In the Morning I Shall Be Sober

The evidence would seem to suggest that this story is probably true, although the exact words vary with each telling.

Churchill was not the first to make such a quip, however. The Quote Investigator (QI) cites several examples, the earliest of which is this one dating from 1882:

"The great A. B. was tremendously jostled the other day in going down to the House. A. B. didn't like it. "Do you know who I am?" he said; "I am a Member of Parliament and I am Mr. A.B." – "I don't know about that," said one of the roughs, "but I know that you're a damned fool." – "You're drunk," said A.B.; "you don't know what you're saying." – "Well, perhaps I am rather drunk to–night," said the man, "but I shall be sober to–morrow morning; but you're a damned fool tonight, and you'll be a damned fool to–morrow morning."

This came from the diary of "the English raconteur Augustus John Cuthbert Hare", who doesn't fully reveal the identity of "the great A. B."; but another exchange that the QI traced has the butt of the joke being Sir Ellis Ashmead–Bartlett – the American–born Conservative member for Eye, 1880–5.

The most–easily verifiable version of the story is probably one that the QI discovered in a W. C. Fields film from 1934:

The film is called It's a Gift and in the script a character hostile to Fields says to him "You're drunk." His sharp rejoinder is: "Yeah, and you're crazy, n' I'll be sober tomorrow n' you'll be crazy for the rest of your life."

A correspondent to the QI wondered whether someone made up the Churchill story after seeing the film; the QI was unable to comment. But if (as most versions assert) the object of Churchill's quip was Bessie Braddock MP, then the W. C. Fields version predates it. Bessie Braddock didn't enter Parliament until 1945.

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