Stirling Moss Popular culture What was popular about stirling Moss Moss was one of the most recognised celebrities in Britain, leading to many media appearances. What was he recogonized for? In March 1958, Moss was a guest challenger on the TV panel show What's My Line? (episode with Anita Ekberg). What appearances did he make? In 1959 he was the subject of the TV programme This Is Your Life. On June 12 the following year he was interviewed by John Freeman What was said in the interview? Freeman later said that he had thought before the interview that Moss was a playboy, but in their meeting he showed "cold, precise, clinical judgement... How did he show this? I don't know. Are there other interesting aspects about this article? As related in the book The Life and Times of Private Eye, Moss was the subject of a less than respectful cartoon biography in the magazine Private Eye. What was the cartoon called? I don't know.
What did the cartoon say?
What did the cartoon biography about Stirling Moss say?
During his driving career, Moss was one of the most recognised celebrities in Britain, leading to many media appearances. In March 1958, Moss was a guest challenger on the TV panel show What's My Line? (episode with Anita Ekberg). In 1959 he was the subject of the TV programme This Is Your Life. On June 12 the following year he was interviewed by John Freeman on Face to Face; Freeman later said that he had thought before the interview that Moss was a playboy, but in their meeting he showed "cold, precise, clinical judgement... a man who could live so close to the edge of death and danger, and trust entirely to his own judgement. This appealed to me". Moss also appeared as himself in the 1964 film The Beauty Jungle, and was one of several celebrities with cameo appearances in the 1967 version of the James Bond film Casino Royale. He played Evelyn Tremble's (Peter Sellers) driver.  For many years during and after his career, the rhetorical phrase "Who do you think you are, Stirling Moss?" was supposedly the standard question all British policemen asked speeding motorists. Moss relates he himself was once stopped for speeding and asked just that; he reports the traffic officer had some difficulty believing him. As related in the book The Life and Times of Private Eye, Moss was the subject of a less than respectful cartoon biography in the magazine Private Eye. The cartoon, drawn by Willie Rushton, showed him continually crashing, having his driving licence revoked and finally "hosting television programmes on subjects he knows nothing about". It also made reference to the amnesia Moss suffered from as a result of head injuries sustained in the crash at Goodwood in 1962. According to the book, Moss responded by offering to buy the original of the cartoon, an outcome the book describes as "depressingly common" for its satirical cartoons about famous people.  Moss is the narrator of the popular children's series Roary the Racing Car which stars Peter Kay, a role he took on, having been approached by both David Jenkins, who had the original idea, and Keith Chapman, the latter the creator of Bob the Builder, as he saw the TV show as a way of introducing motorsport to the next generation.  He is one of the few drivers of his era to create a brand from his name for licensing purposes, which was launched when his website was revamped in 2009 with improved content. Moss is also a supporter of the UK Independence Party. CANNOTANSWER
showed him continually crashing, having his driving licence revoked and finally "hosting television programmes on subjects he knows nothing about".
Sir Stirling Craufurd Moss  (17 September 1929 – 12 April 2020) was a British Formula One racing driver. An inductee into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame, he won 212 of the 529 races he entered across several categories of competition and has been described as "the greatest driver never to win the World Championship". In a seven-year span between 1955 and 1961 Moss finished as championship runner-up four times and in third place the other three times.

Early life
Moss was born in London, son of Alfred Moss, a dentist of Bray, Berkshire, and Aileen (née Craufurd). His grandfather was Jewish, from a family that changed their surname from Moses to Moss. He was brought up at Long White Cloud house on the south bank of the River Thames. His father was an amateur racing driver who had come 16th in the 1924 Indianapolis 500. Aileen Moss had also been involved in motorsport, entering prewar hillclimbs at the wheel of a Singer Nine. Stirling was a gifted horse rider as was his younger sister, Pat Moss, who became a successful rally driver in her own right and also married Swedish rally driver Erik Carlsson.

Moss was educated at several independent schools: Shrewsbury House School in Surbiton, Clewer Manor Junior School, and the linked senior school, Haileybury and Imperial Service College, located at Hertford Heath, near Hertford. He disliked school and did not attain a good academic performance. At Haileybury, he was subjected to antisemitic bullying because of his Jewish roots. He concealed the bullying from his parents and used it as "motivation to succeed". Moss received his first car, an Austin 7, from his father at the age of nine, and drove it on the fields around Long White Cloud. He purchased his own car at age 15 after he obtained a driving licence. After the Second World War, Moss was ruled exempt from doing the mandatory two-year national service for men his age because he had nephritis.

Racing career

Moss raced from 1948 to 1962, winning 212 of the 529 races he entered, including 16 Formula One Grands Prix. He competed in as many as 62 races in a single year and drove 84 different makes of car over the course of his racing career. He preferred to race British cars, stating, "Better to lose honourably in a British car than win in a foreign one". At Vanwall, he was instrumental in breaking the German/Italian stranglehold on F1 racing (as was Jack Brabham at Cooper). He remained the English driver with the most Formula One victories until 1991 when Nigel Mansell overtook him after competing in more races.

1948–1954
Moss began his career at the wheel of his father Alfred's 328 BMW, DPX 653. Moss was one of the Cooper Car Company's first customers, using winnings from competing in horse-riding events to pay the deposit on a Cooper 500 racing car in 1948. He then persuaded his father, who opposed his racing and wanted him to be a dentist, to let him buy it. He soon demonstrated his ability with numerous wins at national and international levels, and continued to compete in Formula Three, with Coopers and Kiefts, after he had progressed to more senior categories.

