Can I dip my bread in your gravy?

Can anyone tell me the Carry On film in which Bernard Bresslaw says to (I think) Jim Dale, ‘Can I dip my bread in your gravy?’ Both are incarcerated in adjacent prison cells. Bresslaw removes a stone in the wall between them, pops his head through and asks the question. Dale, as acquiescent as ever, hands over his dish of gravy. Predictably, Bresslaw takes it back through the hole in the wall. Then, with true comic timing, the next thing we see is the stone being replaced and a suitably indignant Dale cursing his luck. It’s one of my favourite Carry On moments. Partly because ‘gravy’ is one of my favourite words, carrying so many meanings, yet always returning to its simple, viscous self. As a wordsmith, it’s important to have favourite words. Even if you are very unlikely to use them in your daily work. For they act as a perfect counterbalance to the payload of corporate vocabulary we all recycle every day.

Mark Griffiths www.idealconsulting.co.uk