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Is "Biggles Flies Undone" a pun?

English Language & Usage Asked on September 3, 2021

At the end of the Monty Python sketch "Biggles Dictates a Letter", there’s a voiceover (sounds like John Cleese to me) saying: "Next week, part 2: Biggles Flies Undone"

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I’ve always thought this was a pun with two possible meanings: "Biggles’s fly is undone", i.e. the fly of his trousers is not properly closed; and "Biggles Flies on Dun" where "Dun" is some location in Europe. But I realized that I’ve never heard of a place called "Dun".

I searched for "Dun", "Dunn", "Donne", and "Donnes". I found that France has a "Village of Dun" and a "Town of Dun" but both are tiny and don’t mention any notable history.

Maybe there is no second meaning; maybe it’s just a phrase meant to trick your mind: You think you are hearing "Biggles flies on" and then the last word is revealed to actually be "undone". (Humorist Dave Barry calls this comedy technique "judo": you set up an expectation and then instead of fulfilling the expectation, do something absurd.)

Is this a pun? If so, what is the second meaning?

One Answer

It is a (rather old-fashioned) pun on 'undone' but it turns on Lexico's third definition of the word:

undone
formal, humorous (of a person) ruined by a disastrous or devastating setback or reverse.
‘I am undone!’

"Alas! I am undone!" is still in common, and histrionic, usage. As a pun it was a favourite of Frankie Howerd's character in Up Pompeii.

So Cleese's pun says Biggles flies (despite being) ruined, and it also says (as you say) his fly is undone.

But...

In the UK we used to call them 'flies'. Plural. Cleese's generation certainly did. The buttons resembled flies, and as there was always more than one of 'em the word was always plural. I daresay it was the advent of the zip that led to the singular 'fly' being used.

So the second sense of the line is not "Biggles's fly is undone" but the more arresting and headline-like "Biggles's flies undone".

I should add that 'I am undone' was not deemed humorous until the twentieth century. "Woe is me! for I am undone;" [Isaiah 6:5, kjv]

Correct answer by Old Brixtonian on September 3, 2021

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