Mean Mr. Mustard

The lyrics sketch two siblings through a series of odd, memorable details. Mister Mustard seems extremely stingy and isolated, living rough and going to unusual lengths to save money. His sister Pam, by contrast, is presented as energetic and active. The mood is comic and exaggerated, but the repeated descriptions of Mustard as mean and dirty also make the portrait unkind.

Several images make his habits vivid: shaving in the dark to save paper suggests that he treats even tiny expenses as important, while sleeping in a hole in the road emphasizes his poverty or neglect. Keeping a banknote up his nose is a deliberately grotesque comic image, making him seem eccentric as well as miserly. Pam is called a “go-getter,” an informal term for someone energetic and determined; she takes him to see the Queen, apparently giving him a rare outing.

The lyrics do not explain why Mustard lives this way or whether he is truly poor, so it is hard to separate hardship from selfishness or oddness. The narrator’s labels invite us to laugh at him, but the details can also suggest a lonely, neglected person. Pam’s care may be genuine, though her brother’s obscene shouting makes the visit uncomfortable.