ME SO FAR: Vol. VII of THE BANDY PAPERS

The final volume of the Bandy Papers (Me Bandy, You Cissie, 1979, etc.), which have chronicled the farcical (and sometimes only silly) adventures (in WW I and its disillusioned aftermath) of Bartholomew Bandy. Here, Bandy--as an Air Force commander in an Indian state in 1925--is insufferable, loquacious, and sometimes even effective: in a word, Falstaffian. Drunken and embarrassed by Field Marshal Blount, India's new Viceroy, on board ship to Bombay, he goes briefly on the wagon after trying fruitlessly to plant pornography on the Viceroy by way of revenge. As Deputy Supreme Air Lord of Jhamjarh, one of the larger independent states in Central India, he has his drunken pilots practice gunnery and bombing and goes off the wagon. Hung over, Bandy then helps to create a ""situation"" in neighboring war-like Khaliwar and later air-rescues the Maharajah's son in a border incident. Eventually, he's promoted to Commander, but the Viceroy summons him to Delhi (and away from Sigga, his fiancee and senior medical officer), reprimands him, and finds the pornography. Not to worry: our hero, mistaken for a Russian, is taken to Khaliwar, which does indeed have an air force, and thrown into prison before he escapes (with inside help) and flees (a long, tedious chase-sequence) to warn Jhamjarh and the Viceroy of the impending attack. After many misadventures and a series of dogfights, victorious Bandy, knighted and a mystic of sorts, returns home to Canada with the beautiful Sigga. The series comes to an end with Bandy fully recovered from the effects of the war on his psyche. Though much of this is merely antic sitcom slapstick--and for fans only--some is first-rate farce, as uproarious and subversive as the best of Tom Sharpe.