His first major international race victory came on the eve of his 21st birthday at the wheel of a borrowed Jaguar XK120 in the 1950 RAC Tourist Trophy on the Dundrod circuit in Northern Ireland. He went on to win the race six more times, in 1951 (Jaguar C-Type), 1955 (Mercedes-Benz 300SLR), 1958 and 1959 (Aston Martin DBR1), and 1960 and 1961 (Ferrari 250 GT). Enzo Ferrari, the founder of Ferrari, approached Moss and offered him a Formula Two car to drive at the 1951 Bari Grand Prix before a full
-season in 1952. Moss and his father went to Apulia only to find out that the Ferrari car was to be driven by experienced driver Piero Taruffi and were incensed.

Also a competent rally driver, Moss was one of three people to have won a Coupe d'Or (Gold Cup) for three consecutive penalty-free runs on the Alpine Rally (Coupe des Alpes). He finished second in the 1952 Monte Carlo Rally driving a Sunbeam-Talbot 90 with Desmond Scannell and Autocar magazine editor John Cooper as co-drivers.

In 1954, he became the first non-American to win the 12 Hours of Sebring, sharing the Cunningham team's 1.5-liter O.S.C.A. MT4 with American Bill Lloyd.

In 1953 Mercedes-Benz racing boss Alfred Neubauer had spoken to Moss's manager, Ken Gregory, about the possibility of Moss's joining the Mercedes Grand Prix team. Having seen him do well in a relatively uncompetitive car, and wanting to see how he would perform in a better one, Neubauer suggested Moss buy a Maserati for the 1954 season. He bought a Maserati 250F, and although the car's unreliability prevented his scoring high points in the 1954 Drivers' Championship he qualified alongside the Mercedes front runners several times and performed well in the races. He achieved his first Formula One victory when he won the non-Championship Oulton Park International Gold Cup in the Maserati.

In the Italian Grand Prix at Monza he passed both drivers who were regarded as the best in Formula One at the time—Juan Manuel Fangio in a Mercedes and Alberto Ascari in a Ferrari—and took the lead. Ascari retired with engine problems, and Moss led until lap 68 when his engine also failed. Fangio took the victory, and Moss pushed his Maserati to the finish line. Neubauer, already impressed when Moss had tested a Mercedes-Benz W196 at Hockenheim, promptly signed him for 1955.

1955
Moss's first World Championship victory was in the 1955 British Grand Prix at Aintree, a race he was also the first British driver to win. Leading a 1–2–3–4 finish for Mercedes, it was the first time he beat Fangio, his teammate and arch rival, who was also his friend and mentor. It has been suggested that Fangio sportingly allowed Moss to win in front of his home crowd. Moss himself asked Fangio repeatedly, and Fangio always replied: "No. You were just better than me that day." The same year, Moss also won the RAC Tourist Trophy, the Targa Florio (sharing the drive with Peter Collins) and the Mille Miglia.

Mille Miglia
In 1955 Moss won Italy's thousand-mile Mille Miglia road race, an achievement Doug Nye described as the "most iconic single day's drive in motor racing history." He was paired with motor racing journalist Denis Jenkinson, who prepared pace note for Moss, and the two completed the race in ten hours and seven minutes. Motor Trend headlined it as "The Most Epic Drive. Ever." Before the race, he had taken a "magic pill" given to him by Fangio, and he has commented that although he did not know what was in it, "Dexedrine and Benzedrine were commonly used in rallies. The object was simply to keep awake, like wartime bomber crews." After the win, he spent the night and the following day driving his girlfriend to Cologne, stopping for breakfast in Munich and lunch in Stuttgart.

1956–1962

Moss won the Nassau Cup at the 1956 and 1957 Bahamas Speed Week. Also in 1957 he won on the longest circuit ever to hold a World Championship Grand Prix, the  Pescara Circuit, where he again demonstrated his mastery of long-distance racing. The event lasted three hours and Moss beat Fangio, who started from pole position, by a little over 3 minutes.

In 1958, Moss's forward-thinking attitude made waves in the racing world. Moss won the first race of the season in a rear-engined F1 car, which became the common design by 1961. At Monza that year, he raced in the "Eldorado" Maserati in the Race of Two Worlds, the first single-seater car in Europe to be sponsored by a non-racing brand—the Eldorado Ice Cream Company. This was the first case in Europe of contemporary sponsorship, with the ice cream maker's colors replacing the ones assigned by the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA).

Moss's sporting attitude cost him the 1958 Formula One World Championship. When rival Mike Hawthorn was threatened with a penalty after the Portuguese Grand Prix, Moss defended him. Hawthorn was accused of reversing on the track after spinning and stalling his car on an uphill section. Moss had shouted advice to Hawthorn to steer downhill, against traffic, to bump-start the car. Moss's quick thinking, and his defence of Hawthorn before the stewards, preserved Hawthorn's 6 points for finishing second behind Moss. Hawthorn went on to beat Moss for the championship title by one point, even though he had won only one race that year to Moss's four. Moss's loss in the championship could also be attributed to an error in communication between his pit crew and the driver at one race. A point was given for the fastest lap in each race, and the crew signaled "HAWT REC" meaning Hawthorn had set a record lap. Moss read this as "HAWT REG" and thought Hawthorn was making regular laps, so did not try to set a fast lap. The crew was supposed to signal the time of the lap, so Moss would know what he had to beat.

Moss was as gifted in sports cars as in Grand Prix cars. To his victories in the Tourist Trophy, the Sebring 12 Hours and the Mille Miglia he added three consecutive wins (1958–1960) in the 1000 km Nürburgring, the first two in an Aston Martin (in which he did most of the driving), and the third in a Tipo 61 "birdcage" Maserati, co-driving with the American Dan Gurney. The pair lost time when an oil hose blew off, but despite the wet-weather, they made up the time and took first place.

