[pdurrant]

OK, no guesses at all? Let me put you out of your misery.

It's a book by Frank Muir and Denis Norden "The Complete and Utter ‘My Word’ Collection".

There used to be a radio show called "My Word". A sort of literary quiz. The last round was to explain the origin of a famous phrase or saying. But instead of attempting the true answers, Frank Muir and Denis Norden took to making up fanciful stories.

Apparently, according the the introduction to the book, the first quotations in the first show were "Let not poor Nellie starve" and "Dead, dead and never called me Mother!", for which they came up with

"It was first said by the chef at the Savoy when, late at night and short of puddings, he poured things over a peach, hastily christened it "Peach Melba", and sent it out to a famished Dame Nellie Melba"

"It was first said by a lad reeling away from a vandalised phone-box after failing to telephone his parent."

And as time went on, the stories got longer, and the puns got more contrived.

This book is a collection of those stories.

[EDIT: In case anyone didn't get it, the quote punned in the first except I gave (above) is "Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner".]

Someone else, give us a book excerpt.