How Now, Brown Cow? #socs

Stream of Consciousness Saturday 2 Minutes
Image by photosforyou from Pixabay

Funny how that happens: I wet to Pixabay and put "how" into the search engine, and about half the pictures were of cats with their mouths open. Well, okay, I’m exaggerating, but even so, it was a little unexpected. Maybe they thought I said "meow."

We had a news anchor in Chicago named Fahey Flynn. He was a dapper-looking white-haired Irishman who always wore a bow tie, and always opened his newscasts with "How do you do, ladies and gentlemen? I’m Fahey Flynn, and here’s what’s happening at ten (or six) o’clock." Like this…

He always seemed to be in a good mood, probably because he’d spend much of the evening at the bar of the State-Lake Restaurant.

That’s kind of a funny expression, "how do you do?" It doesn’t make a lot of syntactical sense, honestly, but that’s what we were taught to say when being introduced to someone, back in the olden days. Vic Mizzy, who wrote the theme songs for The Addams Family and Green Acres, also wrote the theme for The Pruitts of Southampton, later called The Phyllis Diller Show, and incorporated "how do you do," pronounced "howja do," into it.

The title of this post is a popular saying (or was, when I was younger), and it was used in the 1998 movie The Avengers starring Uma Thurman, Ralph Fiennes, and Sean Connery. This was not the superhero movie, but a movie that remembered the TV show The Avengers that starred Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg. For a brief moment in this clip, at 0:18 to be exact, you hear her say it…

She says it several times in the movie. We saw it back when it was a new movie, and were suitably underwhelmed by it, but it was a fairly enjoyable hour and a half.

Linda brings us Stream of Consciousness Saturday every week. Now this word from Coca-Cola. Give yourself a break: have a Coke!

Those glasses are tiny!

Published by John Holton

Internet disc jockey, lover of old TV (especially the commercials), inveterate wise guy.

Published

24 thoughts on “How Now, Brown Cow? #socs”

  1. I want to see the original Avengers…
    Phyllis Diller…I grew up with her on television…she was great and one of the few women comedians that I knew of.

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  2. I had no idea Phyllis Diller had a TV Show. I would love to watch it as I am a big fan of hers. She was an accomplished pianist too. I should try and watch The Avengers again…love the TV show with Diana Rigg as Emma Peel. How now brown cow is an oldie but a goodie. Good ole Coca Cola in the tiny glasses but that’s all it should be in.

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    1. We have a local station that keeps playing the Honor Blackmon “Cathy Gale” episodes over and over. “The Avengers” was a whole lot different then. In fact, the first season Ian Hendry was the star and Patrck MacNee was the second banana. The Diana Rigg “Emma Peel” episodes started when ABC in the US started working with ABC in England and financed a lot of it. Rigg and Julie Newmar were the first women that made me uncomfortable to watch…

      Phyllis Diller was hilarious, with her crazy outfits and wild hair. She had a couple of albums out that were filled with the kind of stuff she couldn’t do on TV, at least not in the ’60’s. She could also play the harpsichord. She was on The Tonight Show and played some beautiful stuff.

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  6. The television was always on in our house when I was growing up. I remember one night when my brother and I happened to be in the room when Fahey Flynn came on and delivered his customary “how do you do” greeting, and my brother and I responded in unison, “How do I do what?”

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    1. Do you remember when Fahey was on channel 2? It was him, PJ Hoff with the weather, and Bruce Roberts with sports. He used to have a little sign on his desk with the sponsor, either Standard Oil or the Santa Fe Railroad.

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      1. I can’t remember what channel we watched him on. I just remember the “how do you do” business, and the fact that my friend Karen always called him “Flakey Flint.” I have a very selective memory.

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      1. The “kids” will be 18 and 21 this summer! They are getting to be amazing adult people. =)

        I’m doing well, too. I didn’t really quit… just had a hiatus that lasted a lot longer than expected, because death, life, and pandemic happened.

        Easing back in with SoCS. =)

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  8. I remember my father saying “How now brown cow?” a number of times when I was small. I guess we thought it was funny so he kept saying it. Or maybe he just liked saying it.

    Arlee Bird
    Tossing It Out

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