Have your cake and eat it too

Posted by ESC on January 08, 2010 at 14:03

In Reply to: Have your cake and eat it too posted by Gary Martin on January 08, 2010 at 12:17:

: : Does anyone know the origin of "You want to have your cake and eat it too"?

: That's come up here before, so you could try searching for it.

: I can't get past the memory of Dennis Norden's gag on the BBC radio show 'My Word'. Contestants had to invent comic stories that explained how phrases were coined. Norden came up with a tale about an Eskimo (it was Eskimo in those days - the 1950s if memory serves) setting fire to his canoe after lighting a primus stove in it to make a cup of tea. Hence, "you can't have your kayak and heat it too".

: Without Dennis and his fellow 50s BBC Radio wordsmiths, this website wouldn't have happened, so thank you to them.

And I think of the song, "You Can't Have Your Kate And Edith, Too."