In the 1960 Formula One season, Moss won the Monaco Grand Prix in Rob Walker's Coventry-Climax-powered Lotus 18. Seriously injured in an accident at the Burnenville curve during practice for the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps, he missed the next three races but recovered sufficiently to win the final one of the season, the United States Grand Prix at Riverside, California.

For the 1961 Formula One season, run under new 1.5-litre rules, Enzo Ferrari fielded the "sharknose" Ferrari 156 with an all-new V6 engine. Moss's Climax-engined Lotus was comparatively underpowered, but he won the 1961 Monaco Grand Prix by 3.6 seconds, beating the Ferraris of Richie Ginther, Wolfgang von Trips, and Phil Hill, and went on to win the partially wet 1961 German Grand Prix.

In 1962, he crashed his Lotus heavily during the Glover Trophy at Goodwood held on Monday 23 April. The accident put him in a coma for a month, and for six months the left side of his body was partially paralysed. He recovered, but retired from professional racing after a private test session in a Lotus 19 the following year, when he lapped a few tenths of a second slower than before. He felt he had not regained his previously instinctive command of the car. He had been runner-up in the Drivers' Championship four years in succession, from 1955 to 1958, and third in each of the next three years.

Speed records

1950
At the Autodrome de Montlhéry, a steeply banked oval track near Paris, Moss and Leslie Johnson took turns at the wheel of the latter's Jaguar XK120 to average  for 24 hours, including stops for fuel and tyres. Changing drivers every three hours, they covered a total of . It was the first time a production car had averaged over  for 24 hours.

1952

Revisiting Montlhéry, Moss was one of a four-driver team, led by Johnson, who drove a factory-owned Jaguar XK120 fixed-head coupé for 7 days and nights at the French track. Moss, Johnson, Bert Hadley and Jack Fairman averaged  to take four World records and five International Class C records, and covered a total of .

1957
In August Moss broke five International Class F records in the purpose-built MG EX181 at Bonneville Salt Flats. The streamlined, supercharged car's speed for the flying kilometer was 245.64 mph, which was the average of two runs in opposite directions.

Broadcasting career
Away from driving, in 1962 he acted as a colour commentator for ABC's Wide World of Sports for Formula One and NASCAR races. He eventually left ABC in 1980. Moss narrated the official 1988 Formula One season review along with Tony Jardine.

Moss also narrated the popular children's series Roary the Racing Car, which stars Peter Kay.

Return to racing

Although ostensibly retired from racing since 1962, Moss did make a number of one-off appearances in professional motorsport events in the following two decades. He also competed in the 1974 London-Sahara-Munich World Cup Rally in a Mercedes-Benz, but retired from the event in the Algerian Sahara. The Holden Torana he shared with Jack Brabham in the 1976 Bathurst 1000 was hit from behind on the grid and eventually retired with engine failure. Moss, at the wheel of the Torana when the V8 engine let go, was criticised by other drivers for staying on the racing line for over ⅔ of the 6.172 km long circuit while returning to the pits as the car was dropping large amounts of oil onto the road. He also shared a Volkswagen Golf GTI with Denny Hulme in the 1979 Benson & Hedges 500 at Pukekohe Park Raceway in New Zealand.

In 1980 he made a comeback to regular competition, in the British Saloon Car Championship with the works-backed GTi Engineering Audi team. For the 1980 season Moss was the team's number two driver to team co-owner Richard Lloyd. For the 1981 season Moss stayed with Audi, as the team moved to Tom Walkinshaw Racing management, driving alongside Martin Brundle.

Throughout his retirement he raced in events for historic cars, driving on behalf of and at the invitation of others, as well as campaigning his own OSCA FS 372 and other vehicles. In 2004, as part of its promotion for the new SLR, Mercedes-Benz reunited Moss with the 300 SLR "No. 722" in which he won the Mille Miglia nearly 50 years earlier.  One reporter who rode with Moss that day noted that the 75-year-old driver was "so good . . . that even old and crippled [he was] still better than nearly everyone else".  On 9 June 2011 during qualifying for the Le Mans Legends race, Moss announced on Radio Le Mans that he had finally retired from racing, saying that he had scared himself that afternoon. He was 81.

Post racing career

Lister Cars announced the building for sale of the Lister Knobbly Stirling Moss at the Royal Automobile Club in London in June 2016. The car is built to the exact specification of the 1958 model, is the only magnesium-bodied car in the world, and is the only car that was ever endorsed by Moss. Brian Lister invited Moss to drive for Lister on three separate occasions, at Goodwood in 1954, Silverstone in 1958 and at Sebring in 1959, and to celebrate these races, 10 special edition lightweight Lister Knobbly cars are being built. The company announced that the cars will be available for both road and race use, and Moss would personally be handing over each car.

Honours
In 1990, Moss was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame.

In the New Year Honours 2000 List, Moss was made a Knight Bachelor for services to motor racing. On 21 March 2000, he was knighted by Prince Charles, standing in for the Queen, who was on an official visit to Australia.

He received the 2005 Segrave Trophy.

In 2006, Moss was awarded the FIA gold medal in recognition of his outstanding contribution to motorsport.

In December 2008, McLaren-Mercedes unveiled their final model of the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren. The model was named in honour of Moss, hence, Mercedes McLaren SLR Stirling Moss, which has a top speed of  with wind deflectors instead of a windscreen.

