ABSTRACT
Leaving a New York hotel, Noel Coward was approached by an over-eager admirer. The woman cried, ‘You remember me. I met you with Douglas Fairbanks’. Coward responded, ‘Madam, I don’t even remember Douglas Fairbanks’. But few could be more direct than Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, the ‘Iron Duke’. A fawning man who had been presented to him had said, ‘This is the proudest moment of my life my lord’. Wellesley’s reply was, ‘Don’t be a fool sir’. Such directness, while unpleasant for the recipient, is refreshing in a world where so much is oblique. Direct teaching therefore starts with the advantage of being positively named.
