were still unknown to the Americans, a photo appeared in the British press showing John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison playing Rickenbacker guitars. Rickenbacker's London distributor, his "urgency cloaked in British understatement," wrote to the company's California headquarters, "This shows both the Rickenbacker's (sic) used by the group I mentioned to you. We'll need samples of both these models, please." During the Kuala Lumpur-to-Perth leg of British Airways Flight 9 on 24 June 1982, volcanic ash caused all four engines of the Boeing 747 aircraft to fail. Although pressed for time as the aircraft rapidly lost altitude, Captain Eric Moody still managed to make an announcement to the passengers: "Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress." Humour The stereotype of English understatement has been exploited in humour, for example in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life. In one scene, a suburban dinner party is invaded by Death, who wears a long black cloak and carries a scythe. "Well," says one party guest, "that's cast rather a gloom over the evening, hasn't it?" In another scene, an Army officer has just lost his leg. When asked how he feels, he looks down at his bloody stump and responds, "Stings a bit." References English culture Rhetorical techniques