In 2016, in an academic paper that reported a mathematical modelling study that assessed the relative influence of driver and machine, Moss was ranked the 29th best Formula One driver of all time.

Following Moss's death the Kinrara Trophy race at the Goodwood Revival meeting was renamed in his honour. It is a race for  GT cars that competed before 1963.

Biographies 
In 1957, Moss published an autobiography called In the Track Of Speed, first published by Muller, London.
In 1963, motorsport author and commentator Ken Purdy published a biographical book entitled All But My Life about Moss (first published by William Kimber & Co, London), based on material gathered through interviews with Moss.
In 2015, when he was aged 85, Moss published a second autobiography, entitled My Racing Life, written with motor sports writer Simon Taylor. In 2016, Philip Porter published the first volume of Stirling Moss - The Definitive Biography covering the period from birth up to the end of 1955, one of Moss's greatest years.

Popular culture

During his driving career, Moss was one of the most recognised celebrities in Britain, leading to many media appearances. In March 1958, Moss was a guest challenger on the TV panel show What's My Line? (episode with Anita Ekberg). In 1959 he was the subject of the TV programme This Is Your Life. On 12 June the following year he was interviewed by John Freeman on Face to Face; Freeman later said that he had thought before the interview that Moss was a playboy, but in their meeting he showed "cold, precise, clinical judgement... a man who could live so close to the edge of death and danger, and trust entirely to his own judgement. This appealed to me". Moss also appeared as himself in the 1964 film The Beauty Jungle, and was one of several celebrities with cameo appearances in the 1967 version of the James Bond film Casino Royale. He played Evelyn Tremble's (Peter Sellers) driver.

For many years during and after his career, the rhetorical phrase "Who do you think you are, Stirling Moss?" was supposedly the standard question all British policemen asked speeding motorists. Moss relates he himself was once stopped for speeding and asked just that; he reports the traffic officer had some difficulty believing him. Moss was the subject of a cartoon biography in the magazine Private Eye that said he was interested in cars, women and sex, in that order. The cartoon, drawn by Willie Rushton, showed him continually crashing, having his driving licence revoked and finally "hosting television programmes on subjects he knows nothing about". It also made reference to the amnesia Moss suffered from as a result of head injuries sustained in the crash at Goodwood in 1962. Although there were complaints to the magazine about the cartoons, Moss rang Private Eye to ask if he could use it as a Christmas card.

He was one of the few drivers of his era to create a brand from his name for licensing purposes, which was launched when his website was revamped in 2009 with improved content. In 2004, Moss was a supporter of the UK Independence Party.

Moss was a Mercedes-Benz Brand Ambassador, having kept a close relationship with the brand, and remained an enthusiast and collector of the brand, which includes the Mercedes-Benz W113, Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren Stirling Moss among others.

Personal life and death

Moss was married three times. His first wife was Katie Molson; an heir to the Canadian brewer Molson. They were married in 1957 and separated three years later. His second wife was the American public relations executive Elaine Barbarino. They were married in 1964 and divorced in 1968. Their daughter Allison was born in 1967. His third wife was Susie Paine, the daughter of an old friend. They were married from 1980 until his death in 2020. Their son Elliot was born in 1980.

In April 1960, Moss was found guilty of dangerous driving. He was fined £50 and banned from driving for one year after an incident near Chetwynd, Shropshire, when he was test-driving a Mini.

Moss's 80th birthday, on 17 September 2009, fell on the eve of the Goodwood Revival and Lord March celebrated with an 80-car parade on each of the three days. Moss drove a different car each day: a Mercedes-Benz W196 (an open-wheel variant), the Lotus 18 in which he had won the 1961 Monaco GP, and an Aston Martin DBR1.

On 7 March 2010, Moss broke both ankles and four bones in a foot, and also chipped four vertebrae and suffered skin lesions, when he plunged down a lift shaft at his home. In December 2016, he was admitted to hospital in Singapore with a serious chest infection. As a result of this illness and a subsequent lengthy recovery period, Moss announced his retirement from public life in January 2018.

Moss died at his home in Mayfair, London, on 12 April 2020, aged 90, after a long illness.

Racing record

Career highlights

Complete Formula One World Championship results
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap)

 † Indicates shared drive with Hans Herrmann and Karl Kling.
 * Indicates shared drive with Cesare Perdisa.
 ‡ Indicates shared drive with Tony Brooks.
 [a]  After Moss retired from the race he took over the car of Trintignant. Both drivers did not receive any points for their shared drive.

Non-championship results
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position)
(Races in italics indicate fastest lap)

Complete 24 Hours of Le Mans results

Complete 12 Hours of Sebring results

Complete 12 Hours of Reims results

Complete Mille Miglia results

Complete Rallye de Monte Carlo results

Complete Bathurst 1000 results

Complete British Saloon Car Championship results
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap.)

† Events with 2 races staged for the different classes.

