Four Sir Winston Churchill Stories

I.
 
During the wartime coalition, Churchill had to offer jobs to some of his political opponents, but minimized their role by giving them fairly pointless jobs. One of these jobs was the Lord Privy Seal, whose responsibilities involved supervising state papers.

One day the Lord Privy Seal sent an aide to get Churchill's signature, and the aide tracked down the Prime Minister by detecting clouds of cigar smoke billowing from under the door of one of the cubicles in the House of Commons lavatory. 'Prime Minister', the aide said, 'the Lord Privy Seal requires your signature on an important document'

Annoyed at being bothered by a man he particularly disliked, he replied 'Tell the Lord Privy Seal that I am sealed in my privy'.   There was a pause, and he added, 'And I can only deal with one shit at a time'.


II.

Lady Astor: "If I were married to you, I'd put poison in your coffee."

Sir Winston Churchill: "If I were married to you, I'd drink it."


III. 

Churchill was once waiting to be called on stage to give a speech to a huge crowd. The person who was to introduce him leaned over and asked, 'Doesn't it thrill you Mr. Churchill, to see all those people out there who came just to listen to you?'

Churchill replied, 'It is very flattering, but whenever I feel this way I always remember that if instead of making a political speech I was being hanged, the crowd would be twice as big'.

IV.

The Minister of Fuel and Power, Hugh Gaitskell, later Attlee's successor as leader of the Labour Party, advocated saving energy by taking fewer baths: "Personally, I have never had a great many baths myself, and I can assure those who are in the habit of having a great many that it does not make a great difference to their health if they have less."

This was too much for Churchill, a renowned bather: "When Ministers of the Crown speak like this on behalf of HM Government, the Prime Minister and his friends have no need to wonder why they are getting increasingly into bad odor. I have even asked myself, when meditating upon these points, whether you, Mr. Speaker, would admit the word 'lousy' as a Parliamentary expression in referring to the Administration, provided, of course, it was not intended in a contemptuous sense but purely as one of factual narration."