For Knemon, the hateful world, which, he grumbles, has too many people in it, does not include his daughter, Myrrhine, the object of his only display of feeling.
(The alcoholic matinee idol he plays in My Favourite Year has a line O'Toole delivers inimitably. Wandering into the wrong loo, he is reprimanded by a stern old woman. 'This is for ladies only!' she grumbles, to which he replies, unzipping his fly: 'So is this, Ma'am, but every now and again I have to run a little water through it.') In the end, it was Phillips who had an affair and left.
Eisenhower was so unfamiliar with recording equipment that once, in front of a microphone, which was on, he grumbled, "How the hell does this thing work?" But, like everyone running for office after him, he was coached, and groomed, and buffed, and polished.
Nor can I conceive of a universe in which he would punish — so much as grumble at — a contributor who wrote something that embarrassed him.
"She shows an empty call center where people have been laid off — right next door there was a full one, which she didn't film," he grumbled.
("A place which might properly be called Aberfilthy," he grumbled).
He smiles briefly at the image, but quickly falls back into grumbling about the government, which he warns is going to drive mom-and-pop operators like himself out of business through stifling new taxes.
This is not enough for the rating agencies, which have grumbled that he ought to do more to repair Italy's public finances.
"Get your face out the Facebook, and turn off the phone," he grumbles, which rather suggests that, like Peter Kay's grandmother insisting on the existence of something called the "tinternet", Paul Weller thinks Facebook comes with a definite article attached.
A10 World Briefing A14 NATIONAL A20-28 DemocrAct Actoto Reassure Liberals Skeptical of Goals The Democratic Party devoted much of its convention day to reassuring its liberal base, which has grumbled about the centrist tone of the ticket and platform.
Admittedly, it may have been a convenient position from which to grumble about the government, or capitalism.
