The Inimitable Jeeves

By: P. G. Wodehouse

Narrated by: Frederick Davidson

When Bingo falls in love at a Camberwell subscription dance and Bertie Wooster drops into the mulligatawny, there's work for a wet-nurse. Who better than Jeeves?

This is the first Jeeves and Wooster story "Plum" ever wrote. Wodehouse weaves his wit through a wide collection of terrifying aunts, miserly uncles, love-sick friends, and unwanted fiancés.

Bertie gets into a bit of trouble when one of his pals, Bingo Little, starts to fall in love with every second girl he lays his eyes on. But the soup gets really thick when Bingo decides to marry one of them and enlists Bertie's help. Luckily, he has the inimitable Jeeves to pull him out of it.

Public Domain (P)1999 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

"By far the most prolific audiobook interpreter of P.G. Wodehouse's comic English manor-house tales, Frederick Davidson here offers a performance superior to most of his other efforts....Aunt Agatha alone is worth the price of admission." ( AudioFile)

Hilarious High Jinx Among the British Idle Rich

The Inimitable Jeeves is the funniest audiobook I've listened to. Bertie Wooster is a consummately idle idle rich chappie, rather foolish and none too intelligent and prone to getting into absurd fixes regarding women, betting (what he calls sporting), or relatives. Bertie's laconic "genius" valet Jeeves relies on his network of connections among the upper crust's servants and cooks and butlers and his knowledge of human nature and of Bertie's foibles to fish Bertie "out of the soup" or even to solve Bertie's mooching friend Bingo Little's serial love troubles. If all that weren't enough, Jeeves prepares the perfect cup of tea and is a reliable (though severe) arbiter of fashion.

The chapters tell a linked set of amusing and suspenseful stories with colorful characters and perfect, comical payoffs. All are narrated by Bertie in the first person, so that the reader is treated to a plethora of colorful similes ("He lugged them out of the drawer as if he were a vegetarian fishing a caterpillar out of the salad") and slang. Influenced by Bertie, I now find myself "biffing" about saying things like "the rummy thing" and "eh, what?" and "ripping fine day" and "simply topping" and "what's the sitch" (situation)" and "cove" (guy) and and "right-o" and "he's got a goodish pile" (money) and "rather" and "What the deuce" and "Dash it all." At one point Bertie asks Jeeves, "Did you put that pie-faced infant up to bally-ragging Mr. Basington-Basington?" Another time he asks Jeeves if some "chappie is not a blighter or an excrescence." I could go on and on quoting the exquisite Bertie-isms!

And the reader, Frederick Davidson, is perfect, making Bertie sound so refined and buffoonish and sophisticated and ignorant, and Jeeves so terse and superior. Even if you didn't usually like Davidson's manner, you couldn't resist his Bertie!

Brilliant!

Beautifully narrated and superb Wodehouse prose - just a delight. I can't wait to download more - and to re-listen to this one.

An unexpected pleasure

I had just finished Claudius the God and was looking for another book narrated by Frederick Davidson. This book came up and it was listed as one of the top ten funniest books of all time somewhere on the internet so I downloaded it. I had never heard of P.G. Wodehouse but he doesn't disappoint. I plan on listening to the rest of the series. I only wish Davidson had done all the books. This is definitely a repeat listen. Laugh out loud pee your pants funny.

The Inimitable Frederick Davidson

I've always thought Bertie Wooster, so often characterized as a "dim-witted aristocrat", is actually wiser than he seems--both to his Aunt Agatha and to many readers. While not a genius like Thomas Hardy or Jeeves, Bertie has a cagey sense of self-preservation and, what's more, lives up to Madeline Basset's assessment of him as "one of the only truly chivalrous men" she knows.

As a reader, Fredrick Davidson expresses that innate shrewdness in Bertie's character. Just listen to his intonation as Bertie sizes up Bingo Little's latest girlfriend, describes the unspeakable Honoria Glossop or counters the machinations of the vile Rupert Steggles. Then there is his good-heartedness: the lengths he goes to make every one of Bingo's romances come off, though knowing the effort is probably doomed.

All this is important because it transforms Bertie Wooster from the fool with a silver spoon in his mouth to a character--albeit comic--who you actually get to know, like and care about. If Bertie were only a class-warfare stereotype I doubt the allure of the Jeeves-Wooster axis would have lasted as long as it has. And it's this side of the otherwise goofy, slow-witted Bertie that Davidson understood and expressed to a nicety.

This book happens to be one of Davidson's and Wodehouse's best efforts. The stories can be read or listened to individually, but they all link together as chapters in an ongoing story. And that story is simply one of Wodehouse's most delightful and entertaining.

Did not prefer this narrator

Storyline seemed fine but the narrator was a little too whiny for me. Had to stop a few chapters in.