Dudley Do-Right's such a jerk

Long before I actually read or saw anything that would qualify as a traditional Victorian melodrama, I learned a thirty-second parody of the genre from my grandmother, who performed it in three voices with the aid of a napkin doubling (tripling?) for the whiplash moustache of a villain, the hair-bow of a damsel in distress, and the bowtie of a hero. The immortal dialogue ran as follows:

"I've come to collect the rent."
"I can't pay the rent!"
"I've come to collect the rent."
"I can't pay the rent!"
"I'll pay the rent!"
"My hero!"
"Curses, foiled again!"

Did anyone else's relatives ever pull this out at family dinners, or was it just me? It has the feel of a time-honored piece of shtick, but I can't remember ever running into anyone else who knew it—admittedly, I've never asked point-blank. I assume now it will turn out to be one of those things everyone gets from their grandparents at an impressionable age. Internet?

Send those angels down to woo me now

My short story "Another Coming," originally published in Not One of Us #32, will be reprinted in Beyond Binary: Genderqueer and Sexually Fluid Speculative Fiction, edited by Brit Mandelo (Lethe Press, May 2012).

I am really looking forward to this anthology.