(Which, as an aside, make Perry look remarkably like famous author and ornithologist Jonathan Franzen).
It's a remarkably popular theory: famous historical figures such as Walt Whitman, Charlie Chaplin and the actor Orson Welles were doubtful about Shakespeare's authenticity, and even today renowned Shakespearian actors Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance believe there is "reasonable doubt about the identity of Willian Shakespeare".
Most remarkably, he insisted on the famous Crosby clause in his contracts, by which he refused to be billed alone above the picture title: minor actresses were elevated into co-stars.
But I can report from firsthand experience that the declaration as a whole, and not just its most famous phrases, remains remarkably immune to the degrading effects of excessive familiarity.
It is possible that there is an obscure source for the epitaph in the twenty-five years between the event and the biography, but the famous words seem remarkably fragile, insecurely sourced and late in arriving, like so many other moments in history that seem sure until they are inspected, and become more uncertain the longer they are sought.
The solitary moment where it does something you don't really expect comes on the concluding cover of alt-country duo Belle Brigade's Losers: any surprise at hearing Port Vale's most famous supporter sounding remarkably downhome as he duets with folk singer Lissie is ameliorated by the fact that they're singing a genuinely fantastic song.
Her answers, such as not feeling that she was attracted to men, but rather that she "was attracted to Bill [DeBlasio]," are remarkably similar to those of famous women who, having previously been in very public heterosexual relationships, enter into a very public homosexual relationship (famous people rarely call themselves queer).
Coda One: Two and a half years earlier, in November 1967, my dear pal, Jacob, at a Who show at The Village Theater, soon to be renamed the Fillmore East, caught a few chunks of one of Pete's smashed Gibson guitars, including, remarkably enough, the headstock (the famous Baron Wolman Birdman 335, actually!).
(People who know insist that the restaurant still makes remarkably little money for such a famous place).
He sounds remarkably like one of his most famous creations, the gruff and grumpy Father Christmas, whom Briggs imagined as an ordinary man doing a job he loathed.
