, I wouldn't mind if they put me up against a wall and terminated me with extreme prejudice."

I couldn't abandon my old pal to these gloomy thoughts of going the long meander and buying the farm. So I told him to powder his nose in the Gents, and accompany me in a low-budget minicab to my fashionable home, where I put him to bed on the sofa. "It's been a wild night," he said, weakly. "Bloody good fun," I said. "If you'll pardon my French."

'The Oxford Dictionary of Euphemisms', £7.99; see also 'The Big Book of Filth' by Jonathon Green, Cassell, £5.99