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Richard J. Needham (1912–1996) was a Canadian humour columnist for ''The Globe and Mail''. Many of his columns were collected in a variety of books, including ''The Garden of Needham'' and ''Needham's Inferno'', which won the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour in 1967. Needham also coined ''Mop and Pail'' and ''Grope and Flail'' as unflattering nicknames for his employer, both of which are still in use today. Needham was influenced by the work of H.L. Mencken, whose credited comments, especially about politicians and women, found their way into his columns. Needham spent most of his career on the ''Globe'' His own bon mots, such as "Every woman needs one man in her life who is strong and responsible. Given this security, she can proceed to do what she really wants to do — fall in love with men who are weak and irresponsible,” won him a following across Canada. Needham had often expressed to ''Globe and Mail'' staff that he wished for his death to be announced to the public with a notice reading "Richard J. Needham's tiresome and repetitious column will not appear today, because he is dead"; even though Needham had retired more than ten years before his 1996 death, his request was honored (albeit with a note explaining that it had been Needham's idea).〔(Globe and Mail, July 19 1996 )〕 According to Margaret Wente, Needham had the common touch: :The son of an army officer, he came to Canada from England when he was sixteen and claimed he had worked as a farmhand before showing up at the Toronto Star where he was hired for ten dollars a week. Despite his cranky print persona, he was a kindly man who enjoyed the company of teenage misfits with intellectual pretensions.〔Margaret Wente (2004) ''An Accidental Canadian'', p 30, HarperCollins ISBN 0-00-200798-3〕 Regarding the persona, Wente wrote: :As Rudolf J. Needleberry or Rasputin J. Novgorod, he cultivated an alter ego of a fairly disreputable, dirty old man who rescued first-class women from second-class men, who, regrettably, rule the world… In person, Needham was neither dirty nor disreputable. He was a tall, crewcut, polite fellow who stayed married to the same wife for fifty two years. In spite of his loathing of institutions, organized religions and conventional pieties of all kinds, he was a small-c conservative who was deeply suspicious of liberal efforts to reform mankind and protect the world.〔Wente 2004 p 31〕 ==Selected Bibliography== * * * * * * 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Richard J. Needham」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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