Alluding to how
messages get
misheard and distorted when passed down the line from one person to another. Similar to the "
Telephone" game in the United States and a less racial version of the British phrase "
Chinese Whispers" or the French "téléphone arable".
A story from WWI has it that the important message "Send reinforcements, we're going to advance" was passed along a series of radio operators from the front until it became "Send three and fourpence, we're going to a dance".
I wasn't there myself and so this could all be a bit three and fourpence, but let me tell you what a friend of a friend who was there told him that she said...
