I’ve heard two people in the past week make a jocular remark about things just growing ‘Like Topsy’. They were both life peers as it happens, Lady Altmann and Lord Norton of Louth. Is one still allowed to make this proverbial reference to Uncle Tom’s Cabin?

In a way the simile is the same as saying something is like the curate’s egg meaning ‘good in parts’, even though the curate’s egg was nothing but bad.