joke

[BertiWooster]

What is the origin of the phrase - '' said the Bishop to the actress '' - when someone says it in response to something someone else says ?

[Quizmonster]

"As the actress said to the bishop" first appeared in one of the �Saint' books by Leslie Charteris in 1935. The actual quote there was: "What's in a name? - as the actress said to the bishop when he told her she reminded him of Aspasia."
(Aspasia was the mistress of Pericles in ancient Athens, notorious for her naughty private life.) On a similar basis today, the phrase is invariably used as a suggestion of sexual impropriety often in the form of a double entendre.

[andy-hughes]

I don't know hwo you do it QM, but like all on here, I am very glad that you do!

[ELVIS68]

I know how he does it,

Google!

[fredpuli47]

Elvis, that's unfair! Yerman QM has been giving answers of this quality from long before Google was invented. There are such things as books, you know !

[Quizmonster]

Thanks for your kind comments, Andy and Fred. The question has been asked many times before here and elsewhere and - like all such - it has lain in my own little 'encyclop�dia' for years, ready to be brought out on demand.
At no point did I consult Google or Wikipedia in order to find it originally. But what the hey! The easy-way-outers will always be prepared to make such comments.

[andy-hughes]

Well said QM - there are people of - ahem - a 'certain age' who just happen to know things because they have experience of life and culture, not because they simply hit a search engine.

[Quizmonster]

Andy, I suppose that - if 70 doesn't qualify as 'a certain age' - nothing does! I suppose it is easy for younger people to forget that, for the vast bulk of my life, I had no access to any of the information-sources available today other than written ones.
I recall being quite excited by the advent of television in ordinary people's lives and of of the calculator! Accordingly, I had acquired just a smidgeon of information about all sorts of things long before the computer even came along. Thanks again.

[jonesytwotwo]

Hey QM. And you are so so modest, too. But carry on, please. I am fascinated by origins of sayings.

[Quizmonster]

You can count on my continuing to throw in my twopenn'orth - some of which I may actually have found via Google! - wherever I think it'll help, Jonesy. Cheers

[juandelacruz]

Thank God quizmaster still says two penn'orth. I've heard a few people say "two cents worth". However Partridge seems to think it goes back to Edwardian days and refers to the parallel expression "as the soldier said to the girl." He doesn't give any evidence though. There was a scandal in the 18th century of a bishop and an actress (they were like our "models" in those days) which might have been the origin. It's not surprising if phrases stay hidden for many years - at one time books were written for and by those who went to Good Schools.