References

External links 

 Sir Stirling Moss – Official Web Site
 Stirling Moss in the 24 hours of Le Mans
 Grand Prix History – Hall of Fame, Stirling Moss
 Stirling Moss profile at The 500 Owners Association
 BBC Face to Face interview with Stirling Moss and John Freeman, broadcast 12 June 1960
 
 

1929 births
2020 deaths
12 Hours of Sebring drivers
24 Hours of Le Mans drivers
BBC Sports Personality of the Year winners
Bonneville 200 MPH Club members
BRDC Gold Star winners
Brighton Speed Trials people
British Racing Partnership Formula One drivers
British Touring Car Championship drivers
Connaught Formula One drivers
Cooper Formula One drivers
English Formula One drivers
English people of Jewish descent
English racing drivers
ERA Formula One drivers
Formula One race winners
Formula One team owners
Hersham and Walton Motors Formula One drivers
International Motorsports Hall of Fame inductees
Knights Bachelor
Maserati Formula One drivers
Mercedes-Benz Formula One drivers
Officers of the Order of the British Empire
People educated at Haileybury and Imperial Service College
People from West Kensington
People in sports awarded knighthoods
Rob Walker Racing Team Formula One drivers
Sportspeople from London
Segrave Trophy recipients
Vanwall Formula One drivers
World Sportscar Championship drivers
I say it's spinach (sometimes given in full as I say it's spinach and I say the hell with it or further abbreviated to just spinach) is a twentieth-century American idiom with the approximate meaning of "nonsense" or "rubbish". It is usually spoken or written as an anapodoton, thus only first part of the complete phrase ("I say it's spinach") is given to imply the second part, which is what is actually meant: "I say the hell with it."

Rose and White's cartoon

The phrase originated as the caption of a gag cartoon published in The New Yorker on December 8, 1928. Drawn by Carl Rose and captioned by E. B. White, the cartoon shows a mother at table trying to convince her young daughter to eat her vegetable, the dialogue being

Mother: "It's broccoli, dear." 
Daughter: "I say it's spinach, and I say the hell with it."

(Broccoli was a relative novelty at that time, just then being widely introduced by Italian immigrant growers to the tables of East Coast cities.)

Catching on in the 1930s

What White called "the spinach joke" quickly became one of the New Yorker cartoon captions to enter the vernacular (later examples include Peter Arno's "Back to the drawing board!" and Peter Steiner's "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog"), becoming a bon mot of the 1930s, with continued, though diminishing, use into the early 21st century. For instance, Alexander Woolcott in his 1934 collection While Rome Burns: "This eruption of reticence... will, I am sure, be described by certain temperaments as an exercise in good taste. I do not myself so regard it. I say it's spinach.") At the first awards ceremony of the New York Drama Critics' Circle in 1936, Percy Hammond of the New York Herald Tribune gave a speech dissenting from the choice of Maxwell Anderson's Winterset as the Best Play winner, calling it "spinach, and I say to hell with it." Elizabeth Hawles titled her 1938 autobiographical critique and exposé of the fashion industry Fashion is Spinach and made her meaning clear by reproducing Rose and White's cartoon following the title page. S. J. Perelman titled a 1944 story for the Saturday Evening Post "Dental or Mental, I Say It’s Spinach".

Berlin's song

Irving Berlin's song "I Say It's Spinach (And the Hell with It)", which appeared in the 1932 musical Face the Music, used the full phrase: "Long as I'm yours, long as you're mine/Long as there's love and a moon to shine/I say it's spinach and the hell with it/The hell with it, that's all!".

Gammon and spinach
In Britain in the 19th century, "spinach" also meant "nonsense". This is presumably coincidence, with an entirely different origin for the 19th century meaning. Dickens uses the phrase "gammon and spinach" in this sense with Miss Mowcher in David Copperfield (published in 1849) saying "What a world of gammon and spinnage it is though, ain't it!" ("spinnage" being a now-obsolete variant of "spinach"). The same phrase, although with unclear meaning, is also seen in the nursery rhyme "A Frog He Would A-Wooing Go" ("With a rowley, powley, gammon and spinach/heigh ho! says Anthony Rowley"). The 1989 second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary lists these two close senses as letters below the same number in the entry for "spinach". Cassell's Dictionary of Slang gives just the American sense (but listed as extant 1900–1950) while conversely Partridge gives only the British, perhaps echoing the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary which also does so.

References

American English idioms
Editorial cartoons
Quotations from comics
Comedy catchphrases
1920s neologisms
Works originally published in The New Yorker What a Cartoon! (later known as The What a Cartoon! Show and The Cartoon Cartoon Show) is an American animated anthology series created by Fred Seibert for Cartoon Network. The shorts were produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions; by the end of the run, a Cartoon Network Studios production tag was added to some shorts to signal they were original to the network. The project consisted of 48 cartoons, intended to return creative power to animators and artists, by recreating the atmospheres that spawned the iconic cartoon characters of the mid-20th century. Each of the shorts mirrored the structure of a theatrical cartoon, with each film being based on an original storyboard drawn and written by its artist or creator. Three of the cartoons were paired together into a half-hour episode.

The series first aired on February 20, 1995 and the shorts were promoted as World Premiere Toons. During the original run of the shorts, the series was retitled to The What a Cartoon! Show and later to The Cartoon Cartoon Show until the final shorts aired on August 23, 2002. The series grouped three cartoons together into a half-hour episode.

The series is influential for helping to revive television animation in the 1990s and serving as a launching point for the Cartoon Network animated television series Dexter's Laboratory, Johnny Bravo, Courage the Cowardly Dog, Cow and Chicken, I Am Weasel, and The Powerpuff Girls. Once it had several original shorts, those became the first Cartoon Cartoons. From 2005 to 2008, The Cartoon Cartoon Show was revived as a block for reruns of older Cartoon Cartoons that had been phased out by the network.

History

Origins and production 

Fred Seibert became president of Hanna-Barbera Cartoons in 1992 and helped guide the struggling animation studio into its greatest output in years with shows like 2 Stupid Dogs and SWAT Kats: The Radical Squadron. Seibert wanted the studio to produce short cartoons, in the vein of the Golden age of American animation. Although a project consisting of 48 shorts would cost twice as much as a normal series, Seibert's pitch to Cartoon Network involved promising 48 chances to "succeed or fail", opened up possibilities for new original programming, and offered several new shorts to the thousands already present in the Turner Entertainment library. According to Seibert, quality did not matter much to the cable operators distributing the struggling network, they were more interested in promising new programs.

