Comical Pipes (1960)

M/S of Mr Shillitoe, with pipe in mouth, taking a seat at a table with another man at his home in Hitchin, Hertfordshire; numerous pipes are spread out on the table before them and hanging on the wall behind them. As the man looks through a book, Mr S shows him a pipe with the head of a man for the bowl, with a long hairy beard hanging beneath it. C/U of the pipe as commentator says it is a “genuine 50-year-old tree-root novelty from Germany“. We next see in C/U a carved wooden figure of a man with a very large beak-like nose; Mr S takes hold of the head and pulls it out; the head is attached to a pipe which is concealed inside the body. There is also a spare mouthpiece or cigarette holder held under the arm of the figure. From a display of pipes seen in M/S on the table Mr S picks up “a pipe cocking a subaltern snoot [sic] at the Duke of Wellington, who was not popular with his men because he tried to stop them smoking“. In C/U we see the bowl is carved in the head of the Duke, with a smaller soldier