It's a case for Fred Shapiro!

[Laurence Horn]

At 12:49 PM -0500 1/24/01, GEORGE THOMPSON wrote:
>         In a new book I find the following allusion to a very familiar
>expression, referring to the fact that Anne Perry, the mystery
>writer, had been identified as having been involved in a murder when
>a teen-ager in Australia: "Perry was terrified that the revelation of
>her past . . . would destroy her career, but as it turned out, the
>ensuing wave of interest actually increased her sales, confirming the
>old wisdom that there is no such thing as bad publicity."  Martha
>Hailey DuBose, Women of Mystery. . . , NY, 2000/2001, p. 426.
>
>         This is one of those popular expressions which are very hard to
>document because they are very variable in their formulation.  It
>exists in both a negative form, as above, and a positive one: all
>publicity is good publicity.
>
>         I find in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 5th ed., 1999 and the
>Oxford Dictionary of Phrase, Saying and Quotation, 1997, the same
>citation, attributed to Brendan Behan: all publicity is good
>publicity, except your own obituary.  I think that this is obviously
>Behan's elaboration of a previously familiar expression.  The ODQ
>further dates the idea to the early 20th century.  The 1986 edition
>of Partridge's Dictionary of Catchphrases gives it with the
>concluding qualification "so long as they spell your name right" and
>dates it to the mid 1930s.  This is the form familiar to me.

Then there's the related "Call me whatever you want, as long as it's
not late for dinner"

larry