Tweedledum and Tweedledee Tweedledum and Tweedledee Tweedledum and Tweedledee are fictional characters in an English nursery rhyme and in Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There". Their names may have originally come from an epigram written by poet John Byrom. The nursery rhyme has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 19800. The names have since become synonymous in western popular culture slang for any two people who look and act in identical ways, generally in a derogatory context. Common versions of the nursery rhyme include: The words "Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee" make their first appearance in print in "one of
Ian Hislop "Gush", a satire based on the first Gulf War, in the style of Jeffrey Archer. With Newman he also wrote the family-friendly satirical sitcom "My Dad's the Prime Minister" and in the early nineties for the Dawn French vehicle "Murder Most Horrid". Hislop and Newman wrote the Radio 4 series "The News at Bedtime", a satire on fairy tales which aired over the 2009 Christmas season. The series starred Jack Dee as 'John Tweedledum' and Peter Capaldi as 'Jim Tweedledee'; the two present the "news of the day" in the world of fairy tales, while arguing with each other as