Let George do it...

A matter has been troubling me for some time. No use beating about the bush. We're all men of the world here...

It's this whole business of George Formby winning the 1944 Stalin Prize for Arts.

Now I know what you're going to say. Let sleeping dogs lie...Leave the great man's memory undisturbed. No reason to bring up that unwholesome association....

But I cannot leave it be. I have to say, frankly and openly, that I see no harm in Comrade Stalin associating with George Formby Jr.

I have no truck with the revisionists who see Formby as a running dog of Imperialism, a Trotskyite-banjoleleist renegade. I denounce those (you know who you are) who have had the temerity to describe the banjo-ukelele as a "monstrous hybrid" and "musical revisionism made flesh". This is musically and politically unacceptable. I see the banjolele as quintessentially dialectical in the Hegelian sense. On the one hand we have the classic trio of thesis -antithesis-synthesis...and on the other, banjo-ukelele-banjolele.

I rest my case regarding the impeccable Marxist-Leninist credentials of the banjolele. And it is a matter of historical fact that Comrade Stalin was a firm admirer of Mr Formby. I do not know whether Comrade Stalin ever played the banjolele (although I am certain he would have mastered it with his customary ease had he chosen to). Indeed, I know of no prominent Soviet banjo or ukelele players. But I am a simple working man...I leave that sort of thing to the scientists, the historians.

The point is this. Wikipedia reports that Comrade Formby was awarded the Stalin prize for Arts in 1944. This is not incredible and I have taken it in good faith...but recent researches have led me to the conclusion that it is disinormation, spread (no doubt by capitalists, Trotskyites and revisionists) for some nefarious purpose which we cannot yet perceive. I say "yet" with care. I have, as you know, extensive contacts within the FSB. Moscow has been informed and already the Organs of State Security are at work. We take this sort of thing very seriously. They're big fans of Formby in the Lubyanka...

I will keep you informed on this grave matter.