Lord Oom Piet

[Mike_Oettle]

This evening on Kyknet, an Afrikaans TV channel in South Africa, we had a blast from the past in the form of a movie called Lord Oom Piet (made in 1962).
The story line plays up the rivalries (political and otherwise) between the Afrikaners and the English in South Africa.
Piet Kromhout is the candidate for the National Party in the upcoming general election, and is determined to unseat his rival, the United Party MP Sir David Willoughby.
But Kromhout’s bubble is burst when he learns that he has inherited the earldom of Bentwood in England. (Supposedly his English ancestor translated the family name into Dutch on settling in South Africa.) He tries to dismiss it as a rumour, but when the staff of Castle Bentwood arrive at his Cape Dutch farmhouse he is forced not only to admit it, but to play the lord to impress the English-speaking voters of the district.
Apparently the Bentwoods also have Scottish ancestry, so the valet dresses Piet up in a Cameron tartan kilt, a blue velvet coatee with jabot, Argyle hose to match the kilt, and a bonnet with a feather (apparently it is a turkey feather – a deliberate mistake that the “English” would not miss).
The valet also encourages a colony of black African ants by spilling the contents of a sugar basin on the grass, ensuring that Piet itches and scratches throughout a performance by Webster Booth and Anne Ziegler (the English tenor and his second wife had recently settled in South Africa at the time) before plunging into his fish pond to escape the ants!
Unfortunately there are no pictures to be found on the internet, aside from the movie poster, so you will have to be satisfied with my verbal description.
This is Oom Piet (played by writer/director Jamie Uys) from his election poster:

Regards,
Mike