Roger Bacon? Mike Ramsden? David C. Allan? Alex Berlyne? Martyn Cornell? Apocryphal?
Question for Quote Investigator: According to a popular journalistic legend a newspaper in London once published the following difficult to decipher headline:
Foot Heads Arms Body
This headline was purportedly about British politician Michael Foot who had become the leader of an organization which was concerned with military armaments. The headline supposedly appeared in “The Times” or “The Guardian” during the 1980s. Yet, I am skeptical because I have never seen a solid citation. Would you please explore whether this headline is genuine or apocryphal?
Reply from Quote Investigator: The earliest match located by QI appeared in the London magazine “Flight International” in 1974. The editor Mike Ramsden published a lighthearted column titled “Straight and Level” under the pseudonym Roger Bacon.1 The column contained an item about a comical fictional headline. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:2
What a narrow escape for all of us that Mr Michael Foot wasn’t made the Defence Minister, thus sparing me the headline “Foot Heads Arms Body.”
Based on this citation, Mike Ramsden is the leading candidate for creator of this mock headline. The phrase entered circulation as a joke, and it was repeated in other periodicals. QI has searched multiple databases and has not yet found this phrase used as a genuine headline in a newspaper.
Yet, it is conceivable that an editor did insert this headline into a newspaper during the 1980s. The 2010 citation given further below provides some evidence that the headline may have appeared in “The Times”. However, QI has been unable to collaborate this claim.
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
In 1978 the gag headline achieved further distribution when “The Guardian” newspaper of London published a letter from David C. Allan of Edinburgh, Scotland containing the phrase:3
Following your headline “Foot hits back . . .” (June 22), can we expect to read, on the said gentleman’s appointment as Secretary of State for Defence, “Foot heads arms body”?
In 1981 “The Jerusalem Post” published a column by Alex Berlyne which repeated the phrase in a way that suggested it might be a genuine headline:4
The general untidiness of these shelves reminded me of a newspaper headline about the leader of the British Labour party: “Foot heads arms body.”
In 1994 “The Guardian” printed a note from Betty Mastrantone of Gwynedd, Wales which suggested that the headline was genuine:5
I offer the following two headlines referring respectively to Field Marshall Montgomery’s visit to a former battlefield and Michael Foot’s appointment to a government post. “Monty Flies Back to Front”, “Foot Heads Arms Body”.
In 2000 “The Independent” newspaper of London published a piece by Thomas Sutcliffe suggesting that the phrase was a fantasy headline:6
Others cherish more forlorn hopes: the journalist who longed to see “Foot heads arms body” on the front page of The Times knew that it was only in some journalistic Never-Never land that the former leader of the Labour Party would take up the role of chairman of a weapons think-tank.
In 2001 a column in the “Statesman Journal” of Salem, Oregon suggested that the headline was genuine:7
The story was about a man named Michael Foot in the United Kingdom being named to a group studying nuclear disarmament.
The headline on the newspaper article reporting this news was the following, and it’s real: “Foot Heads Arms Body”
In 2008 “The Times” of London published a letter from Al James of Cheshire, England who suggested that the phrase was used as a headline during the 1980s. The acronym CND referred to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament organization:8
In the early 1980s Michael Foot became leader of the Labour Party. He was also a co-founder of CND and pushed for nuclear disarmament. Mr Foot travelled to Brussels to chair a lobby group in the European Parliament to construct a plan to get rid of the bomb as part of the European election policy. From this came the headline “Foot heads arms body”.
In 2010 “The Guardian” published a column by journalist Simon Hoggart which contained the following discussion of the phrase:9
By a sad coincidence, last week I said that the headline “Foot heads arms body” was probably apocryphal. Not at all. I have since heard from Martyn Cornell, who was a subeditor on the Times around 1986.
He had to handle a story about Michael Foot being put in charge of a committee to look at nuclear disarmament in Europe, or something similar. The headline was to be in largish type, but across a single column – always a problem for subs.
“I certainly wasn’t going to get ‘nuclear’ or ‘disarmament’ or ‘committee’ to fit, so after a struggle I decided on ‘Foot chairs arms body’, then thought ‘Foot heads arms body’ would at least give a laugh to the revise sub. To my astonishment, the headline was printed, and a legend was born …”
In 2021 a newsletter edited by quotation expert and BBC broadcaster Nigel Rees published a remark by Cornell:10
Martyn Cornell says: ‘I once wrote a headline for the (London) Times about the former Labour Party leader Michael Foot being made chair of an organisation campaigning for Europe to become a nuclear weapons-free zone, that said: “Foot heads arms body”. That was definitely deliberate. Was in 1986’ – alas, this cannot be confirmed due to a gap in the Times online archive.
In conclusion, this phrase began as a humorous mock headline. The most likely creator was Mike Ramsden who printed it in “Flight International” magazine in 1974. During subsequent years the phrase was mentioned in other periodicals such as “The Guardian” and “The Jerusalem Post”. However, it did not appear as a headline.
The tale offered by Martyn Cornell is difficult to evaluate. He may have subconsciously remembered the phrase, or he may have reinvented the phrase. The headline has not yet been found in “The Times” digital archive.
Image Notes: Picture of newspaper from Andrys at Pixabay. The image has been cropped and resized.
Acknowledgement: Great thanks to Nigel Rees whose newsletter mentioned this phrase which led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration.
- Website: FlightGlobal, Article title: The history of Uncle Roger’s Festive Quiz, Article author: David Learmount, Date on website: December 21, 2009, Website description: Aviation news and opinion. (Accessed flightglobal.com on August 20, 2024) link ↩︎
- 1974 March 28, Flight International, Volume 105, Number 3394, Straight and Level by Roger Bacon (pseudonym of editor Mike Ramsden), Quote Page 416a, Column 3, IPC Transport Press Ltd, London. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1978 June 27, The Guardian, Section: Letters To The Editor, Letter title: Footnote, Letter from: David C. Allan of Dalkeith Road in Edinburgh, Quote Page 10, Column 6, London, England. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
- 1981 July 10, The Jerusalem Post, With Prejudice: In the flesh: by Alex Berlyne, Quote Page A11, Column 3 and 4, Jerusalem, Israel. (ProQuest) ↩︎
- 1994 September 29, The Guardian, Challenging Centipede, Quote Page A6, Column 3 and 4, London, England. (ProQuest) ↩︎
- 2000 February 10, The Independent, The perfect pun has its day in ‘The Sun’ by Thomas Sutcliffe, Quote Page 4, London, England. (ProQuest) ↩︎
- 2001 October 31, Statesman Journal, Willamette Whimsy by Tom Forstrom, Quote Page 1D, Column 1, Salem, Oregon. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
- 2008 January 30, The Times, Section: Letters To the Editor, Letter title: Headline heaven, Letter author: Al James of Bollington, Cheshire, Quote Page 16, Column 5, London, England. (Gale – The Times Digital Archive) ↩︎
- 2010 March 6 (Online date: 2010 March 5), The Guardian, Simon Hoggart’s week: Footnotes to a life well lived by Simon Hoggart, Quote Page 16, Column 5, London, England. (ProQuest and theguardian.com; accessed August 20, 2024) link ↩︎
- 2021 January, The “Quote…Unquote” Newsletter, Volume 30, Number 1, Publisher and Editor: Nigel Rees, Quote Page 15, London, England. (Verified with PDF of newsletter) ↩︎