Tintin Forums

Since people seemed to enjoy looking for presidential surnames (Q141), here's a question in a similar vein:

Can you find three things portrayed in the Tintin books that match three different surnames (or titled names) of UK Prime Minsters?

A few clarifications (to avoid tricky adjudications I hope!):

As with the presidential question, I'm asking for three different Prime-Ministerial names, not just three different Prime Ministers, so any surname shared by more than one PM can only be counted once. (Not sure if that's relevant to any actual answers, but best to be clear.)

By things portrayed in the Tintin books, I mean any ordinary noun, abstract noun or proper noun (place name, person's name, company name etc) that's pictured in the drawings or written in text, so a pretty wide range is available. But the spelling of the word and the PM's name has to be the same so, for instance, a "pit" in a moon crater wouldn't count for William Pitt.

For the purposes of this question, I'm defining "UK Prime Ministers" as people who have held that post from Robert Walpole (1721) onwards, since he's regarded by many historians (and Wikipedia) as the first Prime Minister in the modern sense of the term (even though the actual term wasn't used officially until much later). The total list of these Prime Ministers can easily be found on the web (on Wikipedia and elsewhere).

Some Prime Ministers had an aristocratic title as well as a surname (eg: Robert Walpole, who was also the Earl of Orford). In such cases, either their surname (Walpole) or their titled name (Orford) may be used in an answer, as long as the title was held at the time of them being Prime Minister. (Walpole's a hypothetical example, obviously. I don't think there are actually any Walpoles or Orfords in the Tintin books!)

I think I can spot more than half a dozen possible answers. Obviously, the first person to give three right answers wins the point, though feel free to add extra ones for the fun and the glory!

Yikes, Balthazar! If this were Canadian Prime Ministers, I might stand a chance, but I don't know any UK PM's apart from Churchill! I don't expect anybody outside of the UK would have much understanding of the peerage system, either...

Sorry, gonna sit this one out...

Sorry if this one seems impossible to non-UK citizens, castafiole; that wasn't my intention at all, and I really don't think you are actually at a disadvantage as a non-Brit. To be honest, many (maybe most) of the eighteenth and nineteenth century Prime Ministers that might be required to answer this question aren't exactly household names to us Brits either! The trick (as I hinted) is to type the words: "List of Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom" into Wikipedia. Then you'll have the full list in front of you, and you'll see that plenty of their names are actually words for fairly everyday things - things that can be found reasonably easily in the Tintin books.

And no understanding of the peerage system is required either. (I certainly have almost no understanding of it myself!) I simply meant that where a Prime Minister is listed as having had two last names during his time in office - both an ordinary surname and a "Duke of...", or "Earl of...", or "Marquis of..." name as well - either name would be eligible for this quiz question. (You'll see that this widens the scope of available words to use as answers.)

Hope that helps - give it a go!

OK, I hope these count:

Crab with the Golden Claws - adventure starts with a little incident with a crab "can" - Geroge Canning, PM in 1827.

Shooting Star - Tintin, Captain Haddock and the crew of the recovery ship sail North to retrieve the meteor - Lord North UK PM in 1770.

Tintin in the Land of the Soviets - a particularly stupid KGB operative tries to stop Tintin by making him slip on a banana peel - Sir Robert Peel, UK PM in 1835.

Not bad at all.

Lord North was on my list, and that's fine.

Sir Robert Peel (who incidentally is still well known of in Britain, because he founded the police force) was also on my list. The example you give though is from Tintin in the Land of the Soviets which according to quiz rule two - "Questions should be based on the English language colour edition Tintin books" isn't included in the quiz. However, there are plenty of other examples of fruit peel in the colour Tintin books (at least one of another banana peel).

Canning was one I hadn't thought of. The example you give is a bit wobbly to count, as you've found a "can" rather than "a canning". The word canning is usually a verb, but I suppose it could just be counted as a noun if someone or something was said to be "getting a canning"!

Trivia Quiz rule four actually states that "each player is allowed 1 attempt per question", but in the interests of encouraging new members into the quiz, I'd be inclined to bend this rule on this occasion and let you come back with a revised answer, as long as ed the quizmaster allows it.

