It's a version of the wise, world-weary expatriate father he played in My Beautiful Laundrette a quarter of a century ago.
Twenty years after his debut album, I'm Your Man brilliantly repositioned Cohen as a wise, world-weary and acerbically witty survivor, singing about sexual politics in the era of Aids or the agonising grind of the songwriting process.
Thomas Conner of the Chicago Sun-Times said that "Cheers (Drink to That)" is the best song on the album, saying "[the song is] a wise, world-weary paean from a gal at the bar who's seen some stuff, has moved on and wants to buy everybody a round of fruity shots".
Jacobs has always had a soft spot for the hip schoolgirl, the worldly-wise, world-weary woman-child.
A similar scale of fibbing transformed Laurens van der Post, a pushy South African journalist of moderate gifts, into a British colonel, a Sir, and a world-famous wise man.
As a wise man once wrote, "The world is not a wish granting factory".
Rather, in Peter Morton's clever and humorous work of historic fiction, the queen moves in and out of time, not chronologically, waxing wise on world events, and with the wizardry of dressers, changes costume onstage, hair graying or reversing to youthful brown, with a parade of prime ministers passing through.
The present head of Hyderabad, the most important of the princely states of India, formerly bore the string of titles His Exalted Highness Nawab Mir Osman, Ali Khan Bahadur, Strongest man of This Time, Wisest Man of the World, Emperor of the Earth, King of Kings, Conqueror of Battle, Faithful Ally of the British Government.
Paul Scholten was eerily apt as the worldly wise and world-weary cynic Don Alfonso.
There's a gruesome murder, a wise if world-weary inspector, an unexpected solution to the crime.
