Sometimes he gleaned an apparently off-hand phrase from a newspaper article or magazine advertisement and then write a brief, satiric play or sketch inspired by that phrase. A typical example is his 1950s work "No Starch in the Dhoti, "S'il Vous Plait"." Beginning with an off-hand phrase in a "New York Times Magazine" article ("...the late Pandit Motilal Nehru—who sent his laundry to Paris—the young Jawaharlal's British nurse etc. etc. ...), Perelman composed a series of imaginary letters that might have been exchanged in 1903 between an angry Pandit Nehru in India and a sly Parisian laundryman about the condition of his laundered underwear.