History Main / BanisterSlide

[[caption-width-right:280:A spoonful of sugar helps the nanny and kids go down.]]

Any comedy whose set includes an elaborate staircase with a long, swooping banister will inevitably require someone to slide down[[note]]Or [[Film/MaryPoppins up]][[/note]] that banister. Such slides are always rear-end first.

* In Helen Wells' ''Cherry Ames: Private Duty Nurse'', the heroine does this, causing her mother to jokingly remark, "Shocking behavior for a graduate nurse!" Cherry says her brother Charlie used to do it without using his hands.

[[caption-width-right:280:A spoonful of sugar helps you go down the stairs.]]

* A much milder version shows up in the first novel of the ''[[{{Belgariad}} Malloreon]]''. Eriond and Prince Kheva set up piles of pillows at the end of their banisters ... but Polgara walks in on their game just as one pillow burst and sent feathers all over. Having had some two thousand years of experience raising little boys, all she does is laugh and tell them they need to clean up the feathers.

* ''Film/MaryPoppins'': Mary Poppins does this effectively. Being a MagicalNanny, she also goes ''up'' the banister this way.

* ''Series/HomeImprovement'': when Tim's mother moves out of the house Tim grew up in, Tim reminisces about sliding down the bannister. His brothers comment that Tim was the only one brave enough to go down facing forward, to which Tim replies that he ''was'' able to have kids anyway. Later, he takes a "slide down memory lane," and answers the door with a falsetto voice.

* ''Film/MaryPoppins'': Mary Poppins does this effectively. [[ViolationOfCommonSense She also goes]] ''[[ViolationOfCommonSense up]]'' [[ViolationOfCommonSense the banister this way.]]

* ''Film/MaryPoppins'': Mary Poppins does this effectively. She also goes ''up'' the banister this way.

* ''Film/{{Octopussy}}'': Bond slides down a banister while firing a Kalashnikov rifle, saw the newel post at the end, and blew it off just in time to avoid a ballistic groin impairment.
** And then in ''Film/{{Skyfall}}'' he and Silva slide down the separator between escalators in the London subway system during their chase sequence.
* Chow Yun-Fat's Tequila does a bannister slide of his own with GunsAkimbo in a classic shot from the first shootout of JohnWoo's ''Film/HardBoiled''.

* Among the LoadsAndLoadsOfRules in ''{{GURPS}}'' 3rd edition are rules for sliding down bannisters, including the [[GroinAttack consequences of colliding with the finial]].

* ''Literature/VorkosiganSaga'': Mile Vorkosigan does one near the beginning of Lois McMaster Bujold's ''The Warrior's Apprentice'' because he's got two broken legs, and is supposed to stay off his feet. Fortunately his father was at the bottom of the stairs, and managed to catch him. In ''Captain Vorpatril's Alliance'', Ivan mentions that some earlier point in his life, Miles ended up breaking a leg doing something similar.

* In ''Film/FatherOfTheBride'' (the 1991 version) the titular bride's little brother pretends he's going to do this, much to the horror of his parents and the wedding coordinator, as the banister has been decked out for the wedding. Earlier in the film, Annie had done this as her father came home, and a flashback of his establishes that she's been doing this since childhood.

Any comedy whose set includes an elaborate staircase with a long, swooping banister will inevitably require someone to slide down that banister. Such slides are always rear-end first.

* Magenta does this in the ''RockyHorrorPictureShow'' causing the famous AudienceParticipation line --

* In ''[[TheTenthKingdom The 10th Kingdom]]'', the false Prince Wendell enters his coronation party by jumping on a banister and sliding down into the crowd.
* ''HomeImprovement'': when Tim's mother moves out of the house Tim grew up in, Tim reminisces about sliding down the bannister. His brothers comment that Tim was the only one brave enough to go down facing forward, to which Tim replies that he ''was'' able to have kids anyway. Later, he takes a "slide down memory lane," and answers the door with a falsetto voice.
* In ''HaveIGotNewsForYou'', Paul Merton claimed that "sliding down the banister" was the appropriate method before toilet paper was invented. When it was pointed out that this would make the bannister unusable for its intended purpose, he retorted that "of course you had your shit bannister and then you had your hand bannister. You don't see them nowadays because they were all melted down during UsefulNotes/WorldWarTwo to make Spitfires".

* On ''GilmoreGirls'', Lorelai pretends to try/actually tries to persuade Rory to slide down the banister at her debutante ball. Rory doesn't do it.
* [[DiscussedTrope Discussed]] on ''{{QI}}'' of course. And, of course, plenty of buzzers went off on the mention of the word 'bannister'. Apparently, the correct term is 'balustrade' for the top part, and 'baluster' for the uprights.

* ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'' has a variation: Marco, Ax and Tobias slide down several stories of banister ''as cockroaches''. From their perspective, it's like bobsledding with rockets strapped to your back. Once it's over, they spend a few seconds [[WasntThatFun exulting in how awesome it was]] before declaring they will '''never'' be doing it again.

* ''Disney/BeautyAndTheBeast'': To save Lumiere who's being melted by LeFou, Cogsworth slides down the stair banister and jabs Lefou in the butt with a pair of scissors!

* In "[[WesternAnimation/WhollySmoke]]", Porky speedily slides down the banister, only to stop suddenly just before he hits the vase at the end.