Lobby Lud - Lobby Lud in Popular Culture

Lobby Lud in Popular Culture

• Graham Greene's Brighton Rock (1938) uses a Lobby Lud character (called Kolley Kibber) as a plot device.
• The device also appears in Agatha Christie's Poirot short story The Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan (1924), as the main character, Hercule Poirot, is mistaken for the man in the newspaper contest, "Lucky Len", while he's on holiday at the seaside.
• "You are X and I claim my five pounds" (commonly abbreviated to "YA X AICMFP", "YA X AICM£5", "AICM5GBP" or "AICM5UKP") is now commonly used in online discussion forums such as Usenet and B3ta. The phrase is often employed ironically to make a humorous comparison between the poster and another person, either a third person who frequents the same forum or a celebrity.
• The phrase occasionally mutates thematically to "...my five euros", "dollars", etc. – and among science fiction fans "quatloos" (from Star Trek) is a popular substitution.
• The phrase has occasionally been parodied by Private Eye. Most notably, the cover of issue 180 in November 1968 showed a photograph from the wedding of the former Jackie Kennedy in which the bride was apparently saying: "You are Aristotle Onassis and I claim my five million pounds"
• In "Caving & the Art of Subversion", the first of the Mindscape books by Terence M Harrison, Lobbylud appears as a subversive metaphor for popular culture (the novel involves a group of young 'revolutionaries' whose mission is to destroy a new "Big Brother" type UK database system).
• In the 1970s British comedy Doctor in Charge episode entitled "The Loftus Papers", doctor Paul Collier refers to himself as Lobby Lud. Later he also refers to the cleaning lady in the same way.