In the lead-up to the municipal elections gloves are off, and what has been described as the "silly season" is upon us until results after August 4. 

How apt then that a little book called The Bedside Book Of Insults compiled by William Cole and Louis Phillips should come across my path. 

Here I merely quote some of the better ones and hope to arm politicians with food for thought and fodder for their rivals. This book did exist in the good old days when people had voices which could even be published without the dire threat of a lawsuit for so much as burping on social media. 

"It has been the political career of this man to begin with hypocrisy, proceed with arrogance, and finish with contempt." – Thomas Paine (about John Adams) 

"I am free of all prejudices. I hate everyone equally." – WC Fields

"Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad." – Lord Acton

"One could not even dignify him with the name of a stuffed shirt. He was simply a hole in the air." – George Orwell (on Stanley Baldwin).

 About the Beatles, Noel Coward wrote, "…bad mannered little shits." 

Of Aneurin Bevan (often known as Nye Bevan, a Welsh Labour Party politician who was the minister of health in the post-war Attlee government from 1945 to 1951), Winston Churchill said, "He will be as great a curse to this country in peace as he was a squalid nuisance in time of war." 

"The unpleasant sound Bush is emitting as he traipses from one conservative gathering to another, is a think tinny 'arf' – the sound of a lapdog." – George F Will (about George Bush)

 Gore Vidal wrote of Truman Capote, "Truman Capote has made lying an art. A minor art," while Henry James wrote of him, "The same old sausage, fizzing and sputtering in its own grease." 

"I would not want Jimmy Carter and his men put in charge of snake control in Ireland." – Eugene McCarthy

"He would make a drum out of the skin of his own mother in order to sound his own praises," David Lloyd George wrote about Winston Churchill. 

Irving Stone wrote of American politician Henry Clay, "He was like a chameleon; he could turn any colour that might be useful to him. To read of his career one must have corkscrew eyes."

 George Bush wrote of Michael Dukakis, politician who ran for presidency in the States, "He's the stealth candidate… His campaign jets from place to place, but no issues show up on the radar. 

About Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr, an American politician who served as the 38th US president, Bella Azbug said, "Richard Nixon impeached himself. He gave us Gerald Ford as revenge."

"Gerry Ford is a nice guy, but he played too much football with his helmet off." – Lyndon B Johnson.

Of Charles De Gaulle, Winston Churchill wrote, "He is like a female llama surprised in her bath."

"… a head like a banana and hips like a woman," wrote Hugh Dalton, while HG Wells said of him, "An artlessly sincere megalomaniac."

Benjamin Disraeli wrote of William Gladstone, "If Gladstone fell into the Thames it would be a misfortune. But if someone dragged him out again, it would be a calamity."

Of American playwright Lillian Hellman, Mary McCarthy wrote, "Every word she writes is a lie, including and and the." 

Martin Luther said of King Henry VIII, "… a pig, an ass, a dunghill, the spawn of an adder, a basilisk, a lying buffoon, a mad fool with a frothy mouth."

 Dean Acheson said of J Edgar Hoover, "J Edgar Hoover, whom you should trust as much as you would a rattlesnake with a silencer on it." 

Gore Vidal wrote of Andy Warhol, "He is the only genius with an IQ of 60."

 Hugo Dyson wrote of JRR Tolkien when reading his manuscript, "Oh f**k, not another elf."

Of Theodore Roosevelt Patricia O'Toole wrote, "… he was an old maid with testosterone poisoning."

"In a disastrous fire in President Reagan's library both books were destroyed. And the real tragedy is that he hadn't finished colouring one," wrote Johnathan Hunt.

 "Richard Nixon is a kamikaze pilot who kept apologising for the attack," wrote Mary McGrory.