With Turner Broadcasting CEO Ted Turner and Seibert's boss Scott Sassa on board, the studio fanned out across the world to spread the word that the studio was in an "unprecedented phase", in which animators had a better idea what cartoons should be than executives and Hanna-Barbera supported them. The company started taking pitches in earnest in 1993 and received over 5,000 pitches for the 48 slots. The diversity in the filmmakers included those from
various nationalities, race, and gender. Seibert later described his hope for an idealistic diversity as "The wider the palette of creative influences, the wider and bigger the audiences."

Seibert's idea for the project was influenced heavily by Looney Tunes. Hanna-Barbera founders and chairmen William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, as well as veteran animator Friz Freleng, taught Seibert how the shorts of the Golden Age of American animation were produced. John Kricfalusi, creator of The Ren & Stimpy Show, became a teacher of sorts for Seibert and was the first person Seibert called while looking for new talent for the project.

As was the custom in live action film and television, the company did not pay each creator for the storyboard submitted and pitched. For the first time in the studio's history, individual creators could retain their rights, and earn royalties on their creations. While most in the industry scoffed at the idea, encouragement, according to Seibert, came from the cartoonists who flocked to Hanna-Barbera with original ideas.

Format 
The format for What a Cartoon! was ambitious, as no one had ever attempted anything similar in the television animation era. The shorts produced would be a product of the original cartoonists' vision, with no executive intervention: for example, even the music would be an individually crafted score. Each 7-minute short would debut, by itself, as a stand-alone cartoon or a stand-alone series on Cartoon Network. Three of the 7-minute cartoons are paired together into a half-hour episode. Seibert explained the project's goal in a 2007 blog post: "We didn’t care what the sitcom trends were, what Nickelodeon was doing, what the sales departments wanted. [...] We wanted cartoons."

Crew 

The What a Cartoon! staff had creators from Europe (Bruno Bozzetto), Asia (Achiu So), and the United States (Jerry Reynolds and colleague Seth MacFarlane). The crew also contained young series first-timers (like Genndy Tartakovsky, Craig McCracken, Rob Renzetti, Butch Hartman, and John R. Dilworth), but veterans as well (like Don Jurwich, Jerry Eisenberg, and Ralph Bakshi). In addition to the veterans, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera each produced two shorts each for What a Cartoon!. Many of the key crew members from previous Hanna-Barbera series 2 Stupid Dogs joined the team of What a Cartoon! as well.

Many of its crew members later went on to write and direct for Dexter's Laboratory, Johnny Bravo, Cow and Chicken, I Am Weasel, and The Powerpuff Girls, including those named above. The Kitchen Casanova director John McIntyre is particularly known for directing several Dexter episodes. Ralph Bakshi's series (Malcom and Melvin) was considered too risqué to be shown. It has been rumored that John Kricfalusi was slated to direct several new What a Cartoon! shorts of his own (produced by his production company, Spümcø). However, both Yogi Bear-influenced cartoons were commissioned separately by Seibert, and instead premiered as their own: Boo Boo Runs Wild and A Day in the Life of Ranger Smith both premiered in 1999.

Inspired by Seibert's interest in the modern rock posters of Frank Kozik, each of the shows' creators worked with the internal Hanna-Barbera Creative Corps creative director Bill Burnett, and senior art director Jesse Stagg, to craft a series of high quality, limited edition, fluorescent art posters. The Corps launched a prolonged guerrilla mailing campaign, targeting animation heavyweights and critics leading up to the launch of World Premiere Toons. The first poster campaign of its kind introduced the world to the groundbreaking new stable of characters.

Broadcast 
The first cartoon from the What a Cartoon! project broadcast in its entirety was The Powerpuff Girls in "Meat Fuzzy Lumkins", which made its world premiere on Monday, February 20, 1995, during a television special called the World Premiere Toon-In (termed "President's Day Nightmare" by its producers, Williams Street). The special was hosted by Space Ghost and the cast of Space Ghost Coast to Coast, and featured comic interviews and a mock contest with the creators of the various cartoons. The Toon-In was simulcast on Cartoon Network, TBS Superstation, and TNT. To promote the shorts, Cartoon Network's marketing department came up with the concept of "Dive-In Theater" in 1995 to showcase the 48 cartoon shorts. The cartoons were shown at water parks and large municipal swimming pools, treating kids and their parents to exclusive poolside screenings on 9' x 12' movie screens.

Beginning February 26, 1995, each What a Cartoon! short began to premiere on Sunday nights, promoted as World Premiere Toons. Every week after the premiere, Cartoon Network showcased a different World Premiere Toons made by a different artist. After an acclimation of cartoons, the network packaged the shorts as a half-hour show titled World Premiere Toons: The Next Generation, featuring reruns of the original shorts but also new premieres.

Eventually, all of the cartoons were compiled into one program which was used the name World Premiere Toons: The Show until the summer of 1996 when it started bearing the name of the original project: The What a Cartoon! Show. The show's initial premieres for each short preceded Cartoon Network's Sunday night movie block, Mr. Spim's Cartoon Theatre. The shorts continued to air on Sundays until 1997, when the network moved the shorts to Wednesdays at 9pm. Following the premiere of Johnny Bravo and Cow and Chicken as full series in July 1997, the series shifted to Thursday nights, where it remained.

