Dear Friends and readers,
Proving the as yet unrecognized centrality of Anthony Trollope’s novels: I don’t know if people will be amused, but all Trollopians upon learning about the new possibly dangerous, probably highly contagious variant of COVID must have instantly recalled Trollope’s omnipotent super-respected and expensive London Dr Omicron Pie.
David Brisset in the role of Sir Omicron Pie gravely advising (1974 BBC Pallisers Episode 26, scene 1)
Dr Omicron is called in when other doctors fail or are not thought to be powerful enough, or just when the patient is thought or thinks himself (herself) important or the matter seems grave indeed.
In Simon Raven’s The Pallisers upon being told that Lady Glen is pregnant (Can You Forgive Her?), Plantagenet Palliser immediately thinks to contact Drs Thorne and Omicron Pie.
Philip Latham as Plantagenet and Susan Hampshire as Lady Glen, she having told him, he is about to scurry off to contact the doctors (Pallisers 6)
The Geroulds tell us Sir Omicron first appears in Barchester Towers as a consultant in the illness of Bishop Grantley and Dean Trefoil, then for Sir Roger Scatcherd and Lady Arabella in Doctor Thorne; George Bertram in The Bertrams. Lady de Courcy wants him to send her husband to a German Spa in Small House of Allington. He is called in for rich, gravely ill, nervous or manipulative patients or patients’ relatives.
His name reveals him as a comical figure: at one point Doctor Thorne refers to him as Sir Simon Omicron.
Barbara Murray, once Madame Max, now Mrs Finn looking down, without her usual nourishing soup (Pallisers 26)
But he is not always a comical. He is there at a crucial death in the closing of the BBC film series Pallisers. The lead-in as it were for final Parliamentary novel, The Duke’s Children. He can diagnose pneumonia but can do nothing for the patient.
Philip Latham as Duke and Susan Hampshire as Duchess, who has other things on her mind, just now (Pallisers 26)
We can think of the powers of allegory in language, of intuitive assonance: Omnicron makes us think of ominous. Utter this sentence: When Dr Fillgrave fails, characters call in Sir Omicron Pie: the language suggests Omicron is going to fill graves instead. Not so funny after all.
Ellen
Ellen And Jim Have A Blog, Two 
My friend Catherine: “I loved your comments on Sir Omicron Pie. He is one of my favorite Trollipian “pickles.” Here I mean “pickle” as a relish. garnish, oddity, amuse bouche. It is so like Trollope to create an amusing odd-ball character to keep the atmosphere light, yet advance the plot. Plus Sir Omicron Pie (via the name alone) pokes fun at the British class system. I think it was Thackeray and not Trollope who excoriate the British public school system for putting form and manners ahead of education. The class signifier of knowing “a little dog Greek and Latin” meant a stint in a public school where boys learned things less salubrious than Greek and Latin. But Trollope was on the same page, I think. At the moment, cudgel my brains though I might, I can’t think of an apt quote from Trollope about the snobbery of having “Latin and Greek.”
I was dragged through four years of Latin and ancient Greek. Personally I enjoyed them and am glad I had the experience. What gets under my skin is the nit-picky commentators who argue about whether or not using “Omicron” is correct for naming the virus. (It’s out of alphabetical order.) And making all kinds of abstruse points about the Greek alphabet. It’s all showing off and class signifying, Plus they are demonstrating their ignorance. The naming of the viruses falls under the domain of science and government. They have their own rules and rationales for how to name things. I would rather read about Sir Omicron Pie. He was far more enlightening than any of these pseudo-scholars will ever be … “
Pity the poor newscaster who has to come back with even less news than he had two hours ago. Yes they reveal their snobbery and ignorance — apparently. I “follow” Mary Beard on twitter and she’s been questioning the way Omicron is being pronounced. I gather that it’s thought the Greeks may not have emphasized the first syllable the way we do. I don’t know if anyone knows. And it does appear to be a dangerous variant: one source I read said it was a “heavily mutated” variant, which seemed to imply our vaccines may not be as efficacious against it as say the Delta variant. I read one joke on twitter where someone said he was tired of all this and had no desire to learn the whole Greek alphabet.
Ellen
My friend, Rory, tells me that in the Greek alphabet, Pi comes after Omicron so Trollope is also making a joke about the Greek alphabet.
The first thing I thought of when I heard the latest Covid news, and I mean the very first thing, was Dr. Omicron Pie. I’m relieved to know that I’m not alone!
And what about Sir Lambda MewNew?
I had forgotten about him. What book is he is? What profession?
I discovered the character is named in one sentence in Barchester Towers, along with Sir Omicron, but he never seems to have appeared.
He probably just exists for the sake of the joke. Thank you so much for your blog, Ellen. I learn a lot from it!