http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/winston-churchill/11374144/How-to-drink-like-Winston-Churchill.html
Ouch!
Lady Astor: "Mr. Churchill, you're drunk!"
Winston Churchill: "Yes, and you, Madam, are ugly. But tomorrow, I shall be sober."
Lady Astor: "if I were your wife I would put poison in your tea."
Churchill: " If you were my wife I would drink it."
Both not true quite I'm afraid.
The drunk/ugly exchange was actually between Churchill and the Labour MP Bessie Braddock, who may also have been the real foil of some of his other quotes.
The poison joke appeared in print around 1900, but Churchill may well have reused it. Nancy Astor and Churchill did have a somewhat acid relationship when she first entered Parliament (as the first woman to take a seat as a MP), but the relationship mellowed over time, he was a regular guest at Cliveden, the Astor's country house on the Thames, far more regular than a lot of other politicians of the time.
Sometime in the 1950s a book was published, "All That Glitters", which set Lady Astor as the victim of various Churchill witticisms (regardless of whether he really said them or not) and since then it has entered folklore.
One of the funny stories which is true is that Lady Astor regularly rode on the back of Lawrence of Arabia's motorcycle and the pair of them whized around the country lanes near Cliveden at high speed, much to the disapproval of her husband!
An essential for any raconteur is the ability not to let truth get in the way of a good story :)
Also ...
Churchill: "Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds?"
Socialite: "My goodness, Mr. Churchill... Well, I suppose... we would have to discuss terms, of course... "
Churchill: "Would you sleep with me for five pounds?"
Socialite: "Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?!"
Churchill: "Madam, we've already established that. Now we are haggling about the price"
In a similar vein, Blucher was attending a dinner function in London post-Waterloo. Speaking to the lady in the next seat he said:
Blucher: What beautifully soft hands you have.
Lady: Thank you, I wear calfskin gloves to keep my hands soft.
Blucher: I wear calfskin britches but the do nothing for my ar*e!
Might be apocryphal, might be true but still made me chuckle.
MickS
;D ;D ;D - and the Germans have no sense of humour?
;D
Blucher did not speak English so he probably said "Hinternenkalbslederhosen"