Interestingly, only two years after Tynan's influential first review he saw a production of it in Hamburg, and revised his opinion: the great actor Martin Held played Archie quite differently from Olivier, as a German cabaret MC, "cruder and sweatier than Olivier, and drunker, too, in a stiff-backed, stolid way, emphasising his jokes with a ghastly, crowing laugh".
It's a joke against Ghastly Good Taste.
His sunny, optimistic approach was the perfect foil for Dahl's dark imaginings - the ghastly Twits who play cruel practical jokes on each other, the bestial giants in The BFG and the deliciously scary Witches.
After a ghastly pause, he stammers and makes a deadpan joke, barely retrieving the situation.
To be fair, they are being true to the Halloween spirit in some ways, in that they're far scarier than anyone dressed as a zombie, so maybe you shouldn't inform them that "Trick or treat" is a ghastly American import, and that they should really recite a poem or tell a joke instead.
For Christians, torture is not a joke or a political punchline, but a ghastly reminder of the suffering of Jesus upon the cross.
Yet the real joke is that her own get-up is at least as ridiculous, and the oversize bloomers she wears, grotesquely revealed in her tryst with Daniel, are a ghastly (and wonderful) joke on the whole array of spicy apparel -- thongs, bikinis, lacy come-hithers, push-up bras -- endlessly promoted as aphrodisiac accoutrements.
Ghastly values, ghastly people.
