Does us credit

 

Bathos is one way of being ironic. You set the listener up – then you pull away the chair just as he’s about to sit down.

I can hardly contain my indifference. Kenneth Horne (script by Barry Took and Marty Feldman)

This gun handles with all the grace of a breezeblock. Antiques Roadshow

The Rosicrucians are about as secret as margarine. Fortean Times, May 09

Expectations ran low (for WNO’s subtextual Fledermaus) Rupert Christiansen, Telegraph 2002

Andrew Gimson charts the meteoric downfall of Chris Mullin, a Labour gentleman, as revealed in his new volume of diaries, Decline and Fall. Telegraph 17 Sept 2010

Learn to laugh at yourself – we certainly have.

You have a great future behind you.

Actor goes under the top.

The afternoon dramas on Radio 4 never fail to sink the spirits. Caitlin Moran, Times mag December 11, 2010"

[Boxer] Joe Louis is a credit to his race—the human race."  journalist Jimmy Cannon

“He loathes her!” “He loathed her intimately.” Dialogue from The Dark Corner c. 1945 (spoken by Clifton Webb)

 “My heart belongs to you but my cock is community property” ZZ Top sang in one of their more sensitive moments. David Sinclair Times Oct 30 09

a dish that is often compared to moussaka, though not always favourably (Web)

a heart of pure tin

Alan Partridge ... whose vanity and stupidity were laced through by a core of real nastiness. Andrew Billen Times Oct 8 08

all modern inconveniences

All the guides are very jolly in the worst sense of the word. Sybil Hart-Davis

an ordinary suburban life, local comp, 2.4 tortoises (artist Nick Relph)

Any further suggestions will be gratefully shredded.

Blood is thicker than water – but only if you add cornflour and Bovril. Spike Milligan

Churchill called Stalin’s Russia “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” Kim Jong Il’s North Korea is much the same, minus the transparency.

clear as mud

conducting which invests Mozart’s score with all the scintillating joie de vivre of a Victorian hymnbook. Richard Morrison on Die Zauberflöte Times January 30, 2008

Discretion is the better part of valour; the other parts of it are called'Run for it,' 'help', 'I surrender' and 'Christ, here they come again.' Spike Milligan

Don’t forget she lives in dire wealth. Muriel Spark

Frankfurt – like Croydon, but less exciting.

Hans Pfitzner's opera Palestrina: like Parsifal without the jokes.

He rose without trace. (said of David Frost)

He turned up missing.

He’s a mine of misinformation.

His ignorance is encyclopaedic.

His one liners kept on coming, unfortunately. Andrew Billen Times Nov 24 09

His voice rose to a murmur. (Simon Hoggart)

I could barely contain my boredom.

I plead temporary sanity.

I started out with nothing and still have most of it left.

I worked my way up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty. Groucho Marx

I’d like to shake him warmly by the throat.

I’d say “Call me old fashioned” (or Ishmael – your choice) whatnottocrochet website

If you have mobile phones, now is the time to turn them on.

If you’re not familiar with John Duncan Fergusson or the Scottish Colourists, this exhibition may strike you as quaintly parochial – full of the charm of the forgotten, but ultimately quite unimportant. Hephzibah Anderson, ES January 6, 2005

It has to be seen to be disbelieved.

It is thought to eat like lobster – by those of a lively imagination. Mrs Dods’s cookery book 1829.

It was a howling failure.

It was the kind of show where you came out whistling the scenery.

kicked upstairs

Life is so full of preposterous pretensions and lies and nonsense and fraud and chicanery and deceptions; there’s so much sick, strange, weird, neurotic behaviour, that it’s an infinitely interesting study. Jackie Mason

Mind you, there is nothing that can't be made worse by the addition of tinned carrots and cumin. commenter on guardian.co.uk (Followed up by: Any and all of the recipes on this website are clear evidence, as if it were needed, that we live in a cold unfeeling universe bereft of any kind of benevolent deity.)

music made difficult

overwhelmingly average

peace breaks out

plumbs the shallows/plumbs new shallows

pure as the driven slush (Dorothy Parker)

race to the bottom

runs the gamut from A to B (Dorothy Parker)

scrape off the sham tinsel and reveal the real tinsel underneath

She ideas beneath her station.

sheepin sheep’s clothing

snatch defeat from the jaws of victory

The boundless, puppyish optimism of the performers is deeply depressing. Lyn Gardner Guardian June 10, 2008

the calm before the calm

the screen presence of a roll of lino (Patrick McCarthy, Guardian June 27, 2007)

The vast minority of our time should be spent on this.

There’s less to this than meets the eye.

They used to laugh when I stood up to speak - now they gag me. Albert Campion

this incident-packed novel gave much entertainment, most of it intentional, to its many readers. (Nicholas Parsons on A Lady of Quality by Frances Hodgson Burnett – no, not that Nicholas Parsons)

This is not a book to be cast aside lightly – it should be thrown with great force. Dorothy Parker

thrown into a frenzy of apathy

Tim Henman remains utterly unspoilt by failure. Joe Joseph Times June 12 06

Will it affect the price? Only dramatically. Bargain Hunt

wine flowed like cement

without selling out to Bohemia Jackie Wullschlager in the Financial Times on Rousseau Nov 05