He is tall, slightly stooped, with a sweet smile and a habit of saying things such as "crikey" and "holy cow".
"My dad was born in 1894 and lived in Kent all that while, and he had this accent that was olde worlde," says Blethyn. "When I went down I never went straight in the house, I'd knock on the door and he'd say 'Oh crikey, if it ain't our Brenda, wow, loo' if it ain't a red-letter day'.
The scriptwriters might easily have used wordier dialogue ("Golly gosh, McNulty, can you believe the cheek of this fellow?" "By crikey, Bunk, no. It really is beyond the pale") but it wouldn't have been so effective.
I was thinking, crikey, something's going on up in the ether.
"Seeing how we've trained all week, crikey we're ready for this battle," Rowntree said.
As I write this, I have just read a piece by Sarah Vine in the Daily Mail describing her "one woman war" (crikey!) on the "what's in it for me society".
But, see 'ere, I'm a driver, I am, so I can't intirely forget meself in a function, roight, I've got to keep me beady eyes peeled for — [CRASH] — Oh, crikey!
The American setting is not as important as the Anglicized suspension in which the fairy tale floats: throughout this seven-hundred-and-seventy-page yarn, Tartt's American characters move through a world of cozy Britishisms, like "they tucked into their food," "you look knackered," "crikey," "skive off," and "gobsmacked".
It's what some have called his "Cripes!" or "Oh, crikey!" presentation.
"I'm 69 now, crikey, the sands of time are drifting through".
