Life on the West Island - What the…WGP?

13 years and 660 columns ago, Life on the West Island questioned who had written the following well-known sayings:

• Progress: primitive people used beads and shells for money, but modern people use little plastic cards – WGP.
• People’s minds are like parachutes: to function properly they must first be open – WGP.
• He who laughs, lasts – WGP
• It is not possible to shake hands properly with a clenched fist - WGP

At the time, we concluded that these, and many others, came from a weighty volume entitled World Guide to Proverbs. How wrong we were – there is no such book. But the Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB) lists the actual source of the quotes which have been appearing on Collins Desk Calendars for the past 63 years.

The writer was William George Plunkett (WGP), a man with a long involvement in the printing and publishing industries. Born in 1910, he served a five-year apprenticeship from 1926 as a compositor and linotype operator with Waverley Press Ltd, rising to be foreman by 1934. ADB takes up his story:

On 23 November 1943 Plunkett enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force. Serving in Australia as an aircraft-hand and telephone-operator, he rose to leading aircraftsman before being discharged in Sydney on 26 March 1946. As printing production manager (from 1947) with W. Nevill & Co. Ltd, manufacturing stationers and publishers of the Olympic Desk Calendar, he began to collect literary quotations to provide the calendar's 'thought for the day'. Plunkett included a few pithy phrases of his own in 1961, and added more in the ensuing years. Many of his aphorisms were based on family incidents; others were drawn from conversations with colleagues at the Earlwood-Bardwell Park branch of the Returned Sailors', Soldiers' and Airmen's Imperial League of Australia, of which he was vice-president.

Jotted down on anything to hand—a packet of Tally-Ho cigarette papers, a newspaper, or even a toilet roll—and shaped into quotable form, Plunkett's maxims appeared in some 400,000 desk calendars each year, usually on Wednesdays, above the initials W.G.P. His words stood alongside quotations from the Bible, Shakespeare, Bacon, Milton, Pope and Coleridge.

Most of his own epigrams were homely and didactic:

• One of the real secrets of happiness is to be content with what you have;
• A good deed, no matter how small, is worth more than the grandest good intention; and
• Husbands are like the fire on the hearth—likely to go out if unattended.

There was often a sardonic touch:

• Travel may well broaden the mind, but it certainly narrows the bank account; and
• Many a self-made man worships his maker.

Some desk-calendar readers thought that W.G.P. stood for 'Wednesday's Golden Proverb' [because his sayings were often published on Wednesdays]. The relative few who knew the identity of the motto-maker dubbed Plunkett 'the man of a thousand sayings'. A quick-witted raconteur, he enjoyed a joke, a bet and a beer, but he could also be strict, pedantic and unyielding. He read avidly, habitually consulted the Oxford English Dictionary, usually carried a cryptic crossword puzzle in his pocket, and described himself as an 'ordinary bloke' who liked to 'play around with words'.

Given that the real WGP died in 1975, Life on the West Island was fascinated that his pithy sayings are still printed today in desk calendars. So we had a look through ours, and discovered some more pearls of wisdom from the late WGP:

• No wonder teenagers become so confused. While half their parents are telling them to find themselves, the other half are telling them to get lost;
• The whispered lie is just as wrong as the one that thunders loud and long;
• Some people must make a full-time career out of clumsiness. They couldn’t be so good at it by accident;
• Money talks; the secret is to hold it long enough to hear what it says; and
• The most severe test of friendship is whether it can stand a loan.

All of WGP’s witty and wise sayings persuade us that he would have been an interesting companion, who could give sound advice on life’s dilemmas. But one saying hints at a deeper issue in the life of this prolific West Island “aphorist”: The only sure cure for a hangover is to stay drunk!

RIP, WGP. Long may your sage advice grace our desk calendars.