So, Castafiole, if you can give me an instance of peel from one of the colour books and give me an instance of something being given a canning in a canning factory in a Tintin book (I can think of one such instance), I'll give you the point.

However -to keep it fair - if anyone else wants to beat Castafiole to it, and puts forward three different valid Prime Ministers first, they'll get the point.

Ed the Quizmaster, is it OK for me to try again, as per Balthazar's post?

In case it is:

Tintin engages the Chicago gangsters in a fight in a canning factory in "Tintin in America", so maybe that will count...

And does't someone slip on a banana peel in "the Black Island", during the fight with Ranko at the ruined Castle?

I also recall some nameless baddie slipping on an orange in "Temple of the Sun", but that was the whole fruit, not just the peel. But it was the peel he stepped on! :)

Sorry, doing this at work, and therefore completely from memory.

And in case it isn't OK for me to try again, please just ignore me. I'll be in the corner over here. :)

Ed the Quizmaster, is it OK for me to try again, as per Balthazar's post?

I should think so - though it will be up to Balthazar to decide whether you are correct!

Ed

I think I've found some more avatars or representations of British PMs:

- 1812 Robert Jenkinson, Earl of Liverpool: LIVERPOOL can be read on the wall in The Blue Lotus (p.18-A2)

- 1830 Charles Grey, Earl Grey: a "GREY flannel" is mentioned in The Broken Ear (p.4-B3)

- 1834 Sir Robert Peel: a banana PEEL features in Cigars (p.49-B3)

- 1916 David Lloyd George: St GEORGE features in Ottokars' Sceptre (around p.30, last panel, with a dragon)

- 1922 Andrew Bonar Law: "In the name of the LAW" is uttered in Cigars (p.4-D3)

- 1970 Edward Heath: some HEATH (wasteland) features in The Emerald (p.1-B2)

- 1990 John Major: one MAJOR Kardouk features in The Calculus Affair (p.55, panel 13)


see PMs' list on http://www.psr.keele.ac.uk/area/uk/pm.htm

Yep, Castafiole, the canning factory in Tintin in America was the instance I had in mind to make that part of your entry work a bit better. (We see a cow getting a "canning", and Tintin nearly gets canned too.)

I don't think any banana peel features in the Ranko scenes in The Black Island (the banana skin scene I had in mind is in Cigars of the Pharaoh, on the railway platform), but there is a lot of orange peel in Prisoners of the Sun. (It surely still counts as peel even when its still on the fruit.) Zorrino's oranges get knocked all over the road by the bullies who Tintin challenges, and Haddock knocks over a bowl of fruit when he attempts to jump that long table in their luxury cell, towards the end of the book. I don't think anyone slips on the fruit as you remember, but obviously this isn't critical to it counting as peel, and I appreciate you're working from memory! So I think you're close enough, Castafiole.

So, since Ed has allowed your revised second entry on principle, the point and the task of setting the next question are yours. Well done!

The other PMs I could spot in the Tintin books are:

The Duke of Wellington.
One of the forgers in The Black Island is wearing green wellington boots.

The Earl Grey.
Grey can be a noun as well as an adjective (and verb), according to my dictionary, either meaning a particularly identified grey colour or pigment (as in "this grey is darker than that grey"), or a grey horse. Plenty of grey colours throughout the Tintin books, and a few grey horses as well.

The Viscount Melbourne.
I think that Qantas V-Jet at the star of Flight 714 (which featured in one of Ranko's quiz questions) has the name "City of Melbourne" written beneath the cockpit windows.

Neville Chamberlain.
The Lord Chamberlain of Syldavia confers with the King on page 42 of King Ottokar's Sceptre.

Edward Heath
I think the grassland that Tintin crash lands onto when he arrives in Scotland in The Black Island could maybe count as a heath.

John Major.
One of the Japanese officers in The Blue Lotus is a major. (He can be seen talking with Dawson, who refers to him by rank, on page 29.)

There may well be others. (Edit: Now that I've posted this, I see that whilst I was typing this list, yamilah was posting hers. Sorry for thus repeating some, and well done on the new ones you spotted, yamilah.

One I was tempted to include, but which doesn't quite count as a real word, was The Earl of Beaconsfield (Benjamin Disraelli's title). Does Müller's large garden with the three red beacons lit count as a Beaconsfield? Maybe not!