Oldest Member

The Oldest Member is a fictional character from the short stories and novels of P. G. Wodehouse. He narrates the majority of Wodehouse's golf stories from the terrace of a golf club whose location is unclear, and he never has a proper name. We don't even know whether the Golf Club is located in England or in the United States. In The Clicking of Cuthbert, it appears to be in England. In The Heart of a Goof, it seems to be in the United States, but then, some characters will talk about pounds instead of dollars, and Marvis Bay is mentioned in one of the story. And we know that Marvis Bay is one of the favorite fictional English seaside resorts of Wodehouse.

While the club's members enjoy having drinks in the clubhouse after a brisk eighteen holes, they do so fully aware of the risk that the Oldest Member, who, though he has long since given up golf, has seen all and knows all, might pick up on their conversation and begin to relate a story from his experience. Once he has started talking, he cannot be stopped. These stories are often told to another character, 'the young man', who, for some reason, seems eager to leave before the story has even started.

BBC Radio 4 aired an adaptation of some of the short stories and novels. Maurice Denham starred in three series between 1994 and 1999.

Famous quotes containing the words oldest and/or member:

“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)

“The essence of man is, discontent, divine discontent; a sort of love without a beloved, the ache we feel in a member we no longer have.”
—José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955)