Monday 29 December 2014 | UK News feed  Bill Deedes and that
distinctive lisp  Where did Bill Deedes's famous Churchillian
lisp come from? His distinctive shushing of the letter "s" was a
matter that had long fascinated his colleagues. His frequent
broadcast performances allowed a rolling assessment of the
development of the impediment - if that is what it was - that
had been captured in the Private Eye joke when he was the
Telegraph's Editor: "Shome mishtake, shurely?"  There was no
hint of the lisp in his childhood nor in his television
appearances in the 1950s. John Butterwick, who had been an
intelligence officer in Deedes's battalion in the war, noticed
how his voice had changed over the years. There had been no
shushing when Major Deedes was shouting orders to his riflemen.
Yet when Butterwick saw his comrade on television in later
years, he noticed that it was there. Butterwick thought it had
been deliberately acquired.  Deedes always affected to be
puzzled himself as to how the lisp developed. In a te