The What a Cartoon! Show continued airing new episodes on Thursdays until November 28, 1997, when the final short of the 48 contracted during Seibert's era aired. In 1998, Cartoon Network debuted two new short pilots and advertised them as World Premiere Toons: Mike, Lu & Og and Kenny and the Chimp, both of which were produced by outside studios. The two pilots were later compiled into The Cartoon Cartoon Show, while both shorts eventually garnered their own series, Mike, Lu & Og in 1999 and Codename: Kids Next Door in 2002. Two pilots entitled King Crab: Space Crustacean and Thrillseekers, respectively dated 1999 and 2000, was also retconned into The Cartoon Cartoon Show anthology.

On June 9, 2000, The What a Cartoon! Show was relaunched as The Cartoon Cartoon Show. In this new format, it aired reruns and new episodes of the full-series Cartoon Cartoons, as well as new Cartoon Cartoon shorts and old WAC! shorts. From 2000 to 2001, the pilot shorts appearing on the network's viewer's poll that lost to The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy and Codename: Kids Next Door (except for Whatever Happened to... Robot Jones?) were added to the anthology. The show continued to air until October 16, 2003, when it was temporarily dropped from the network's schedule.

On September 12, 2005, The Cartoon Cartoon Show was revived, this time as a half-hour program featuring segments of older Cartoon Cartoons that were no longer shown regularly on the network, such as Cow and Chicken, I Am Weasel, and others. Some Cartoon Cartoons were moved exclusively to this show and the Top 5, though there was also some overlap with shows that already had regular half-hour slots outside the series. In 2006, the programming was expanded to also include non-Cartoon Cartoons that were regularly shown on the network, such as Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, Camp Lazlo, My Gym Partner's a Monkey, and Squirrel Boy. The show ended on June 21, 2008.

In 2007, reruns of What a Cartoon! played briefly on Cartoon Network's retro animation sister channel, Boomerang.

Legacy 
What a Cartoon! is the first short cartoon incubator created by Fred Seibert. Starting with What a Cartoon! and continuing throughout his cartoon career, his Frederator Studios has persisted in the tradition of surfacing new talent, characters, and series with several cartoon shorts "incubators," including (as of 2016): What a Cartoon! (Cartoon Network, 1995), Nickelodeon/Nicktoons' own Oh Yeah! Cartoons (1998), Nicktoons Film Festival (2004), Random! Cartoons (2008), The Meth Minute 39 (Channel Frederator, 2008), The Cartoonstitute (Cartoon Network, 2009/unfinished), Too Cool! Cartoons (Cartoon Hangover, 2012), and GO! Cartoons (Cartoon Hangover, 2016). These laboratories have spun off notable series like: Dexter's Laboratory, The Powerpuff Girls, Johnny Bravo, Cow & Chicken, Family Guy, Courage the Cowardly Dog, Samurai Jack, The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, Codename: Kids Next Door, The Fairly OddParents, My Life as a Teenage Robot, Nite Fite, The Mighty B!, Fanboy & Chum Chum, Adventure Time, Regular Show, Bravest Warriors, Secret Mountain Fort Awesome, Gravity Falls, Rocket Dog, Bee and PuppyCat, and Uncle Grandpa.

Dexter's Laboratory was the most popular short series according to a vote held in 1995 and eventually became the first spin-off of What a Cartoon! in 1996. Two more series based on shorts, Johnny Bravo and Cow and Chicken, premiered in 1997, and The Powerpuff Girls became a weekly half-hour show in 1998. Courage the Cowardly Dog (spun off from the Oscar-nominated short The Chicken from Outer Space) followed as the final spin-off in 1999. In addition, the Cow and Chicken short I Am Weasel eventually was also spun off into a separate series: in all, six cartoon series were ultimately launched by the What a Cartoon! project, any one of which earned enough money for the company to pay for the whole program. In addition to the eventual spin-offs, the What a Cartoon! short Larry and Steve by Seth MacFarlane featured prototypes of characters that would later go on to become MacFarlane's massively successful Family Guy.

The What a Cartoon! project and its assorted spin-offs brought Cartoon Network more commercial and critical success, and the network became an animation industry leader as the 1990s drew to a close. In 2001, coinciding with the death of William Hanna, Hanna-Barbera Productions absorbed into Warner Bros. Animation and Cartoon Network opened its own production arm, Cartoon Network Studios, in Burbank, as the rightful Hanna-Barbera successor to produce original programming for the network and future projects. Two What a Cartoon! shorts, Wind-Up Wolf and Hard Luck Duck, were the last cartoon shorts directed and produced by co-founder and co-chairman William Hanna. In addition, What a Cartoon! and spin-offs were the final original productions released by Hanna-Barbera.

Creator of The What a Cartoon! Show, Fred Seibert, left Hanna-Barbera in late 1996 to open up his own studio, Frederator Studios, and has persistently continued in the tradition of surfacing new talent, characters, and series with similar shorts "incubators", including (as of 2015) Oh Yeah! Cartoons (Nickelodeon, 1998), Nicktoons Film Festival (Nickelodeon, 2004), The Meth Minute 39 (Channel Frederator, 2008), Random! Cartoons (Nickelodeon/Nicktoons, 2008), Too Cool! Cartoons (Cartoon Hangover, 2012), and GO! Cartoons (Cartoon Hangover, 2016). Oh Yeah! Cartoons showcased What a Cartoon! alumni (Butch Hartman, Rob Renzetti) and launched several successful Nickelodeon series, including The Fairly OddParents, ChalkZone and My Life as a Teenage Robot. Frederator Studios also launched an animation film festival, Nicktoons Film Festival from 2004 to 2009; only to have The Mighty B! greenlit as a series based on the Super Scout short; though one short from Alex Hirsch would later go on to make Gravity Falls for Disney Channel/Disney XD. The studio launched another animation showcase in 2006, titled Random! Cartoons, which in turn produced Nickelodeon's Fanboy & Chum Chum in 2009, Cartoon Network's Adventure Time in 2010, and Cartoon Hangover's Bravest Warriors in 2012.

