Up Pompeii

Provincial plot to assassinate Emperor Nero fails, thanks to a slave’s intrigue, but the whole thing comes crashing down anyway.

In Pompeii they still do Christians and lions, Nero’s on to wrestling. Christians are hippies, in prison they won’t help with a tunnel, “we don’t dig ‘em.”

The proconsul wants to be emperor, Ludicrus Sextus wants to clean up Pompeii, Lurcio wants Scrubba at the end, but Cassandra’s prophecy turns all to pumice.

“Scrub daintily,” says Lurcio.

Up the Chastity Belt

This is a provision against spoilage whilst Crusading amidst Sal Saladin’s oars.

“Ha-ha, Lurkalot the First, yes, of Essex, Sussex and Wessex. That’s a lot of land, and a lot of sex.”

Robin Hood gets generally sent up in a rearguard action.

Cœur-de-lion’s twin fetches him back, the serf and brother raised by pigs at the order of evil barons. Lurkalot has a Do It Thyself Bird invention and a chastity belt of his own design, with a combination lock, it helps to prevent depredations at home. Contrariwise, he also sells a love potion.

The complexity of the arrangement seems to have defeated the critics, their gobs were stoppered mightily.

Up the Front

Tommy Atkins, underfootman to the Twithamptons, rises to colonel in the Great War, only to do it all over again in ’39.

Savior of Britain, by dint of patriotic hypnosis. The German master plan’s tattooed on his bum by British Intelligence, all he must do is show it to General Burke.

“I don’t know why you’re looking tired,” he tells a soldier, “I’ve been writing poetry.”

Neil Simon borrowed Mata Hari’s line for The Cheap Detective, “I even intoxicate myself.”

Are You Being Served?

Romance on the Costa Plonka, where an uprising is underway.

German tourists, Conchita, the Earl of Harman, Cesar of the thirteen men, and the singing loo.

Grace Bros. is redecorating, which accounts for the interval.