Thinking man's/woman's crumpet
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In British English, the thinking man's crumpet or thinking woman's crumpet is a humorous term for a person who is popular with the opposite sex because of their intelligence and their physical attractiveness.[1]
The expression is derived from the slang use of the term "crumpet" to refer to a woman who is regarded as an object of sexual desire.[2]
Usage
The first person to be called "the thinking man's crumpet" was Joan Bakewell, by humourist Frank Muir, following her appearances in high-brow television discussion programmes such as BBC2's Late Night Line-Up.[3] Bakewell is still synonymous with the phrase, but it has subsequently been applied to other high-profile women such as Anne Gregg,[4] Joanna Lumley,[4] Kate Bush and Felicity Kendal,[4] and, more recently, Helen Mirren[5] Jennifer Saunders, Lucy Worsley and Gillian Anderson.[6] Trumpeter Alison Balsom is sometimes referred to as the "trumpet crumpet".[7] In a poll in the Radio Times in 2003, Nigella Lawson received the most votes to be the readers' "thinking man's crumpet",[8] with Carol Vorderman in second place.[citation needed]
Almost half a century after Muir deployed the term, Bakewell (by then Baroness Bakewell and a Dame of the British Empire) remarked that "it has taken me a lifetime to live it down. It was meant as a compliment I suppose, but it was a little bit of a put-down".[9]
Actors Benedict Cumberbatch, Colin Firth and Bill Nighy have been repeatedly called by the press "the thinking woman's crumpet".[10][11][12][13][14][15] But even before them, Michael Kitchen was acclaimed as "the thinking woman's crumpet" in a review in "The Mail" in November 2003.
After the release of the 1997 film Titanic, Kate Winslet was dubbed by one newspaper as "the sinking man's crumpet",[16][17] but this moniker was repeated by only one other British newspaper.
Stewart Lee uses the phrase "crumpet man's thinker" in his stand up, referring to Andrew Graham Dixon.
References
- ↑ the thinking woman's/man's crumpet - definition in the British English Dictionary & Thesaurus - Cambridge Dictionaries Online
- ↑ Crumpet, from World Wide Words.
- ↑ An affair to remember, The Daily Telegraph, 5 October 2003.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Obituary, The Independent, 9 September 2006.
- ↑ Helen Mirren: A real drama queen, The Independent, 3 September 2006.
- ↑ The X Files Uncovered, Fox Home Entertainment.
- ↑ See, for example, Daily Mail, 10 September 2009 and 3 June 2011
- ↑ Press Release, BBC Worldwide, 22 September 2003.
- ↑ Quoted in The Oldie, June 2014
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- ↑ Shinan Govani: Tapping Idris Elba and Benedict Cumberbatch, the Titans of TIFF | National Post
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