MISSING LINKS - LT. COLUMBO & LORD PETER WIMSEY

Spoilers, sweetie....

'COLUMBO'
"MIND OVER MAYHEM"

Lt. Frank Columbo:
"I had the tires removed from car number eight and run through our lab.  In the tread of one of those tires was some grains of impacted tobacco.  Give me that tobacco.

"This is the same tobacco that Professor Nicholson imported from England.  This is the same tobacco that he used in his pipe, the same pipe that was crushed in his driveway by the car that killed him.  The same car that you signed out for, the car that you were driving."

I asked my friends at the Facebook page "Columbo-TV" for any information on fictional brands of tobacco that might have appeared in Toobworld.  Among the replies, Nancy Thompson came through with this:

"'In Murder Must Advertise', Lord Peter Wimsey (in disguise as Death Bredon) works on a print campaign for Whifflets."

Wimsey, using his middle names as an alias, went undercover at the Pym advertising company to investigate the possibility of a murder.  But he ended up getting pulled into the work itself, especially with the campaign he devised for Whifflets cigarettes.

The mini-series doesn't go into the amount of detail as the book did, but at least Whifflets did get a shout-out.

I found the mini-series on YouTube, starring Ian Carmichael as Lord Peter Wimsey.  And near the end of his investigation, Lord Wimsey said to his brother-in-law, CI Charlie Parker:

"If I can't be of anymore help to you tonight, I'll toddle off home to bed.  I have my Whifflets scheme to get out early tomorrow morning."  

And earlier in the mini-series we saw Wimsey offer his guest a cigarette from his case.  I can only assume that those were Whifflets which he had to offer.

Now, those mentions of Whifflets were of cigarettes.  Professor Nicholson smoked a pipe.  But it's not a barrier to my claim that the tobacco connects those television adaptations of Lord Wimsey mysteries to the 'Columbo' series.

A major corporation which doesn't diversify in its product is going to be out of business eventually.  And there are tobacco companies that offer more than one brand of cigarettes.  And they would also be selling tobacco prepared for use in the pipe.

I don't know what the brand of pipe tobacco was named; perhaps the company wanted to establish a brand and so hewed closely to "Whifflets".  Whiffler's, perhaps?  (Maybe the family name for the founders of that tobacco company was Whiffley.)

So it's a trivial connection for linking 'Columbo' to 'Murder Must Advertise', but 'twill serve....

As to how Howard Nicholson came by it, I think he must have discovered it while he was in England during World War !!.  Nicholson was in his mid-thirties when the United States entered the conflict, but he may not have been over there as a soldier.  (I know Lew Ayres, who portrayed Nicholson, would have vetoed that idea,)

He could have already been working on his research into chemistry.  And perhaps his research was utilized for the war effort.

Or he could have been teaching at a good English college or university - one only to be found in Toobworld, of course.  Perhaps at St. Cedd's ('Doctor Who') or at Gresham College, where he sat in with the "Invisible College" members of the time. ('Inspector Lewis')

Even with the fact that he preferred that English tobacco and he enjoyed a good English breakfast of kippers, I don't think Nicholson was English himself.  Like Mr. Ayers, I believe Nicholson was an American as well.

Thanks for the help, Nancy, and welcome to Team Toobworld!

BCnU!