A sequel-of-sorts to the What a Cartoon! project, a Cartoon Network project titled The Cartoonstitute, was announced in April 2008. Created by the channel executive Rob Sorcher and headed by The Powerpuff Girls creator Craig McCracken and My Life as a Teenage Robot creator Rob Renzetti, the project was to "establish a think tank and create an environment in which animators can create characters and stories", and also create new possible Cartoon Network series. However, the project was eventually scrapped as a result of the late 2000s recession and only 14 of the 39 planned were completed. Nevertheless, J. G. Quintel's Regular Show short and Peter Browngardt's Secret Mountain Fort Awesome were greenlit to become full series. A recurring character on the show, Uncle Grandpa, would get his own series two years later. The Big Cartoon DataBase cites What a Cartoon! as a "venture combining classic 1940s production methods with the originality, enthusiasm and comedy of the 1990s".

On April 15, 2021, Cartoon Network announced it debuted a new iteration of Cartoon Cartoons. The lineup of the first 9 shorts were announced in November of 2021: According of Geoffery & Mary Melodica by Louie Zong (of The Ghost and Molly McGee and We Bare Bears), Dang! It's Dracula by Levon Jihanian (of Tig n' Seek), Hungy Ghost by Jesse Moynihan, Fruit Stand at the End of the World by Rachel Liu, Off the Menu by Shavonne Cherry (of Ren and Stimpy and The Looney Tunes Show), Harmony in Despair by Andrew Dickman (of Looney Tunes Cartoons), Unravel by Alexis Sugden, Mouthwash Madness by Lisa Vandenberg (of Animaniacs), and Scaredy Cat by JJ Villard (of King Star King).

Filmography
Fred Seibert cartoon shorts filmography

List of shorts

Original show (1995–97) 
The following is a list of the original shorts produced under Fred Seibert's management for What a Cartoon! by Hanna-Barbera. The shorts are listed in the order that they originally aired.

The Cartoon Cartoon Show (1998–2002) 

After What a Cartoon! ended its run in 1997, Fred Seibert left Hanna-Barbera in 1997 to launch Frederator Studios. In 1998, Sam Register, who was Cartoon Network's vice president at the time, took over What a Cartoon!, and two years later, turned them into The Cartoon Cartoon Show. Register would later create Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi for Cartoon Network in 2004. Two Cartoon Cartoon shorts were produced in 1998 and one in 1999. All Cartoon Cartoon shorts produced between 2000 and 2001 were entered in The Big Pick, a contest to choose the newest Cartoon Cartoon. The shorts premiered on Cartoon Cartoon Fridays in the weeks leading up to "The Big Pick" and the winner was revealed during the actual event. The winners were The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, in 2000, and Codename: Kids Next Door, in 2001.

In 2002, eight new shorts premiered during the Cartoon Cartoon Weekend Summerfest. They did not compete against one another. These were the final Cartoon Cartoon shorts before the brand name was dropped. One short, LowBrow, was given its own series under the name Megas XLR.

Cartoon Cartoon segments 

From 2000 to 2003, The Cartoon Cartoon Show featured new episodes and reruns of the full-series Cartoon Cartoons (which were introduced in 2002 for the primetime hours), interspersed with premieres and reruns of the Cartoon Cartoon pilot shorts (some of which were retconned WAC! shorts). From 2005 to 2008, the block was revived, this time dropping the pilot shorts.

Episodes from each show were anthologized into 7 or 11-minute segments. This is a list of shows that were presented on the block:

 Dexter's Laboratory (2002–2003; 2005–2008)
 Johnny Bravo (2002–2003; 2005–2008)
 The Powerpuff Girls (2002–2003; 2005–2008)
 Cow and Chicken (2002–2003; 2005–2007)
 I Am Weasel (2002–2003; 2005–2006)
 Time Squad (2002–2003)
 Grim & Evil (2002–2003)
 Whatever Happened to... Robot Jones? (2002–2003; 2005–2006)
 The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy (2006–2008)
 Evil Con Carne (2005–2008)
 Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends (2006–2008)
 Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi (2006)
 Camp Lazlo (2006–2008)
 My Gym Partner's a Monkey (2006–2008)
 Squirrel Boy (2006–2008)
 Ed, Edd n Eddy (2002–2003; 2006–2008)
 Mike, Lu & Og (2002–2003)
 Courage the Cowardly Dog (2002–2003; 2005–2008)
 Codename: Kids Next Door (2006–2008)

See also

 Oh Yeah! Cartoons on Nickelodeon
 Random! Cartoons on Nicktoons Network
 Shorty McShorts' Shorts – a Disney Channel Original Series of shorts on Disney Channel
 Raw Toonage – created by Disney and originally aired as part of CBS's Saturday Morning Line-up
 Sunday Pants
 The Cartoonstitute – a cancelled spiritual successor that would have continued the What a Cartoon! format
 Liquid Television on MTV
 Cartoon Sushi on MTV
 Funpak on YTV

References

External links 
 
 
 What a Cartoon! at Frederator.com

1990s American animated television series
1990s American children's comedy television series
1990s American variety television series
1995 American television series debuts
1997 American television series endings
American children's animated anthology television series
American children's animated comedy television series
Cartoon Network original programming
Cartoon Network Studios series
English-language television shows
Television series by Hanna-Barbera