Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge - Character

Character

Standing around 6' 2" tall, with large ears and a loud voice, Ukridge makes a striking figure, generally found wearing worn grey flannel trousers and a golf coat with a bright yellow Mackintosh over it; his collar is rarely properly attached to his shirt, and his pince-nez glasses are held in place with wire from a ginger beer bottle. By way of contrast, he looks exceptionally smart in evening dress (generally borrowed without permission from his friend Jimmy Corcoran, the narrator of most of the stories).

Ukridge has a fondness for whisky and cigars. He tends to address people as "laddie" or "old horse", and his favourite exclamations are "upon my Sam" and "it's a bit hard", the latter summing up his view of the treatment life invariably seems to mete out to him, although he remains forever cheerful. He always has some visionary scheme which will win him fame and fortune, but is hampered by lack of capital; in borrowing from friends he exhorts them to have "vision" and to maintain the "big, broad, flexible outlook".

Ukridge is forthright and opinionated, and likes to maintain a casual, informal atmosphere. Though rarely meaning to be rude, he often manages to offend those not used to his manner. People are overwhelmed by his personality and are persuaded to give him credit regularly, but become less civil when they find their bills unpaid. He can more than hold his own in a bar-room scrap.

He does occasionally win people over, the ex-butler Bowles who owns his friend Jimmy Corcoran's apartment building being a quite mystifying case-in-point. Ukridge exhibits no snobbery, and is often pally with members of the lower orders, domestic staff, bookies, and chaps he meets in pubs. For a time Ukridge manages the boxer "Battling" Billson, whom he met at sea.

To those who count themselves his friends (foremost among them being Corcoran, who narrates the shorts, and Jeremy Garnet, narrator of Love Among the Chickens), Ukridge is a difficult and often exasperating companion, but one who is generally well-regarded. Corcoran has a lot of time for him, despite the ordeals he endures at his friend's hand, and their old schoolfellow George Tupper, a man of some wealth and distinction in the Foreign Office, has some faith in his schemes and is often generous with funds.

He is generally at loggerheads with his fearsomely proper novelist aunt, Julia Ukridge, who lives in a big house off Wimbledon Common, but has occasional periods of reconciliation, which end when he exploits his position in her house to start another scheme.