"Lean On Me"

'Pooh, are you there?'

'Helleher, helleher, this is 2Hundred Acre Winpo--'

'No, skip all that.'

'As you wish, Piglet.'

'A great shame about Mr Withers.'

'Oh, yes.  I loved his songs: "Ain't no shoeshine when she's gone…".'

'Pooh, it's actually sunsh--'

'Only known song about kleptomania in the world of footwear maintenance.'

'Yes, Pooh, you're probably…something or other.'

'Wonder where he got the name "Withers" from?'

'What do you mean, where he got it from?  It was his given surname.  He wouldn't have had any control--'

'Ah, but they say that names reveal character.'

'Dear heaven, do they?'

'Oh yes.  Withers, now…probably had a nice line in sardonic repartee.'

'Pooh, I really don't think--'

'Like that actress lady, Googie Withers.  Always played proper termagants.'

'Actually she played a variety--'

'Oh, no, Piglet, always personages of surpassing hauteur.  Had to, you see, with a name like that.'

'But that just doesn't follow.'

'Really?  And why does it not wotnot?'

'The characters she played weren't called Withers, were they?'

'Here we go. Same old Piglet.  Picky picky.  Always jugging hares.'

'Look, she'd have to get into the character she was playing.'

'What, you mean that Menthol Acting?'

'Well, she wasn't that kind of--'

'No, she wasn't. So my point stands.'

'No it doesn't.  It might be different if she was playing, oh, I don't know, Lady Alfreda Withers, arrogant yet vulnerable heiress to a docks-pallet fortune.'

'Well there you are, Piglet.  Lady Alfreda. Gimlet-eyed.  Corrosive line in light trans-shipment raillery.'

'But not if her character was, I don't know, Primrose Slade, an unassuming--'

'Unassuming? With a name like that?  Obviously a homicidal botanist.'

'What?' 

'Cleaver-wielding herbaceous borderer.  Known up and down the Mile End Road as Primmy the Chop.'

'Pooh--'

'Chop, see?  Nod to the Meat Marketing Board.  That's the thing about film publicity, Piglet.  Has to be hydrant-headed.'

'But Miss Withers couldn't invest any witheringness, assuming she ever had any, in a character who didn't require--'

'Not in an obvious way, Piglet.  Not in a spell-it-out way.  But I daresay as Primmy the Chop she'd utter some Wildean apercus before she got weaving with Spear and Jackson's finest.'

'"Lean on Me".'

'Piglet, I can hardly crawl through the screen on my lapsang and--'

'My favourite by Mr Bill Withers.'

'Ah.'

'"We all need somebody to lean on".'

'Doubtless what Primmy the Chop would say with a smile of mesmeric brightness in the seconds before the blade whirled--'

'Oh, dear, I think my waikiki connection's going.'