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"Georgy Porgy" is a 1960 horror short story by Roald Dahl, collected in Kiss Kiss . [1] The title is derived from "Georgie Porgie", a 19th-century English nursery rhyme. The story is about a neurotic and celibate vicar, George, who is pursued by lustful spinsters in his country parish.
The story is narrated by a sexually repressed vicar, George, who dislikes any kind of physical contact with women, though he appreciates their beauty. This becomes a problem in the village where his parish is, as the local spinsters try to seduce him. His anxieties may stem from a memory of his late mother, who, seeking to educate her young son, showed him a rabbit giving birth in a cage in their garage. The rabbit, however, then swallowed its baby whole, and George fled terrified into the night. His mother pursued, but was struck and killed by a car.
Constantly but painfully rebuffed by George, the spinsters increase their efforts to ensnare him over a period of years, and in an effort to understand their psychology he performs an experiment with rats taken from a choirboy. He separates males from females for three weeks, estimating a translation into three years of human abstinence. He then puts all the rats in the same box, dividing the sexes with a small electric fence. The first rat to try to breach the fence is male, but from that point forth only the females try crossing it, killing themselves one by one as they grow more desperate to reach the males. From these results George draws the conclusion that women are naturally predatory and sexually driven, absolving himself from any blame in the spinsters' behaviour. He decides to cultivate a cold and severe manner, thereby deterring further advances.
He is invited to a party hosted by Lady Birdwell, at which he is distant and sardonic with every woman he meets. That is until Miss Roach, a handsome and kindly middle-aged spinster, makes him what she says is a soft fruit drink. He loosens up (it is implied Miss Roach spiked his drink with alcohol), agrees to walk alone with her, and they end up in a summer house where George, apparently in a state of intoxication, starts kissing Miss Roach. She then appears to open her mouth into a large, daunting cave and, like the rabbit George saw as a boy, swallow him whole. He tries clinging to bits of her mouth, but slips easily down her throat until he lands in her stomach, where he meets several other men, mostly in white coats.
The implication is that, after attacking Miss Roach in the summer house, he was sectioned, and the men are doctors. From "inside" Miss Roach he hears the spinsters call him a "sex maniac" and "sadist", while it's suggested he maimed Miss Roach's mouth. He's happy to be where he is, however, because he worries that if he gets out the spinsters will catch him. The story ends with another man, possibly a psychiatrist, trying to convince George to escape with him, but George insists they are safer where they are.
The story was dramatised in series two, episode nine of Tales of the Unexpected , [2] first broadcast April 26, 1980. It was written by Robin Chapman and directed by Graham Evans. Joan Collins played both George's mother and Miss Roach. George was played by John Alderton.
Roald Dahl was a British author of popular children's literature and short stories, a poet, screenwriter and a wartime fighter ace. His books have sold more than 300 million copies worldwide. He has been called "one of the greatest storytellers for children of the 20th century".
The BFG is a 1982 children's novel by British author Roald Dahl. It is an expansion of a short story from Dahl's 1975 novel Danny, the Champion of the World. The book is dedicated to Dahl's oldest daughter, Olivia, who had died of measles encephalitis at the age of seven in 1962.
Matilda is a 1988 children's novel by British author Roald Dahl. It was published by Jonathan Cape. The story features Matilda Wormwood, a precocious child with an uncaring mother and father, and her time in school run by the tyrannical headmistress Miss Trunchbull.
Boy: Tales of Childhood (1984) is an autobiography written by British writer Roald Dahl. This book describes his life from early childhood until leaving school, focusing on living conditions in Britain in the 1920s and 1930s, the public school system at the time, and how his childhood experiences led him to writing children's books as a career. It concludes with his first job, working for Royal Dutch Shell. His life story continues in the book Going Solo.
James and the Giant Peach is a children's novel written in 1961 by British author Roald Dahl. The first edition, published by Alfred Knopf, featured illustrations by Nancy Ekholm Burkert. There have been re-illustrated versions of it over the years, done by Michael Simeon, Emma Chichester Clark, Lane Smith and Quentin Blake. It was adapted into a film of the same name in 1996 which was directed by Henry Selick, and a musical in 2010.
