Wednesday, November 07, 2007

I yamwhat I yam

According to Wikipedia “I Am What I Am" is a song originally featured on the Tony-award winning Broadway musical La Cage aux Folles (1983 -1987)’
Alec in Coronation Street I remember saying that if he heard another turn I yamming he would lose his mind.
Normally I fall asleep when the television is on but the other night I drifted into consciousness two thirds through a documentary film which actually woke me up for the rest. ‘Deep Water’about the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race of 1968. I cant think how I missed all this drama back in the 60’s. All fascinating characters but Donald Crowhurst the most interesting of all. In a round the world yacht race he hung about off South America faking with great difficulty his log and then slipped back into the race as the others came round the Horn. Then because the boat in front of him sunk and it would mean him winning the race (for the fastest circumnavigation) he completely lost his mind , wrote a 25,000 word essay, which included the phrase ‘I am what I am’ and jumped overboard.
So among other things I am wondering if he was in fact the first Iyamma or whether there where earlier examples.

3 comments:

Sir Compton Valence said...

An interesting discussion, almost philisophical. Does not the OED have a department where people are employed to discover the date of the earliest uses of popular phrases? "I could murder a..." as in "I could murder a curry" is reputed to have first been uttered in 1986, though I suspect it is much earlier and am pretty sure I heard it in the 70s. That's the sort of thing we're after here, isn't it?

MacDuff said...

Yes like 'murdering a curry' it is probably a lot older. Thats a bit of a worrying metaphore - I could eat a curry with all the energy and gusto of somebody beating to death his victim with the leg of a table. What kind of mind thought that one up?

FBT said...

I know - I could murder a steak in the same that I normally murder people by grilling them, cutting them up and eating them.