Kiss Kiss is a collection of short stories by Roald Dahl, first published in 1960 by Alfred A. Knopf. Most of the constituent stories had been previously published elsewhere.
George's Marvellous Medicine is a children's novel written by Roald Dahl and illustrated by Quentin Blake. First published by Jonathan Cape in 1981, it features George Kranky, an eight-year-old boy who concocts his own miracle elixir to replace his tyrannical grandmother's regular prescription medicine.
The Vicar of Nibbleswicke is a children's story written by Roald Dahl and illustrated by Quentin Blake. It was first published in 1991, after Dahl's death the previous year, by Century.
Danny, the Champion of the World is a 1975 children's novel by British author Roald Dahl. The plot centres on Danny, a young English boy, and his father, William. They live in a Gypsy caravan, fix cars for a living in their mechanic shop and partake in poaching pheasants. It was first published on February 14, 1975, in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. and in the United Kingdom by Jonathan Cape.
Switch Bitch (1974) is a book of adult short stories by British writer Roald Dahl. Four stories, originally published in Playboy between 1965 and 1974, are collected. They are linked by themes of rape by deception: in each one, some major act of cunning, cruelty, or hedonism underpins the sexuality.
"The Landlady" is a short horror story by Roald Dahl. It initially appeared in The New Yorker, as did other short stories that would later be reprinted in the 1960 anthology, Kiss Kiss.
"Lamb to the Slaughter" is a 1953 short story by Roald Dahl. It was initially rejected, along with four other stories, by The New Yorker, but was published in Harper's Magazine in September 1953. It was adapted for an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (AHP) that starred Barbara Bel Geddes and Harold J. Stone. Originally broadcast on April 13, 1958, this was one of only 17 AHP episodes directed by Hitchcock. The episode was ranked #59 of the Top 100 Episodes by TV Guide in 2009. The story was adapted for Dahl's British TV series Tales of the Unexpected. Dahl included it in his short story compilation Someone Like You. The narrative element of the housewife killing her husband and letting the policemen eat the evidence was used by Pedro Almodóvar in his 1984 movie What Have I Done to Deserve This?, with a leg of mutton.
The Great Automatic Grammatizator is a collection of thirteen short stories written by British author Roald Dahl. The stories were selected for teenagers from Dahl's adult works. All the stories included were published elsewhere originally; their sources are noted below. The stories, with the exception of the war story "Katina", possess a deadpan, ironic, bizarre, or even macabre sense of humor. They generally end with unexpected plot twists.
More Tales of the Unexpected is a collection of nine short stories by Roald Dahl. It was published in 1980 by Penguin. Five of the stories were published in prior collections, while the other four had not been previously collected in book form.
Georgy Porgy may refer to:
"Royal Jelly" is a short horror story by Roald Dahl. It was included in Dahl's 1960 collection Kiss Kiss and his 1979 collection Tales of the Unexpected, and later published as a standalone volume in 2011 and included in the February 1983 issue of Twilight Zone Magazine.
Roald Dahl (1916–1990) was a British author and scriptwriter, and "the most popular writer of children's books since Enid Blyton", according to Philip Howard, the literary editor of The Times. He was raised by his Norwegian mother, who took him on annual trips to Norway, where she told him the stories of trolls and witches present in the dark Scandinavian fables. Dahl was influenced by the stories, and returned to many of the themes in his children's books. His mother also nurtured a passion in the young Dahl for reading and literature.
The Witches, is a 2020 dark fantasy comedy horror film co-produced and directed by Robert Zemeckis, who co-wrote the screenplay with Kenya Barris and Guillermo del Toro, based on the 1983 novel The Witches by Roald Dahl. It is the second film adaptation of the novel, following The Witches (1990). The film stars Anne Hathaway, Octavia Spencer, Stanley Tucci, Kristin Chenoweth and Jahzir Bruno.
Roald & Beatrix: The Tail of the Curious Mouse is a Sky original made-for-television drama film inspired by the true story of a six-year-old Roald Dahl meeting his idol Beatrix Potter. It was written by Abigail Wilson and directed by David Kerr starring Dawn French as Beatrix Potter, Rob Brydon as William Heelis and Jessica Hynes as Sofie Dahl.